Symbolic closure through memory,reparation and revenge in post-conflict societies
Top Cited Papers
Open Access
- 1 March 2002
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Taylor & Francis Ltd in Journal of Human Rights
- Vol. 1 (1), 35-53
- https://doi.org/10.1080/14754830110111553
Abstract
Countries going through democratic transition have to address how they will deal with the human rights crimes committed during the authoritarian era. In the context of amnesty for perpetrators, truth commissions have emerged as a standard institution to document the past. Increasingly,claims are made that truth commissions have beneficial psychological consequences, that is, that they facilitate 'catharsis', or 'heal the nation', or allow the nation to 'work through' a violent past. This article draws on trauma counselling experience and anthropological fieldwork among survivors to examine these claims in the context of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It argues that nations are not like individuals in that they do not have collective psyches, that nation-building discourses on reconciliation often subordinate individual needs, and that truth commissions and individual processes of healing work on different time lines. Calls for reconciliation may demand too much psychologically from survivors and retribution may be just as effective as reconciliation at creating symbolic closure.This publication has 5 references indexed in Scilit:
- The Politics of Truth and Reconciliation in South AfricaPublished by Cambridge University Press (CUP) ,2001
- Repairing the Irreparable: Dealing with the double-binds of making reparations for crimes of the pastEthnicity & Health, 2000
- We Suffer Our Memories: Thinking About the Past, Healing, and ReconciliationAmerican Imago, 1998
- A Selected Bibliography of Literature on RevengePsychological Reports, 1994
- Mother Who Won't DisappearHuman Rights Quarterly, 1994