The Weight of Nightmares

How does the past live on in the present-and how might we break its grip?
From capitalism and racism to debt and inheritance, The Weight of Nightmares explores how dominant systems of power operate through a politics of time, where history is not behind us, but actively shaping the now.
The demand for reparations for slavery and colonialism has reignited fierce debate by exposing the historical foundations of today's inequalities. Dismissed by critics as backward-looking or divisive, these demands persist because the legacies of exploitation continue to reproduce themselves. Reparations, this book argues, are not about the past alone-they are about confronting the structures we have inherited in order to transform the present.
Responding to the most common critiques of reparations, this powerful work rethinks the very meaning of time in politics. What would it mean to undo the temporal logics of capitalism-its equations of money, value, and labor time-and imagine a radically different future? A politics of reparation would not merely look back, but reconfigure the temporal order itself, opening the present to new narratives, new responsibilities, and new forms of collective life.