ABSTRACT
On the contemporary scene of geopolitical studies and international relations theory the subject of transitional justice is much invoked of late (see e.g. McAdams 1997; Minow 1999; Teitel 2000; Elster 2004; Roht-Arriaza and J. Mariecruzana 2006; De Greiff 2010; Leebaw 2011). Typically, the phrase is mobilized in reference to the recuperative period that political cultures undergo after a traumatic episode has come to pass. Reckoning with a conflict that has left a society riven, transitional justice seeks to reconstitute a shared sense of belonging – what JeanLuc Nancy would call a ‘being-in-common’ – a collective social identity embodied in the mutual invocation of a communal ‘we’ (Nancy 2000). The founding of legal tribunals, truth commissions, official apologies, and public confessionals serve as paradigmatic exemplars. Each is established to help reconcile a society to its violent past and to shore up a new more just era ‘after evil’ (see Copjec 1996; Bernstein 2002; Barkan 2001; Philpott 2006; Meister 2010). As Martha Minow puts it, ‘the capacity and limitations of these legal responses illuminate the hopes and commitments of individuals and societies seeking, above all, some rejoinder to the unspeakable destruction and degradation of human beings’ (Minow 1999: 1).
