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Lea David is an assistant professor in the School of Sociology, University College Dublin. She is the author of The Past Can’t Heal Us: The Dangers of Mandating Memory in the Name of Human Rights (2020).
Lea David’s vivid writing traces the paths of ‘desire objects' connected to persons and their tragic deaths in acts of war and genocide, and how the moral labor invested in their various public trajectories gives substance to an evolving ideology of human rights. This is a highly innovative and thought-provoking book. -- Jonathan Hearn, author of <i>The Domestication of Competition: Social Evolution and Liberal Society</i> What happens to the literal remains of atrocity, the personal objects it leaves behind? In this difficult and moving book, Lea David shows how personal possessions become what she calls 'desire objects' as they move from the forensic site, through the homes of the survivors, to the public sphere of museums and display. So much more than mere things, they are shaped by, and vehicles of, ideology and meaning. A signal contribution to moral sociology from one of its most creative practitioners. -- Jeffrey K. Olick, author of <i>The Politics of Regret: On Collective Memory and Historical Responsibility</i>
