concern with the nation-as-person, she asks, can the "nation" "sin" and can the "nation" "apologize"? Since the nation is not an individual, it can only apologize through the person of a representative leader, who provides a communion between a flesh and blood individual and the larger body politic (p. 258).Another set of issues center around whether apologies matter. Are they just words or cheap talk? Her answer is that they do matter, but how much they matter depends on how, when, where, and why they occur. They have to be done right. It is not simply a question of saying "sorry about that." The deeper meaning of political apologies depends on how they fit within the context of contemporary politics and what actions accompany them.Apology looks not only to the past. It also seeks to remediate historical wrongs, to make things right, or at least righter, in the present and the future. In this sense, political apology seeks to repair a flawed foundation to rebuild community identity in ways that are truer to shared core values.Celermajer's research adds to our understanding of apology in the traditions of political theology and political philosophy. Although she does not explicitly link her work much to prior literature on apology in the fields of rhetoric and communication, she contributes to these as well. Overall, she has made a significant contribution to our understanding of the way political apology works in contemporary political society.Though it is not her stated intention, her work could well be used as a foundation for comparative, systemic study of political apologetics, where a database of historical cases might be coded according to an inventory of attributes and compared in terms of causes and effects. At the same time she provides a normative framework for judging current and future political controversies. When, for example, we look through her eyes at the apologetic efforts of the Catholic Church, we see how far the Church has come and, much more clearly, how far it still needs to go. Apologizers and their audiences would do well to study Danielle Celermajer's work.
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