Various thinkers have proposed accounts of guilt that either make the concept itself modern, or which argue for a specifically modern version of guilt. There is something in this. And yet our thinking and practice with regard to guilt is haunted by concepts that, on the face of it, belong to the remote past, such as pollution, collective guilt and original sin. Researchers Sam Ashenden and James Brown will explore the forms and significance of this haunting both for our concepts of guilt and in order to problematise modernity.

Samantha Ashenden is Senior Lecturer in Sociology in the Department of Politics at Birkbeck College, University of London. Her current research focuses on guilt, violence and conditions of political legitimacy.

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