ABSTRACT
The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) involved a novel process by which perpetrators could confess to past violence in exchange for amnesty from prosecution. Many aspects of the process have been criticized, not least of which the failure to prosecute those who did not confess or did not receive amnesty. Less questioned is the TRC’s underlying assumption that perpetrators’ confessions would lead to reconciliation.
This chapter challenges that view. Using a performative analysis, it shows that the confessional script, acting, timing, staging, and audience tend to lead towards dialogic conflict, referred to in the essay as “contentious co-existence,” rather than reconciliation. The chapter contends, however, that this process is not necessarily negative for democracy. Indeed, it suggests along the lines of other theorists that agonistic debate is one of democracy’s fundamental principles.
This chapter explores factors that explain agonistic responses to perpetrators’ confessions, but also their absence. In so doing, it considers contextual factors that heighten or reduce perpetrators’ power in societies emerging from situations of political violence.
