Introduction

During the latter half of the 20th century, discourses of trauma and human rights have dominated Western conceptualizations of memory and understandings of how difficult pasts should be dealt with on individual and societal levels. Different legal instruments – such as truth and reconciliation commissions, reparations, compensations, and public apologies – have & Pettai 2014). Societies recovering from conflicts and periods of repression have used these public instruments of reconciliation in order to redress past violations. For the most part, the expanding field of retrospective and transitional justice rests on the presupposition that solidarity and a peaceful future depend on reconciliation and the settling of past injustices. (Rigney 2012, 252-253; Shaw 2007, 186.)

At their core, the practices of retrospective and transitional justice reflect the so-called paradigm of “redemptive remembering,” which is based on ideas of the detrimental nature of silence and the necessity of telling the truth and “coming to terms” with the past in order to heal and create a better future (Shaw 2007). The paradigm of “redemptive remembering,” largely universalized and naturalized (in the West), is also underpinned by a therapeutic script related to the necessity of healing the wounds caused by past wrongdoings through victim-centered truth politics (Humphrey 2005; Shaw 2007, 189-193). However, as Rosalind Shaw (2007; see also Kennedy 2018) has noted, when applied with insufficient consideration of historical or cultural context, or the situation at hand, instruments of retrospective justice may become sites of frictional engagement.