Dealing with a traumatic past
The victim hearings of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission and their reconciliation discourse
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12877113 |
|---|---|
| Authors | A Verdoolaege (0000-0002-4568-7753, Ghent University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2009 |
| Volume | 6 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 297-309 |
| Publication date | 2009-09-23 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Critical Discourse Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1740-5904 • E-ISSN: 1740-5912 |
| Publisher | Routledge (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/17405900903181135 |
| OpenAlex | W2029650110 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 10 |
| References cited | 13 |
In the final years of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first century, there has been a worldwide tendency to approach conflict resolution from a restorative rather than from a retributive perspective. The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), with its principle of ‘amnesty for truth’ was a turning point. Based on my discursive research of the TRC victim hearings, I would argue that it was on a discursive level in particular that the Truth Commission has exerted/is still exerting a long-lasting impact on South African society. In this article, three of these features will be highlighted and illustrated: firstly, the TRC provided a discursive forum for thousands of ordinary citizens. Secondly, by means of testimonies from apartheid victims and perpetrators, the TRC composed an officially recognised archive of the apartheid past. Thirdly, the reconciliation discourse created at the TRC victim hearings formed a template for talking about a traumatic past, and it opened up the debate on reconciliation. By discussing these three features and their social impact, it will become clear that the way in which the apartheid past was remembered at the victim hearings seemed to have been determined, not so much by political concerns, but mainly by social needs
Amnesty · Commission · Criminology · Economic Justice · Political science · Politics · Retributive justice · Sociology · Transitional justice · Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics · Law · Law in Society and Culture · South African History and Culture
Trading justice for peace? Reframing reconciliation in TRC processes in South Africa, Canada and Nordic countries
Reconciliation and the Aporia of Transitional Justice
Theorizing Collective Trauma in International Political Economy
But as a stance marker in Nigerian investigative public hearings
“Are you saying …?”
Toward More Stories About the Humanness of the Victims
Going off-script and reframing the frame
Hearing Voice
Memory practices and colonial discourse
Contextual Beliefs in a Nigerian Quasi-Judicial Public Hearing
| Citations per year | 0.91 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2015 - 2026 (12) |
| Highly cited | No |