Narrating Transitional Justice
Memory in the Age of Truth and Reconciliation
Will be published approx. on 16. December 2025
Book
Paperback/Softback
456 pages
978-0-2280-2623-5 (ISBN)
Description
In truth and reconciliation settings, particular narratives are recounted by victims, perpetrators, witnesses, and legal experts, each employing distinct rhetorical strategies. Their testimonies, reported by the media and represented in various cultural forms, profoundly influence public understanding and collective memory in post-conflict societies.
Authored by an interdisciplinary team of international scholars across the humanities and social sciences, policymakers, and cultural producers, Narrating Transitional Justice examines truth and reconciliation commissions as acts of public storytelling. Contributors elaborate on how these testimonies function as creative grist for cultural producers to reconstruct, redefine, and reappraise transitional justice work. They further examine the inimitable insights that creative imaginaries - in the form of literature, theatre, film, fine art, popular music, street art, and online media - offer about the remaking of nations fractured by long histories of human rights violations.
Critically reflecting on debates around the centrality of storytelling in transitional justice processes, Narrating Transitional Justice asks: What are the discourses embedded in the varied stories of reconciliation actors, and how do these function as acts of state-making after atrocity?
Authored by an interdisciplinary team of international scholars across the humanities and social sciences, policymakers, and cultural producers, Narrating Transitional Justice examines truth and reconciliation commissions as acts of public storytelling. Contributors elaborate on how these testimonies function as creative grist for cultural producers to reconstruct, redefine, and reappraise transitional justice work. They further examine the inimitable insights that creative imaginaries - in the form of literature, theatre, film, fine art, popular music, street art, and online media - offer about the remaking of nations fractured by long histories of human rights violations.
Critically reflecting on debates around the centrality of storytelling in transitional justice processes, Narrating Transitional Justice asks: What are the discourses embedded in the varied stories of reconciliation actors, and how do these function as acts of state-making after atrocity?
Reviews / Votes
"This first-rate volume offers a profound justification for why we need stories for a proper conception of transitional justice." Chielozona Eze, author of Justice and Human Rights in the African Imagination "This collection brings together humanists and social scientists from North America, Europe, Africa, and Latin America, offering an exceptionally diverse range of perspectives and methodologies on the arts of transitional justice." Eleni Coundouriotis, author of Narrating Human Rights in AfricaMore details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Montreal
Canada
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Illustrations
18 photos
Dimensions
Height: 228 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 30 mm
Weight
635 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-2280-2623-5 (9780228026235)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Paul Ugor is professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Waterloo.
Bonny Ibhawoh is Senator William McMaster Chair in Global Human Rights at McMaster University and co-editor of Truth Commissions and State Building.
Bonny Ibhawoh is Senator William McMaster Chair in Global Human Rights at McMaster University and co-editor of Truth Commissions and State Building.
Content
Figures ix
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction: The Aesthetics of Transitional Justice: Narrativity, History and Memory 3
Paul Ugor and Bonny Ibhawoh
Part One: Transitional Justice and Imaginative
Work: Historical Reflections
1 The Invention of Difficult Pasts 43
Juan Gabriel Vasquez
2 A Storage Place of Memory: Misremembered Narratives of Reconciliation, Restoration, and Betrayal 55
Zakes Mda
Part Two: Representation and the Politics of Memory
3 Recovering Ancestral Memory in Mohale Mashigo's The Yearning and "The Parlemo" 73
Shane Graham
4 The Disappeared: Memory, Narratives, and Representation in Colombia 98
Julian Numpaque
5 What Is a Transitional Narrative? 131
Valeria Vegh Weis
6 The Politicization of Memory: Genocide Narratives, Transitional Justice, and the Art of Social Cohesion in Post-Conflict Rwanda 154
Adeolu Oyekan
7 One Hundred Years of Solitude: Memory, Impunity, and Human Rights 184
Alfredo Duplat and Andres Molina Ochoa
Part Three: The Arts, Truth-Telling, and Social Justice
8 Between Justice and Truth: The Legal Prosecution of Third Reich Crimes in Giulio Ricciarelli's Labyrinth of Lies 203
Pascal Michelberger
9 History on Film in Post-Genocide Rwanda (2004-14): "Everybody has got a different story" 224
Alison MacAulay
10 Unbraiding the Significance of Testimony, Ceremony, Healing, and Hair in Three Contemporary First Nations Plays 247
Juliann Knaus
11 The Moment of Maneuver in the South African Truth and Reconciliation Hearings: A Critique of Nation and Narration in Antjie Krog's Country of My Skull 269
Paul Ugor
12 Art and Justice in Bakhtiyar Ali's Shari Mosiqare Spiyekan 295
Jeannette Okur
Part Four: History, Narrativity, and Trauma
13 Memorial Museums in Guatemala: Agents of Transitional Justice 325
Martha C. Galvan Mandujano and JoAnn DiGeorgio-Lutz
14 The Haunts of Biafra Atrocity Photography 350
Chigbo Arthur Anyaduba
15 Phantoms and Truth Commissions: The Subversive Power of Alternative Narratives in Post-Conflict Latin America 369
Alfredo Duplat and Andres Molina Ochoa
Contributors 389
Index 395
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction: The Aesthetics of Transitional Justice: Narrativity, History and Memory 3
Paul Ugor and Bonny Ibhawoh
Part One: Transitional Justice and Imaginative
Work: Historical Reflections
1 The Invention of Difficult Pasts 43
Juan Gabriel Vasquez
2 A Storage Place of Memory: Misremembered Narratives of Reconciliation, Restoration, and Betrayal 55
Zakes Mda
Part Two: Representation and the Politics of Memory
3 Recovering Ancestral Memory in Mohale Mashigo's The Yearning and "The Parlemo" 73
Shane Graham
4 The Disappeared: Memory, Narratives, and Representation in Colombia 98
Julian Numpaque
5 What Is a Transitional Narrative? 131
Valeria Vegh Weis
6 The Politicization of Memory: Genocide Narratives, Transitional Justice, and the Art of Social Cohesion in Post-Conflict Rwanda 154
Adeolu Oyekan
7 One Hundred Years of Solitude: Memory, Impunity, and Human Rights 184
Alfredo Duplat and Andres Molina Ochoa
Part Three: The Arts, Truth-Telling, and Social Justice
8 Between Justice and Truth: The Legal Prosecution of Third Reich Crimes in Giulio Ricciarelli's Labyrinth of Lies 203
Pascal Michelberger
9 History on Film in Post-Genocide Rwanda (2004-14): "Everybody has got a different story" 224
Alison MacAulay
10 Unbraiding the Significance of Testimony, Ceremony, Healing, and Hair in Three Contemporary First Nations Plays 247
Juliann Knaus
11 The Moment of Maneuver in the South African Truth and Reconciliation Hearings: A Critique of Nation and Narration in Antjie Krog's Country of My Skull 269
Paul Ugor
12 Art and Justice in Bakhtiyar Ali's Shari Mosiqare Spiyekan 295
Jeannette Okur
Part Four: History, Narrativity, and Trauma
13 Memorial Museums in Guatemala: Agents of Transitional Justice 325
Martha C. Galvan Mandujano and JoAnn DiGeorgio-Lutz
14 The Haunts of Biafra Atrocity Photography 350
Chigbo Arthur Anyaduba
15 Phantoms and Truth Commissions: The Subversive Power of Alternative Narratives in Post-Conflict Latin America 369
Alfredo Duplat and Andres Molina Ochoa
Contributors 389
Index 395