Acts of Oblivion

Bernadette Meyler’s Theaters of Pardoning offers a profound and provocative meditation on the relationship between forgiveness and the state. In this comment, I follow her methodological and substantive lead by taking literary and legal approaches to a curious form of pardoning she discusses in her work—the “Act of Oblivion.” The Act of Oblivion operated as a super-pardon: It was “a form of general amnesty erasing the record of the underlying events rather than simply remitting punishment.” Pardon is to oblivion as forgiving is to forgetting.