Justice and Retribution in Postconflict Settings
John Borneman’s essay “Reconciliation after Ethnic Cleansing” (Public Culture 14 [spring 2002]: 281–304) makes an elegant case for the central role of listening in postconflict situations, rightly highlighting the contribution of anthropology and other interpretative disciplines to fostering greater understanding and intersubjectivity. The transition from authoritarianism requires the breaking of hegemonic silences and the construction of a new public space where ordinary citizens can tell truths about the consequences of state terror. As Michael Ignatieff (2001) has contended, the recognition and acceptance of these formerly repressed truths, as well as their integration into a public narrative about the past, circumscribes the range of impermissible lies. After the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, one can no longer maintain, as the National Party once attempted to argue, that apartheid was a benevolent, “good neighbor” policy somehow gone awry.
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