IRRC No. 910
Does individual and collective remembrance of past violence impede or foster reconciliation? From Argentina to Sri Lanka
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Abstract
While the dominant human rights discourse on transitional justice constitutes a mix
of reinforcing aims that seek to “make peace with” a violent past, this article
complicates this notion by exploring how affective memories can prevent
individuals from envisioning a future for themselves in which their individual and
their nation’s past is safely left behind. In the context of ongoing debates over
whether to remember or forget a country’s traumatic past, the article will show
how affective memories of violence and disappearance prevail and disrupt the
reconciliation paradigm, and need to be taken into account in transitional justice
processes.