This paper explores the roles of remorse and recollection as ethical resources apropos tragedy, particularly in reckoning with what constitutes tragedy and what does not. Firstly, I suggest that tragedy has often been eclipsed in favour of fatalistic or deterministic accounts of catastrophe, with detrimental, 'silencing' effects on ethical reflection. Then, I explore how remorseful recollection might help us to recognize and reflect on tragedy historically—which is to consider tragedy within its authentic, truthful temporal conditions without being trapped in deterministic evasions. To further elucidate this, I explore how 'rememory' in Morrison's Beloved serves as a type of remoresful recollection vis-a-vis tragedy.
Finally, in mournfully recalling the tragic past, I consider how such (re)narrations of shared, tragic loss might also serve as ethical resources for articulating and engaging in an alternative, liberative reality through protest, repentance and repair, and forgiveness.