Theorizing Collective Metanoia: Apology, the Penitent Self, and the Penitent State By Adam Ellwanger Presented at the Conference of Historical Dialogues, Justice, and Memory Network Columbia University, New York, New York – Dec. 9, 2017 The central rhetorical feature of apologies, public and private, singular and collective, is metanoic testimony. Many of you are familiar with the concept of metanoia, but I will characterize it briefly. The earliest references to metanoia come out of ancient Greek rhetorical texts: there, it was conceived as a figure of speech by which a speaker might modify or “take back” an earlier statement. But even in its earliest manifestations, metanoia had profound spiritual implications. By modifying earlier claims, speakers revealed what kind of person they were. In other words, metanoia is a means to transform ethos – the speaker reveals who he is in what statements are modified, which statements are “taken back,” and how they are taken back. Early Christians significantly enhanced the spiritual dimensions of metanoia and their implications for the Christian ethos. Variations of the word metanoia appear dozens of times in the letters of Paul the Apostle – he uses it to characterize the essence of Christian conversion. In English translations of the New Testament, metanoia is rendered as “repentance.” Thus, the Christian notion of metanoia is still a way of “taking something back,” but where the rhetorical metanoia took back an earlier statement, Christian metanoia renounces the speaker’s whole preceding life – all of the sinful deeds that ensured one’s alienation from the kingdom of God. Put differently, Christian metanoic testimony (or repentance) was a rhetorical performance in which the new convert rejected his old ethos and signified a new identity in Christ. For Paul,