In this lecture, we focus on the societal impacts of, and measures to address, a particularly challenging heritage of society: large-scale, systematic violence. While most societies find some sort of atrocities at their foundations (as decolonization movements illustrate vividly), systematic attempts to account for (some of) them and offer transitional justice only surged since the 1990s. The lectures provides an introduction to: how transitional justice measures and processes seek to tackle a heritage of violence; the challenges transitional justice faces; how memory and truth increasingly turn into political battlegrounds when addressing a past, present, and future of violence. The lecture traverses themes such as international law, political theory of reconciliation, and the politics of graffiti to explore the connections between transitional justice, memory, conflict from the perspective of heritage.

Readings (Highly Recommended)

Jelin, Elizabeth. 2007. Public Memorialization in Perspective: Truth, Justice and Memory of Past Repression in the Southern Cone of South America. International Journal of Transitional Justice 1 (1): 138-156

(Further) Readings

Georgi, F: Richard. 2021. Spatial Imaginaries and (Transitional) Justice in Colombia’s Borderlands. Peace Review 33(4), 470–478

Wilke, Christiane. 2013. Remembering Complexity? Memorials for Nazi Victims in Berlin. International Journal of Transitional Justice, 7(1), 136–15

Chandler, David 2008. Cambodia Deals with its Past: Collective Memory, Demonisation and Induced Amnesia. Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, 9(2–3), 355–369