Discourse, normative change and the quest for reconciliation in global politics 9781526130624

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Discourse, normative change and the quest

J UJ D R ERRNEENNN ENREERR JUUIDTDIH ITTHH

Discourse, Discourse, normative change normative normativechange and the quest for and andthe thequest questfor for reconciliation reconciliation reconciliation global politics inin global in globalpolitics politics

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di s c ou r s e , n or m at i v e c h a n g e a n d t h e qu e s t f or r e c o n c i l i at io n i n g l o b a l p ol i t ic s

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Discourse, normative change and the quest for reconciliation Discourse, normative change global and theinquest forpolitics reconciliation in global politics Judith Renner Judith Renner

Manchester University Press Manchester and New York distributed in the United States exclusively Manchester University by Palgrave Macmillan Press

Manchester and New York distributed in the United States exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan

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Copyright © Judith Renner 2013 The right of Judith Renner to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Published by Manchester University Press Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA, UK www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data is available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available ISBN 978 1 7849 9390 0 paperback First published by Manchester University Press in hardback 2013

The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

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To my family

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Contents Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Contents

List of figures Acknowledgements List of abbreviations Introduction 1 A discourse theoretical approach to normative change

Contents

page ix xi xiii 1 9

2 The emergence of reconciliation as an empty universal in South Africa

43

3 The global proliferation of the reconciliation language in the context of the transitional justice discourse

71

4 The proliferation of reconciliation practices and the rise of a global reconciliation coalition

97

5 Bringing reconciliation to Sierra Leone: the global reconciliation discourse and its local performance

125

Conclusion

155

References

165

Index

185

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Figures Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

List of Figures

1 The composition of a discourse

List of Figures

page 23

2 The South African reconciliation discourse

69

3 The global reconciliation discourse

83

4 The global transitional justice discourse

84

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Acknowledgements Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements

Without the help and support of some important people, I would have not written this book. First of all, I would like to thank my family, my mother Elisabeth Renner, my brother Thomas Renner and my sister Stefanie Renner, for their constant support for my work, their great patience with my changing moods during the ups and downs of my research and writing, and my mother’s sceptical questions regarding my critical stance towards reconciliation, which she did not always share. I would also like to thank Alexander Spencer for his love and support, his helpful comments and his steady encouragement throughout the research process. This book is the result of a Dr. Phil. dissertation which I wrote during my time at the Geschwister-Scholl-Institute for Political Science at the LudwigMaximilians-University of Munich. Here, too, a lot of people supported me and provided an indispensable input to my research. In particular, I would like to thank my supervisors, Professor Christopher Daase and Professor Thomas Diez, for their inspiration and their helpful comments in the early and the later stages of the writing process. I would also like to thank my colleagues at the Geschwister-Scholl-Institute, in particular Tine Hanrieder, Andreas Kruck, Rainer Hülsse, Marina Karbowski, Michel Horelt, Alexander Kocks and Renate Strassner, as well as the participants of our research colloquium for their critical and insightful comments. Furthermore, I would like to thank Professor Bernhard Zangl for his willingness to act as an additional examiner of the dissertation at a late stage of the writing process, and Professor Dieter Kerwer who, with his critical questions, constantly made me find new justification strategies for the discursive approach used in this book. Finally, I would like to thank Jan Tiedemann who was always ready to help when I faced technical problems and the staff at Manchester University Press for their support during the editing process. I dedicate this book to my family and in particular to my father Gerhard Renner, who did not live to see me write my dissertation.

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Abbreviations Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

List of Abbreviations

AFRC ANC BCM CAVR

List of Abbreviations

Armed Forces Revolutionary Council African National Congress Black Consciousness Movement Comissão de Acolhimento, Verdade e Reconciliação de Timor-Leste CMI Crisis Management Initiative CODESA Convention for a Democratic South Africa ECOMOG Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group ECOWAS Economic Community of West African States ESDP European Security and Defence Policy EU European Union HCHR UN High Commissioner for Human Rights ICC International Criminal Court ICG International Crisis Group ICTJ International Center for Transitional Justice ICTY International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia IDASA Institute for a Democratic Alternative for South Africa IDEA International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance IFP Inkatha Freedom Party IJR Institute for Justice and Reconciliation IJTJ International Journal of Transitional Justice IR International Relations NEC National Executive Committee (of the ANC) NGO Non-governmental Organisation NP National Party

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xiv OAS OAU OHCHR PAC PBC RUF SATRC SCU SLA SLTRC TJRC TRC UDF UK UN UNAMSIL UNOMSIL UNTAET US USIP

List of Abbreviations Organization of American States Organization of African Unity UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights Pan Africanist Congress United Nations Peacebuilding Commission Revolutionary United Front South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission Serious Crimes Unit Sierra Leonean Army Sierra Leonean Truth and Reconciliation Commission Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission Truth and Reconciliation Commission United Democratic Front United Kingdom United Nations United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone United Nations Mission of Observers in Sierra Leone United Nations Transitional Authority in East Timor United States of America United States Institute for Peace

Introduction Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

The quest for reconciliation in global politics

Introduction

Fifty years ago, reconciliation was not an issue in global politics. Wars were ended by military victory or, alternatively, the negotiation of ceasefires, and reconciliation was considered important only in the private realm. Today, however, things are different. Reconciliation is now a powerful trope in global politics and the goal of fostering not private but ‘national reconciliation’ after violent conflict or repression is promoted by international actors such as the European Union (EU) or the United Nations (UN). The rise to prominence of reconciliation has been accompanied by the proliferation of the so-called Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) as a specialised institution for reconciliation. In the past two decades, numerous TRCs have been created in countries transiting from war to peace or from one regime type to another in the hope of facilitating reconciliation and lasting peace after war or repression. This book is interested in how this normative change came about. How was it possible, it asks, that reconciliation emerged as a widely accepted and authoritative ideal in global politics, given that it was not an issue a while ago? Why is reconciliation understood and practiced the way it is, namely through the creation of truth commissions? The book’s main argument and proposed answer is that the authority and interpretation of reconciliation in global politics can be understood as the product of a powerful discourse. This introductory chapter sets out to introduce the argumentation advanced in the following chapters. The next section sketches the global quest for reconciliation and raises some critical questions that challenge the authority of reconciliation in global politics as well as its underlying assumptions. The second section then briefly introduces the discourse theoretical approach that is suggested here for the critical assessment of the global quest for reconciliation. The final section gives an overview of the overall argument of the book and briefly summarises the chapters that follow.

2

The quest for reconciliation in global politics

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The global quest for reconciliation The global quest for reconciliation began around the mid 1990s when the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission was established in order to bring about the reconciliation of South Africans after decades of repression under apartheid legislation. The South African TRC claimed to facilitate national reconciliation through a process of public truth-telling. In a highly staged symbolic process that went on over about two years the TRC held public hearings in which South Africans could tell their stories and experiences from the past to the wider public. The TRC granted amnesty to individuals who had committed human rights violations and gave full disclosure of their crimes, it provided empathy and consolidation to those who had suffered from such violations and it made recommendations for reparations in order to acknowledge the victims and improve their material situations (Graybill, 1998; Moon, 2008; Wilson, 2001). Since the South African experience, scholars and political practitioners have been fascinated by the idea that truth-telling in a truth commission might be a way to national reconciliation. Today, long after the end of its existence, the South African TRC remains, as Claire Moon puts it, the ‘indisputable locus classicus’ (Moon, 2008: 1; emphasis in original) for the global quest for reconciliation. The underlying assumptions and the working processes of the TRC have constantly, and often uncritically, been reproduced in the scientific discourse, and the assumption that public truthtelling in a truth commission leads to reconciliation has been established as a relatively stable knowledge (cf. Borer, 2006; Humphrey, 2002; Moon, 2008). In political practice, the truth commission is widely considered as the archetypical institution of reconciliation after conflict and repression (Humphrey, 2002: 105–124; Moon, 2004: 186; 2008: 1–3; Rigby, 2001: 8). TRCs have been erected, for instance, in Peru, Guatemala, Sierra Leone, East Timor or Liberia, and often trans- and international actors played a major role in their initiation, planning and implementation. Setting up a truth commission in the name of reconciliation has meanwhile become an important component of post-conflict peacebuilding and is explicitly supported by the UN, the EU, as well as other trans- and international actors (Crossley, 2009; Stahn, 2002). The academic discourse underpins this reconciliation practice as here too reconciliation is predominantly discussed in relation to the truth commission. Truth commissions have become the dominant – though not exclusive – processes examined by scholars when theorising about reconciliation (cf. Humphrey, 2002: 105–124; Moon, 2004; Philpott, 2006b). Based on the South African experience, truth-telling is supposed to provide accountability for past crimes, to heal the individual and national psyche and to restore the moral consensus and order of the community (Borer, 2006;

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Introduction

3

Humphrey, 2002: 105–124; Moon, 2008). According to Michael Humphrey, it is generally assumed that speaking out helps victims of violence get over their traumas and link their private fates with the history of the whole community. For the perpetrators of violence, it is assumed that speaking out is cathartic, rehumanising and relieves them of their burden of guilt. For the whole community, the truth-telling process is expected to restore consensus as to what is right and what is wrong and thus to recreate the community’s moral order and foundation (Humphrey, 2002: 105-124). Truth commissions are emphasised as appropriate institutions, as they are supposed to create a space where victims and perpetrators of past violence can tell the public about their experiences, receive empathy, compassion and healing, associate their private fates with the narrative of the whole community, and contribute to a process of national catharsis in which the moral base of the society is recreated and a new foundation for communal life is discovered (Humphrey, 2002: 108–124; Minow, 1998; Moon, 2008; Rotberg and Thompson, 2000). Despite its widespread acceptance, however, the assumption that public truth-telling leads to reconciliation is not as self-evident as it might seem at first glance and several critical questions can be and indeed have been raised against the global quest for reconciliation. Firstly, it can be questioned why the South African TRC should be accepted as a universal template for reconciliation in theory and practice. The TRC was a political institution that was born out of political negotiations between antagonistic parties, and there is no obvious reason why its mechanisms should be applicable as a general model of reconciliation in global politics. Secondly, the plausibility of the assumption that reconciliation can be achieved through public truth-telling can easily be challenged. Why, as several authors have asked, should truth-telling and reliving the past lead to reconciliation and the closure of a conflict (cf. Allen, 1999: 317; Moon, 2008: 6; Rigby, 2001: 1)? Is it not at least as plausible to believe that digging up painful experiences or listening to the confessions of a person that has committed severe abuses in the past lead to even more hatred and desires for revenge? Andrew Rigby for example argues convincingly that ‘[a]t a common-sense level it would seem obvious that most people want to forget the pains of the past and get on with their lives. Why should anyone want to relive past traumas by talking about them?’ (Rigby, 2001: 1). Overall, there is little reason to believe that the assumptions inherent in the reconciliation paradigm represent some wider truth. As Claire Moon contends, ‘[w]hilst powerful, the truth claims generated by the TRC in particular … are anything but evident in political practice, and important cases challenge and contradict them’ (Moon, 2008: 6). Thirdly, the question can be asked what ‘this thing called reconciliation’ (Hamber and van der Merwe, 1998) is at all, that is what reconciliation actually means and what a reconciled society would look like. Several

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The quest for reconciliation in global politics

authors have criticised the vagueness and intangibility of reconciliation in the context of political transition, and have argued, for example, that ‘the essence of reconciliation stands at a pinnacle of a pyramid of uncertainty and intangibility’ (McGregor, 2007: 112), and the meaning of the term shifts with the context of its usage (Borer, 2004: 23; Hermann, 2004; Lerche, 2000: 1). Due to its vagueness, so the argument goes, reconciliation might easily be misused to disguise cheap political solutions and compromises and ‘has been recklessly used many times to attempt the justification of blatant impunity’ (Méndez, 2001: 28). Reconciliation, from this perspective, would be a dangerous cheat rather than a desirable goal after conflict and repression, and the global quest for reconciliation would be a support to cheap political compromise. Asking such questions renders the global quest for reconciliation disputable, and raises the question how the authority of reconciliation came into being at all. This book therefore seeks to do two things in the following chapters: firstly, it aims to analytically reconstruct the emergence of reconciliation as an authoritative discourse in global politics; secondly, it wants to examine critically its truth claims and empirical performance as a widely accepted social meaning. Both goals, it will be argued below, can be achieved through a discourse theoretical approach.

Why discourse? The following chapters rely on discourse theory in order to make their argument. This perspective was chosen for two reasons. Firstly, discourse theory offers theoretical concepts which make it possible to engage with the analytical questions posed above. It provides theoretical insights into the production and decay of social meaning and makes it possible to examine how the interpretation of reconciliation through truth-telling was construed as an authoritative meaning in global politics. Secondly and relatedly, discourse theory helps to adopt a critical perspective towards social reality in general and reconciliation in particular, as it assumes that all kinds of social reality are socially constructed. They are part and parcel of historically contingent discourses that institute a certain kind of social order which is then accepted as social objectivity (Howarth and Stavrakakis, 2000; Torfing, 2005). With this assumption, discourse theory also denies the possibility of a given validity of normative meanings, such as reconciliation, and interprets them as the contingent products of their time. From a discourse theoretical perspective, the global quest for reconciliation can be traced back to the rise of a powerful reconciliation discourse. This discourse renders the creation of TRCs meaningful and legitimate as a practice of reconciliation. In other words, the reconciliation discourse does not reflect a given reality, for example that public truth-telling really

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Introduction

5

leads to national reconciliation, but it rather produces this reality and makes it appear true and plausible. The discourse theoretical perspective however suggests that the reconciliation discourse does even more than that. Discourses not only produce meaningful, normal or legitimate practices, they also produce the subjects and objects related to these practices and are generally constitutive of purposeful action and what we take to be social reality (Epstein, 2008; Howarth and Stavrakakis, 2000; Torfing, 2005). The discourse theoretical perspective insofar offers a wide range of possibilities of engaging with and exploring reconciliation in global politics, as it not only makes it possible to analyse the emergence of the reconciliation discourse, but also the consequences of this discourse for social reality. By choosing a discourse theoretical perspective, this book hopes to critically engage with two strands of social science literature. Firstly, by analysing normative change in terms of discourse and asking how discourses come into being and how they produce social reality, discourse theory offers a useful alternative to other approaches dealing with the emergence and diffusion of shared meanings in international relations (IR), such as moderate constructivist approaches to norm emergence and norm diffusion. Numerous models of norm emergence and norm diffusion have been developed in the past twenty years (cf. Deitelhoff, 2009; Finnemore and Sikkink, 1998; Katzenstein, 1996), and, recently, several scholars have suggested to engage more intensively with discourse theory in order to gain new and different insights into processes of normative change (Krook and True, 2010; Wiener, 2004). The account offered here seeks to tie in with moderate constructivist approaches, while offering a rather different perspective on the normative meaning it explores. On the one hand, the discourse theoretical account offered here suggests a different conceptualisation for the process of meaning emergence than moderate constructivists. While moderate constructivist accounts are largely agent-centred and explain the emergence of normative meaning in terms of the purposeful behaviour of social actors, discourse theory makes sense of meaning production as a contingent process, which makes purposeful action possible in the first place. On the other hand, discourse theory pursues a different ‘politics of reality’ (Zehfuss, 2002) from moderate constructivist IR theories. While moderate constructivists tend to take as given the empirical norms under investigation, and therefore unwillingly confirm and thus reproduce the normative meanings they investigate, a discourse theoretical approach deliberately questions the normative meanings it explores. Assuming that all social meanings, including normative ones, are socially constructed and historically contingent denies that these meanings can have an inherent moral value and interprets them as contingent social inventions. Thus, a discourse theoretical account of norm emergence cannot claim to be neutral towards its objects of analysis, but consciously invites a critical perspective towards them.

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The quest for reconciliation in global politics

Secondly, by applying such a critical perspective specifically to the idea of national reconciliation, this book also seeks to get into dialogue with a strand of social science literature which is commonly known as transitional justice research. Scholars of transitional justice have inquired intensively into the issues of reconciliation and truth-telling; however, as outlined above, they often rather uncritically reproduce the assumptions about reconciliation and truth-telling that were advanced by the South African TRC and are now widespread in global politics (Chapman, 2001; Hayner, 2001; Minow, 2000; Rotberg, 2000). Here, reconciliation is widely accepted as a desirable ideal after conflict and repression, and the assumption that reconciliation can be facilitated through public truth-telling is often taken for granted. As Tristan Anne Borer points out, the belief of transitional justice scholarship in the close relationship between truth-telling and reconciliation ‘is so taken for granted that often little attempt is made – beyond the provision of anecdotal evidence – to determine whether it is in fact true, either in general or in specific cases’ (Borer, 2006: 30). By interpreting reconciliation not as a given reality but rather as a social construction and explaining how the reconciliation discourse came into being, this book hopes to provide an alternative to the affirmative writings of many transitional justice scholars. It thereby wants to strengthen the critical stance towards reconciliation and other transitional justice ideals that has only recently gained influence in this research field (Arthur, 2009; Bell, 2009; Nagy, 2008). While several scholars have, for example, offered a critical perspective specifically on the South African reconciliation process (Moon, 2004; 2007; 2008; Verdoolaege, 2008; Wilson, 2001), this book seeks to complement these studies by providing a critical account of the local and the global dimensions of reconciliation.

Structure of the book The main argument advanced in this book is that the career of reconciliation in global politics can be understood as the rise of a powerful reconciliation discourse which produced reconciliation as a powerful political ideal and truth-telling as its central practice. The following chapters thus aim to retrace the emergence of this discourse and to critically inquire into its performance in global politics. In pursuit of this goal, the rest of the book will be structured as follows. Chapter 1 sets out to develop the theoretical framework for this undertaking. After a critique of moderate constructivist accounts of norm emergence and norm diffusion, it outlines a discourse theoretical alternative for the critical analysis of normative change. The chapter focuses specifically on one particular discourse theoretical approach that was developed by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe (cf. Laclau, 1990; 2004; 2007; Laclau and Mouffe,

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Introduction

7

2001). It argues that Laclau and Mouffe’s concepts of the destabilisation (dislocation) of discourses and their (re)construction through hegemonic struggles provide useful tools to reconstruct processes of normative change. Moreover, the concepts of discourse and its constitution around a particular nodal point, or empty universal, are helpful to analyse in detail the ways in which (normative) meaning is produced and temporarily stabilised in ‘relational systems of signification’ (Torfing, 2005: 14). Based on the concepts developed in the first chapter, chapters 2 to 5 offer a theoretically informed analysis of the rise and performance of the global reconciliation discourse. Chapter 2 looks at the early emergence of the discourse and reconstructs how reconciliation gained normative authority in the political sphere at all. It locates the beginning of this discourse in South Africa in the early 1990s, when the country transited from apartheid to democracy. In the course of the transitional negotiations, reconciliation was used by the antagonistic parties African National Congress (ANC) and National Party (NP) as a vague ideal which helped them to justify their various political demands and find a common reference point which made compromises possible. As chapter 2 shows, at this time reconciliation was not at all interpreted in terms of truth-telling or healing, but was alternately related to political negotiations, compromise, power sharing or the release of political prisoners. It was only later, after the passing of the South African interim constitution in 1993 that the reconciliation ideal came to be firmly associated with the establishment of the South African TRC and the practices of truth-telling, healing and forgiveness. These constructions then remained relatively stable as they were reproduced throughout the workings of the TRC. In the years after the South African transition, these constructions of reconciliation began to proliferate beyond the borders of South Africa. Chapter 3 reconstructs this process and examines how the South African transition and reconciliation discourse were part of and fed into another discourse that emerged on the global level at the time, namely the discourse on transitional justice. Chapter 3 argues that it was in the context of this emerging global discourse that the reconciliation ideal gained authority beyond the South African confines from the late 1990s onwards, and the South African constructions of reconciliation diffused around the globe. The global spread of the reconciliation language, as argued in chapter 3, performed in global politics by authorising the truth commission as a legitimate institution in the context of transition. While the truth commission was no new institution at the time, it was hitherto seen as a second-best response to human rights violations, and it was through the rise of global reconciliation discourse that this institution gained normative authority on its own. The global proliferation of the reconciliation discourse, as chapter 4 sets out to demonstrate, not only manifests itself in the spread of the

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The quest for reconciliation in global politics

reconciliation language but also in the simultaneous diffusion of a set of reconciliation practices and practitioners in global politics. The chapter argues that from the late 1990s onwards, the truth commission emerged as a standard and increasingly standardised technology of post-conflict peacebuilding, and reconciliation through truth-telling was increasingly adopted in countries transiting from war to peace. This development was co-constitutive with the appearance of new agents in global politics, as social actors could emerge as advocates and experts of reconciliation and carry out political activities in the name of reconciliation. As chapter 4 shows, the practices and interventions of this expert force were crucial for the further articulation of the reconciliation discourse on the global level and for its proliferation to new local settings. Chapter 5 then moves from the global to the local level, and explores how the global constructions of reconciliation are brought to a local post-conflict situation and how they perform there. Focusing on the example of Sierra Leone, the chapter shows how the activities of global reconciliation agents were crucial for shaping the local reconciliation process according to the global standards, despite some local resistance. Once the global constructions marked the local understanding of reconciliation, the reconciliation discourse performed by producing a particular reconciliation reality in Sierra Leone. As chapter 5 argues, the discourse predominantly performed by constructing Sierra Leone’s post-war society as the victims and perpetrators of past human rights violations, which are in need of reconciliation and healing. In other words, the chapter suggests that reconciliation is not brought to a society which is naturally in need of reconciliation after conflict or repression, but that it is the reconciliation discourse itself which produces the societies to which it can meaningfully be applied.

1

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A discourse theoretical approach to normative change The quest for reconciliation in global politics

A discourse theoretical approach to normative change

The cause of the origin of a thing and its eventual utility, its actual employment and place in a system of purposes, lie worlds apart; whatever exists, having somehow come into being, is again and again reinterpreted to new ends. (Nietzsche, 1989: 2.12)

The goal of this book is to reconstruct the emergence of the reconciliation discourse and to critically examine its performance in global politics, and this chapter sets out to develop the theoretical framework for this undertaking. Thus, the chapter seeks to achieve two things. In order to meet its analytical goal, it provides a set of theoretical concepts that help to reconstruct the emergence and hegemonisation of powerful discourses. In order to meet its critical goal, it develops an understanding of discourse which emphasises the power of discourse, thereby making it possible to question the validity and necessity of social reality in general and of reconciliation in particular. Both goals, the chapter argues, can be met with discourse theory. It therefore suggests a discourse theoretical approach to the emergence, hegemonisation and productivity of discourses which is based predominantly – but not exclusively – on the writings of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. These authors provide an elaborate theory of structural change which describes how existing discourses are destabilised and (re)constructed and how discourses struggle for hegemony. Furthermore, they offer a concept of discourse which helps understand how discourses are constituted and how they institute a particular, yet contingent kind of social reality. Based on this theoretical approach, the chapter will argue that the emergence of a new discourse can basically be understood as a response to severe social crisis, in which new social ideals are articulated by social actors and eventually become the anchor points of the new discourse and temporarily stabilise the new (normative) meaning in a relational system of signification.

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The quest for reconciliation in global politics

The discourse theoretical approach suggested here can be understood as an alternative specifically to those approaches in IR which seek to inquire into the emergence of shared meanings in global politics. In particular, it ties in with moderate constructivist approaches to normative change. Whereas these accounts are predominantly agent-centric and theorise norm emergence in terms of strategic or persuasive efforts of norm entrepreneurs, the discourse theoretical approach conceptualises the emergence of normative meanings as a contingent social process which is a result of de-facto decisions of social and political actors, instead of purposeful behaviour. Moreover, the discourse approach suggested here offers an explicitly critical perspective on the normative meanings it analyses and sheds light on how these meanings perform by shaping social reality. The following sections elaborate these arguments in more detail. The first section reconstructs some approaches to norm emergence and norm diffusion and points out how the discourse theoretical perspective offers an alternative to these accounts. The second section introduces discourse theory with a focus on the approach developed by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. It reconstructs the crucial concepts of powerful discourse, empty universal, dislocation and hegemonic struggles and shows how they can usefully be applied to an investigation of the emergence and performance of normative structures in global politics. The last section outlines the methodological procedures that will be applied in the empirical analysis offered in the following chapters.

Constructivist IR research on the emergence of meaning Normative change and in particular the emergence of shared meanings in global politics has long been a popular object of inquiry in IR. In particular, moderate constructivists have inquired into this issue in their research on norm emergence and norm diffusion. This section will therefore engage with constructivist accounts of normative change and discuss the points of contact and the differences between these accounts and the discourse theoretical approach suggested here. Generally, constructivist approaches are characterised by their departure from a purely materialist view of the world. In contrast to positivist IR theories, constructivism tries to take seriously the constructed nature of the social world and to integrate immaterial factors in its investigations of world politics. It centrally assumes that things such as identities, norms or social institutions matter to international politics as they constitute relatively stable but nevertheless changeable social structures in which (international) actors are embedded (Diez, 1999; Fierke, 2009; Fierke and Jørgensen, 2001). According to constructivists, social structures and social actors are mutually constitutive. Structures enable and produce social actors and social practices

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A discourse theoretical approach to normative change

11

while simultaneously being constructed and reconstructed by them (Wendt, 1987). As Jeffrey Checkel points out, ‘the ontology [of agents of structures] is one of mutual constitution, where neither unit of analysis – agents or structures – is reduced to the other and made “ontologically primitive”’ (Checkel, 1998: 326). Social norms, understood as ‘standards of appropriate behaviour for actors with a given identity’ (Finnemore and Sikkink, 1998: 891; Florini, 1996; Kowert and Legro, 1996) are considered a crucial part of the (international) social structure and have become a central subject of constructivist IR research. Early constructivist studies on norms in IR focused primarily on the structural character of norms and investigated the effects of norms on actors’ behaviour in order to show that norms matter (Finnemore, 1996; Herrmann and Shannon, 2001; Katzenstein, 1996; Klotz, 1995; Kratochwil, 1984; March and Olsen, 1998). Here, norms are generally considered to influence social actors by defining their identities and shaping their interests and preferences (Checkel, 1998: 326). As James G. March and Johan P. Olsen point out, actors act according to a logic of appropriateness rather than being purely rational. Actors adopt norms which invoke certain identities and roles which guide their action. So ‘[t]he pursuit of purpose is associated with identities more than with interests, and with the selection of rules more than with individual rational expectations’ (March and Olsen, 1998: 951). Overall, constructivists expect norms to have a double impact on social behaviour. They can be constitutive and create new actors, actions or identities, or they can be regulative and recommend certain kinds of behaviour by defining them as appropriate (Finnemore and Sikkink, 1998: 891; Florini, 1996; March and Olsen, 1998). The norm of national sovereignty for instance produces and legitimates the nation state as the central actor of international politics and provides it with considerable agency (Kowert and Legro, 1996: 466). At the same time, it contains the behavioural prescription that national borders should be respected and that legitimate (that is sovereign) authority should be acknowledged (Barkin and Cronin, 1994).

The central role of norm entrepreneurs in agent-centric approaches to norm emergence While the effects of social norms remain an important issue of constructivist research, a growing group of authors has begun to inquire more intensively into structural change and to theorise the process through which normative meaning is socially constructed (Finnemore and Sikkink, 2001: 400). Meanwhile a large body of literature has developed which investigates the emergence of social norms and the conditions of their diffusion (Bailey, 2008; Deitelhoff, 2006; 2009; Finnemore and Sikkink, 1998; Florini, 1996; Payne, 2001; Price, 1995; Risse et al., 1999; Sandholtz, 2008).

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Most constructivist explanations of normative change are agent-centred (cf. Finnemore and Sikkink, 2001: 400, 403) and locate the driving force behind this change in the efforts of various kinds of transnational actors (Adler and Haas, 1992; Bailey, 2008; Deitelhoff, 2006; 2009; Finnemore and Sikkink, 1998; Haas, 1992; Keck and Sikkink, 1998; Park, 2005; Risse, 2006; Risse and Sikkink, 1999). Here, normative change in global politics is centrally traced back to the activities of so-called norm entrepreneurs (Finnemore and Sikkink, 1998), advocacy networks (Keck and Sikkink, 1998; 1999) or epistemic communities (Adler and Haas, 1992; Haas, 1992). These agents share a common normative base in terms of either principled beliefs, that is ‘strong notions about appropriate or desirable behaviour in their community’ (Finnemore and Sikkink, 1998: 896), or consensual knowledge, that is authoritative claims on cause–effect relationships and act purposefully in global politics in order to spread new normative meanings (Risse, 2006: 256). In their model of the norm life cycle, Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink for example identify the strategic efforts of norm entrepreneurs as the central mechanism of norm emergence. ‘Norms do not appear out of thin air; they are actively built by agents having strong notions about appropriate or desirable behaviour in their community’ (Finnemore and Sikkink, 1998: 896). According to these authors, norm emergence is crucially propelled by the attempts of norm entrepreneurs ‘to convince a critical mass of states (norm leaders) to embrace new norms’ (Finnemore and Sikkink, 1998: 895). In particular, according to Finnemore and Sikkink, norm entrepreneurs seek to convince states and other actors of a norm by strategically framing a new norm, that is they interpret and dramatise it and associate it with already established and accepted norms in order to make the new norm resonate with a broader audience (Keck and Sikkink, 1998; 1999; Klotz, 1995). As Finnemore and Sikkink point out, ‘[t]he construction of cognitive frames is an essential component of norm entrepreneurs’ political strategies, since, when they are successful, the new frames resonate with broader public understandings and are adopted as new ways of talking about and understanding issues’ (Finnemore and Sikkink, 1998: 897). A similar argument is also made by Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, who emphasise framing as a central strategy of advocacy networks. According to these authors, framing serves to make issues, or norms, comprehensible, interesting or attractive for an audience and thus to encourage collective action. Again, framing is seen as an essentially strategic act which is carried out by these networks in order to spread their ideas, norms and discourses to a more global audience: ‘By framing, we mean “conscious strategic efforts by groups of people to fashion shared understandings of the world and of themselves that legitimate and motivate collective action”’ (Keck and Sikkink, 1999: 90).

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Whereas the framing model relies on a linear and strategic understanding of norm emergence and norm diffusion, some authors have argued against this one-sided understanding of persuasion and began to conceptualise persuasion as a more interactive process of norm emergence which relies on mutual deliberation and conscious agreement (Crawford, 2002; Deitelhoff, 2006; 2009; Payne, 2001). Persuasion is here understood as a communication process which aims at changing actor preferences and creating new collective meaning (Deitelhoff, 2009: 43; Payne, 2001: 38; Risse, 2000: 2). Scholars focusing on persuasion have criticised in particular the one-sided and linear understanding of norm emergence that underlies the framing model outlined above (Payne, 2001: 42). Norm emergence, it is rightly argued, cannot be a strategic process as this would presume that norms are already existing static entities which only need to be spread. Instead, these scholars insist, norm emergence can only be thought of as a process of social interaction and argumentation in which all participants are prepared and willing to change their positions, so that new normative meaning can be constructed (Deitelhoff, 2006: 20, 77; Payne, 2001: 40–43; Risse, 2000). Concepts of persuasion therefore often rely on a Habermasian model of social interaction and deliberation, which assumes that actors do not act strategically (that is according to fixed interests) but rather according to an ‘argumentative rationality’ (Deitelhoff, 2009: 35; Risse, 2000: 2–14). Here, the goal is not to maximise stable interests, but ‘to arrive at a shared understanding of the nature of a situation … [through] the free exchange of arguments’ (Deitelhoff, 2009: 35). Persuasion in this sense refers to a communication process in which arguments are exchanged by reasonable actors who challenge the implicit or explicit validity claims that are advanced, and who eventually reach a consensus, without trying ‘to push through [their] own view of the world or moral values’ (Risse, 2000: 10). Here, new norms are expected to emerge in the process of argumentation where actors deliberate freely and sincerely and are willing to change their preferences and positions due to the good arguments advanced by other participants. New norms emerging from such processes are then considered to be the products of ‘the “noncoercive coercion” of the better argument’ (Deitelhoff, 2009: 43). Norm emergence through argumentative rationality and persuasion, it is argued along with Habermas, can only occur in rational discourses which obey certain conditions. The participants have to share a certain life world in order to have a common (normative) reference frame and the discourse has to be free from manipulation and repression in order to provide the same communicative rights for all participants. Furthermore, power inequalities have to be excluded from the discourse and the discourse has to be open to all those that are affected by its agreement (Deitelhoff, 2009: 43; Risse, 2000: 10–11). For such ‘islands of persuasion’ (Deitelhoff, 2009: 33) to occur, norm

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entrepreneurs are again considered to be of utter importance. According to Deitelhoff, international institutions may provide the opportunity structures that foster the minimal formal conditions for rational discourses, such as trust, shared normative understandings or procedural mechanisms. However, norm entrepreneurs and other rather powerless actors are crucial, as they strategically try to create the conditions for rational discourse in order to alter the mode of interaction from bargaining to arguing and to increase their own power assets which are located primarily in discursive resources (Deitelhoff, 2006, 138–140; 2009: 44). While framing and persuasion approaches differ in their conceptualisation of the diffusion process, they are nevertheless similar in that they emphasise the central importance of agency and intentionality in the process of norm emergence. Finnemore and Sikkink in particular emphasise the central importance of intentionality, rationality and agency in their model of a norm life cycle. They tellingly refer to the process of norm emergence as ‘“strategic social construction” in which actors strategise rationally to reconfigure preferences, identities, or social context’ (Finnemore and Sikkink, 1998: 889; emphasis added). Habermasian concepts of persuasion also stress the intentionality and agency of actors in the process of norm emergence. Here scholars even introduce argumentative rationality as a particular logic of action which allows for actors’ intentionality, but also for a change of preferences and normative concepts. As Thomas Risse points out, [a]rgumentative and deliberative behaviour is as goal oriented as strategic interaction, but the goal is not to attain one’s fixed preferences, but to seek a reasoned consensus … Where argumentative rationality prevails, actors do not seek to maximise or to satisfy their given interests and preferences, but to challenge and to justify the validity claims inherent in them – and they are prepared to change their views of the world or even their interest in light of the better argument. (Risse, 2000: 7)

Agent-centric approaches to normative change and the lack of norm construction The agent-centric accounts of normative change have produced important insights into processes of normative change and have been used to explain a number of empirical cases of norm diffusion, such as the (failed) proliferation of an anti-whaling norm (Bailey, 2008), the end of apartheid (Klotz, 1995), the global diffusion of women’s suffrage rights (Finnemore and Sikkink, 1998) or the legalisation of an international norm to prosecute severe human rights violations (Deitelhoff, 2006; 2009). In particular, these approaches have made an important contribution to IR research as they brought to the fore the importance of non-state actors in processes of norm diffusion.

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However, the emphasis that agent-centric approaches place on norm entrepreneurs and their purposeful action in particular in the construction phase of normative meanings is not totally convincing. In fact, as will be argued below, these approaches leave undertheorised the process by which purposeful action in the name of a certain norm, be it strategic or argumentative, is made possible at all. In other words, they do not theorise the process by which normative meaning is constructed and legitimised, so that norm entrepreneurs can purposefully promote them in global politics. This problem, it seems, stems from a general reluctance to let go of agency in the process of norm emergence. Framing models, as outlined above, focus on the agent’s side of norm emergence as they construct norm emergence as a process of ‘strategic social construction’ (Finnemore and Sikkink, 1998: 889; Risse, 2006: 267; emphasis added). If norm emergence is conceptualised as a strategic undertaking of norm entrepreneurs however, this implies that the new norm, and thus normative change, is brought about by the intentional acts of autonomous agents who can act rationally and purposefully, independent from and ahead of the social structure in which the new norm is to be placed. This conceptualisation, as Charlotte Epstein points out, ‘[maintains] intact the duality of structure and agency in a way that obscures the more complex processes that mediate between them and the ways in which they mutually constitute each other within a dynamic process’ (Epstein, 2008: 91). What is overlooked, according to Epstein, is the way in which ‘tectonic-like transformations that are located within the structures themselves’ (Epstein, 2008: 92) shape the emergence of normative meanings. While the framing model insofar privileges agents over structures in the process of norm production it, paradoxically, simultaneously implies a structural argument as the new norm is implicitly assumed to already be there, to be stable, and to be powerful as it guides the behaviour and the strategies of norm entrepreneurs. If a new norm is intentionally spread by norm entrepreneurs, this implies that this new norm must be recognised at least by some actors, the norm entrepreneurs, who have somehow gained an early insight into its normative desirability. Only norm entrepreneurs who know about the new norm can intentionally propagate it. As Antje Wiener points out, the norm entrepreneurs are already driven by a logic of appropriateness, while the content and the actual process of norm-building remain theoretically bracketed (Wiener, 2007b: 49–51). Bearing these things in mind, the framing model seems to conceptualise the diffusion of already existing norms through norm entrepreneurs, rather than the process of norm construction. In contrast to the framing model, the persuasion approach seems to successfully get around this implicit structuralist argument by introducing rational discourse, mutual deliberation and – importantly – the willingness

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of all participants to change their preferences and normative beliefs in the process of argumentation. However, the persuasion approach also implicitly seems to assume that actors participate in argumentation processes with precast normative concepts (cf. Herborth, 2007), which are then put up for discussion and modification. As Benjamin Herborth points out, ‘the expected processes of argumentation are always functionally related to the implementation of norms, the meanings of which have already been defined in advance’ (Herborth, 2007: 153).1 Nicole Deitelhoff tellingly stresses that, within the persuasion model, the newness of a new norm should be understood not in terms of its construction, but rather as the process in which an existing normative meaning is turned into a binding social norm (Deitelhoff, 2006: 45). Rather than the building of a normative meaning, persuasion can then be understood as a process on the micro-level where a concrete group of actors argues about a concrete (maybe vague or non-binding) norm, which is then, possibly in a modified version, agreed on and turned into binding law (cf. Deitelhoff, 2009). This micro-foundation of normative meanings in global politics brings with it another problem, however, in that it establishes an understanding of social norms as resting on individual and subjective agreement rather than social construction and intersubjectivity (Hanrieder, 2008: 173–174; Holzinger, 2001: 259). Actors have to be really and authentically persuaded of the desirability and validity of a norm in order for that norm to become part of the social structure. As Tine Hanrieder points out, the persuasion model thus establishes an understanding of norms that is based on their moral appropriateness or validity which needs to be acknowledged by social actors. This understanding, however, can be opposed with a factual validity of institutionalised norms which are intersubjectively rather than subjectively shared and over which individual actors have no control (Guzzini, 2000: 155; Hanrieder, 2008: 173–174; Herborth, 2007: 166; Holzinger, 2001: 259).

The constitutive power of norms and the politics of reality of social science The agent-centric approaches to norm emergence leave open questions of how normative meanings are constructed, that is how normal or sedimented meanings are reinterpreted and transformed into authoritative meanings and standards of behaviour which make purposeful action in their name possible. This brings with it an unnecessary analytic restriction as it makes it hard for the researcher to gain an insight into the historically contingent nature and constitutive power of social norms. As Richard Price argues, moral norms and principles which are accepted today should be understood not as stable and given rules, but as the result of historical contingencies (Price, 1995: 87). They are constructed and modified in a historical process

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whereby ‘the purposes and forms of moral structures often change in such a way that they come to embody values different from those that animated their origins’ (Price, 1995: 86). Throughout this process of construction, Price argues, moral rules and moral systems are productive and promote a certain kind of politics, an assumption that resonates with the overall constructivist assumption on the constitutive nature of social norms. Norms can be understood as productive discourses which legitimate and naturalise certain practices and identities while delegitimising others. In this regard, inquiring into the construction process of social norms would make it possible to find out about the historical productivity of social norms and to uncover their more hidden constitutive effects. It can help to find out about the ‘political technologies’ (Edkins, 1999) that are produced and naturalised by a norm and that are overlooked today because the norm together with the social reality it produces is long accepted and taken for granted as valid social meaning. Apart from this analytical restriction, the neglect of the process of norm construction, that is of the question how it is that certain practices are considered legitimate at all, also has another effect for constructivist norm research: it brings norm scholars to unwillingly take part in a particular kind of politics by confirming or even legitimising existing social norms as well as the power relations and the social reality they produce. As mentioned above, both the framing and the persuasion approaches, start at a point where a social norm already exists and is either diffused or modified and institutionalised. The framing model assumes that certain normative meanings are simply there and can be strategically diffused by norm entrepreneurs. Hereby, the norm under investigation is naturalised: its validity and legitimacy as a particular normative social fact is not questioned. This procedure has political implications insofar as it confirms the normative quality of the norm and therewith the social reality it produces. An even stronger political effect can be observed with the persuasion approaches, as they not only naturalise but even legitimise the norm under investigation. Persuasion approaches, as mentioned above, often build on a Habermasian model of argumentation and rational discourse in order to explain the emergence of a particular norm. The concept of the rational discourse was developed as a normative-critical approach, however, which tries to offer an ethical foundation for a reasoned moral system on the basis of the rationality and morality found in real life communication (Hanrieder, 2008: 168). Morally reasoned and acceptable norms, according to this account, can be derived from specific procedural conditions, namely argumentation in a rational discourse which grants access, equality and freedom from discrimination to all its participants and produces agreements through the persuasiveness of the best argument. What persuasion approaches do now is translate this normative model into

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an analytical model of norm emergence. This is not unproblematic however, as Tine Hanrieder points out (Hanrieder, 2008). By using the normative model for the explanation of empirical norm emergence, persuasion approaches unwillingly moralise empirical processes of norm production and legitimise empirically accepted norms ex post. When empirical processes of norm production are interpreted in terms of rational and just discourses, de facto advanced arguments become good and persuasive arguments and empirically emerging norms are turned into morally acceptable and just norms. Here, the norm under investigation is not only naturalised, but implicitly declared to be legitimate because it was produced in and through rational discourse.

Contestation, interpretation and the contingency of normative meanings In contrast to the affirmative stance towards empirical norms adopted by the agent-centric approaches, the goal of this book is to enquire into the process of normative change and to critically shed light on how normative meanings are produced so that we take their content and their normative authority as given. In other words, this book seeks to partake in a different politics of reality: it proceeds from scepticism towards the validity and desirability of reconciliation and considers it as a contingent normative meaning. Consequentially, it wants to examine how this meaning gained its legitimacy and authority and how it performs in global politics, that is, what kind of social reality it produces and legitimises. Therefore, the following pages aim at developing a theoretical frame which makes it possible to look beyond the purposeful behaviour of norm entrepreneurs and to theorise the process of meaning emergence as a contingent process of the construction of social reality. One interesting step in this direction has already been made by some more recent constructivist work on normative change which localises the dynamics of normative change not in the purposeful behaviour of norm entrepreneurs, but rather in the constant struggles over the meaning of norms which are to be found in any kind of social interaction. These approaches explicitly emphasise the co-constitution of agents and structures and suggest focusing especially on the interplay between the two in order to understand normative change (Sandholtz, 2008; Wiener, 2004; 2007a; 2007b). Antje Wiener, for instance, argues for a reflexive approach to social norms which focuses not on norms as stable structural variables, but acknowledges the dual quality of norms as meaning in use which is constituted and changed through social practices (Wiener, 2004). Norms are simultaneously ‘constructed and structuring’ (Wiener, 2004: 201) and enable social action

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while simultaneously being maintained and modified through it (Wiener, 2007a: 6; Sandholtz, 2008: 102). Hence, normative change is traced back to this interplay between normative structures and their constant reenactment through social practices. Importantly, looking at the process of normative change these authors focus on the role of meaning and interpretation and the ambiguities and tensions of the social structure which are produced through social interaction. Norms, it is argued here, are constantly interpreted and reproduced through social practices, which inevitably lead to their contestation and to conflicts about their meaning. The contestation and ambiguity of the social structure force actors to dispute and struggle over the meaning of norms whereby normative meanings are transformed and reinterpreted (Sandholtz, 2008; Wiener, 2004; 2007b). Here, normative change is seen to be triggered by everyday practices as all kinds of interaction can challenge dominant interpretations of normative meaning and initiate struggles on how a norm should be understood or changed. Simultaneously, the product of these struggles, that is the norm in question, is considered as the contingent outcome of social interaction. The approaches to normative change discussed here supplement the agent-centric approaches in three important ways. First, they suggest that normative structures themselves provide the possibility for change, as they are inherently unstable and constantly have to be interpreted and reinterpreted through social practices. Normative change thus has to be understood as a product of the ambiguities and tensions in the social structure which are produced by the interplay between intersubjectively shared normative meanings and those social practices which realise and interpret, and simultaneously challenge and change them. Second, these approaches importantly shift the analytical focus to language and discourse and suggest looking at interpretation as an important mechanism of normative change. Social practices, as Wiener points out (Wiener, 2004: 201), must be interpreted as discursive interventions which actualise and modify the meaning structure. Analysing meaning and interpretation is then crucial for understanding normative change. Third, these approaches interpret the meaning of norms as the contingent outcome of social interpretation rather than given and stable or the result of rational discourse. They thereby adopt a less affirmative stance towards the empirical norms they analyse and acknowledge their contingent character. Overall, these three insights offer important analytical supplements to the agent-centric approaches to normative change. However, they do not provide an explicitly critical programme for the analysis of global norms. Such a programme, it will be argued below, can however be derived by building on post-structuralist discourse theory. Discourse theory offers an analytically fertile and critical perspective to normative change. It promises

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further insights into the dynamics of normative change by putting its analytical focus especially on the dynamics of language and interpretation and theorising the process by which social meaning is produced and modified through language and social practices. Furthermore, discourse theory adds a deliberately critical perspective on the (normative) meanings it analyses by conceptualising them as inherently powerful and political meanings and by exploring how these meanings perform. What a discourse theoretical approach to normative change might look like will be discussed in the remainder of this chapter.

A discourse approach to the emergence of meaning Discourse theory can be understood as a more radical form of constructivism.2 Just like the more moderate constructivist approaches discussed above, discourse theory departs from a materialist conception of the social world and looks at the social world not as a given entity but as a product of social construction (Fierke, 2001). Discourse theory emphasises the constructed nature of all social meaning and considers discourse as the central constitutive category of social reality. ‘It is through discourse that individuals, societies, and states make sense of themselves, of their ways of living, and of the world around them’ (Epstein, 2008: 2). From a discourse theoretical perspective, social norms, just as all kinds of social meanings, can be understood as components of historically contingent discourses which are produced and reproduced through social practices, in particular language. What actors perceive as the right or the natural thing to do is down to hegemonic discourses which produce and naturalise certain practices and make them appear good or appropriate. Inquiring into the emergence of (new) norms therefore requires to look at the discourses that underlie them and to find concepts which help to examine how discourses emerge and gain hegemony, how these discourses are constituted so that they produce social meaning such as norms, and finally how these new constructions of social reality perform in social life. The following pages develop a theoretical foundation for such an analysis. Building centrally, but not exclusively, on the discourse theory developed by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, they reconstruct a theory of social and normative change. The next section illustrates these theoretical understandings and shows how discourses are constituted and produce social meaning. The subsequent sub-sections then focus on the constitutive power of discourse and on the conditions and processes of social change. The last sub-section discusses how these theoretical categories can be understood as a research tool for the analysis of normative change.

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Discourses, empty universals and the construction of meaning Discourse theory proceeds from the assumption that language and meaningful practices are constitutive of social reality. Even though discourse theory accepts that there is a thought independent world out there, which consists of a number of (natural) phenomena, it challenges their languageindependent observation (Kratochwil, 1991). It holds that humans have no possibility to access and describe the world objectively, but they can only make sense of it through their existing socially constructed knowledge, which is centrally stabilised and conserved in discourse (Diez, 1999; Guzzini, 2000). As David Howarth and Yannis Stavrakakis put it, ‘human beings are “thrown into” and inhabit a world of meaningful discourses and practices, and cannot conceive or think about objects outside of it’ (Howarth and Stavrakakis, 2000: 3). Insofar, discourse theory builds on an ‘anti-essentialist ontology’ (Torfing, 2005: 13) in that it believes that all social reality must be conceived not as brute facts but as social interpretations that are produced and stabilised through discourse. Discourse is the central constitutive category and ordering principle of social life, as it is in and through discourse that meaning is temporarily stabilised and social and physical realities become meaningful (Epstein, 2008: 2; Howarth and Stavrakakis, 2000; Torfing, 2005). A discourse can be understood as a relatively stable arrangement of social meaning or a ‘structured totality’ in which meaning and social identities are temporarily arranged in a system of relational signification (Laclau and Mouffe, 2001: 105). According to Laclau and Mouffe, every discourse is constituted around a nodal point (see Figure 1 below). The structural position of the nodal point is usually occupied by social ideals, such as reality, nature, god or justice (Laclau and Mouffe, 2001). The authors centrally argue that constructed foundations such as these are essential for the temporary stabilisation of meaning in discourse, as they anchor a discourse and thus make it possible to temporarily stabilise all other meaning units of the discourse in relation to the foundations themselves. Meaning can only be stabilised relationally, that is in relation to other meaning. Accordingly, the production of meaning and the social world is only possible by constructing reality or nature, for example, as an ultimate foundation in relation to which we can categorise things. Only because we believe in some reality can we categorise things as true, false, natural, man-made, etc. Only because we have an idea of god can we classify actions as sins, commandments, good, evil, holy, etc. In other words, constructed ultimate foundations make signification and meaning possible. Laclau argues that ultimate foundations usually take the shape of tendentially empty signifiers, that is they have no particular content on their own. They are vague yet powerful social ideals which cannot be clearly defined but are normatively charged. Democracy, justice, order or reconciliation, for

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example, are all powerful words that serve as social ideals and normative justifications and yet their content remains vague and can hardly be grasped (Laclau, 2007: 36–46). Empty universals only gain meaning, vague and allusive as it might be, because they represent a radical opposition to some current negative state of affairs. As Laclau puts it, the content of an empty universal cannot be grasped in all its positivity but ‘it will always show itself through the presence of its absence’ (Laclau, 2007: 53). In other words, an empty universal will always be present as the desired opposite of a current negative state of affairs. Communism can serve as an empty universal against a perceived reality of a radically capitalist state. Order can serve as an empty universal against a perceived reality of radical disorder. Justice can serve as an empty universal in a situation ‘in which people experience a feeling of being wronged’ (Laclau, 2004: 280). In Laclau’s words, ‘[a]ny term which, in a certain political context becomes the signifier of the lack, plays the same role’ (Laclau, 2007: 44). Within a discourse, nodal points are ‘privileged signifiers or reference points’ and ‘bind together a particular system of meaning or “chain of signification”’ (Howarth and Stavrakakis, 2000: 8). They structure social meaning through two different discursive logics. The empty signifier and all other signifiers are related to each other in either a logic of difference or equivalence. While the nodal point/empty signifier stands in a semantic relation of equivalence with each signifier of the discourse and binds them in a chain of equivalence, the signifiers themselves are associated with each other in a relation of difference (Adamson, 2000; Glasze, 2007; Laclau and Mouffe, 2001) (see Figure 1 below). Relations of equivalence and difference are the fundamental mechanisms with which meaning is produced. The equivalential relation between the empty signifier and the other meaning units is particularly crucial, as it leads to a slight redefinition of the meaning of those signifiers. In Slavoj Žižek’s analysis of communist ideology, for instance, communism is identified as the nodal point of the discourse. Other signifiers that are used in communist ideology, such as democracy, freedom or justice, are articulated around the nodal point communism and thus their meaning is modified in relation to the nodal point. Freedom then acquires the meaning of ‘the surmounting of the bourgeois formal freedom, which is merely a form of slavery’; democracy comes to mean ‘“real” democracy as opposed to “bourgeois” democracy’ and so on (Howarth and Stavrakakis, 2000: 8; Žižek, 1989: 102). Discourses are constituted by the practice of articulation, that is ‘sensemaking practices’ (Epstein, 2008: 4) which articulate and rearticulate the social world. Articulation is defined as ‘any practice establishing a relation among elements [that is meaning units that are not bound in a discourse] such that their identity is modified as a result of the articulatory practice’ (Laclau and Mouffe, 2001: 105). Every social practice contains an articulatory

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dimension, as each social action confirms and thereby reconstructs some meanings while at the same time challenging and modifying others (Laclau and Mouffe, 2001: 113). Whenever we speak or act in the social world, we produce and reproduce meaning. We interpret, categorise and treat things according to pre-existing knowledge, thereby simultaneously reproducing or modifying the meaning on which our act was based. Social practices and the meaning structures that shape social life are therefore closely intertwined. It is only through discourse and pre-existing meaning that social practices are made possible but, simultaneously, meaning is only activated and (re) produced through social practices. The production and reproduction of meaning and social reality through social practices can thus be understood as a circular process, in which social actors interpret their world, act according to their interpretations and by this reproduce and modify the meaning structures that made their actions possible: ‘Whatever we say, think, or do is conditioned by a more or less sedimented discourse which is constantly modified and transformed by what we are saying, thinking, and doing’ (Torfing, 2005: 14).

Powerful discourses and the constitution of social reality Social reality is produced through hegemonic discourses which are powerful in that they institute historically contingent constructions of social life and fix

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one particular interpretation of social reality while excluding others (Epstein, 2008: 9; Hansen, 2008: 18–19; Howarth and Stavrakakis, 2000: 4; Torfing, 2005: 14–15). In other words, powerful discourses make a difference in the world as the social reality that is constructed by them could just as well have been constructed otherwise. As Epstein points out, ‘[i]f the world we live in is socially construed, it could have been construed otherwise’ (Epstein, 2008: 9). Any social construction is therefore historically contingent and ‘their construction has excluded other possible sets of articulations or meanings’ (Epstein, 2008: 9). Overall, power in discourse theory is thus understood not as the capability of particular agents, but as the power of a discourse which institutes and naturalises a certain kind of social reality, a certain kind of social order and a certain kind of social relations (Barrett, 1991: 135; Epstein, 2008: 3–4; Torfing, 1999: 162–163). It is a productive and generative understanding of power which constitutes and simultaneously regulates social relations. Studying the power of discourse, as Michèle Barrett points out, does not only mean ‘to study the “who” of power – who exercises power’, but to study it ‘in conjunction with the “how”: “the strategies, networks, the mechanisms, all those techniques by which a decision is accepted and by which that decision could not but be taken in the way it was”’ (Barrett, 1991: 136). Studying the power of discourse, in other words, means studying the force by which a discursively produced social reality is accepted as true and objective social reality so that certain practices, decisions and social relations are naturalised and legitimised by making them appear as arising out of unquestioned ‘common sense’ (Epstein, 2008: 9–10). While discursive power is not to be understood as a possession of social agents, discourse, power and social agents are nevertheless closely intertwined as it is through the constitutive power of discourse that social agents are constituted and empowered to act. Through their constitutive quality, discourses define the subjects, objects and practices of social life, thereby giving social agents the possibility to identify with subject positions, to embrace or oppose certain objects, such as norms, and to carry out certain practices. The social subject, as Martin Nonhoff points out, ‘constitutes herself only against the background of always-already existing discourses and in the course of her discursive statements, i.e. articulations’ (Nonhoff, 2005: 154).3 The constitution of social subjects is made possible through the subject positions that are provided by discourses (Epstein, 2011; Howarth and Stavrakakis, 2000: 12; Laclau and Mouffe, 2001: 115; Nonhoff, 2005: 156–157). Subject positions can be understood as discursive spaces and identities that can be adopted by social agents. A subject position ‘refers to a position within a discourse. It is a place-holder, a linguistic category … the I/we of a discourse’ (Epstein, 2011: 343; emphasis in original). The positions of the student, teacher, male, female, black, white, victim or perpetrator, for instance, are categories provided by discourses and offer social agents the

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opportunity to identify and find a place in the social structure which tells them who they are and what they can do. Social subjects then constitute themselves if and when they ‘step into’ and identify with the positions carved out by a discourse (Epstein, 2008: 93–95; Epstein, 2011). Overall, social subjects in discourse theory can thus not be understood in terms of stable and static identities, but the constitution of social subjects takes place through an active process of identification: ‘An identity requires an individual actively embracing it. It demands active recognition on behalf of the individual’ (Epstein, 2008: 169; Howarth and Stavrakakis, 2000: 13–15). Identification occurs through the act of articulation, that is through subjects speaking and thus further articulating a discourse. As Epstein puts it, actors constitute themselves as social agents by speaking the discourse and positioning themselves as the I/we of that discourse (Epstein, 2011). The becoming of a subject and the reproduction of social meaning therefore go hand in hand. This co-constitution of subject and discourse is an important point insofar as it is here that agency is located according to discourse theory. As Epstein points out, ‘to speak is also to act … social actors are first and foremost speaking actors. That is, speaking is both a key modality of their agency and of the way in which they position themselves in the world’ (Epstein, 2011; Nonhoff, 2005: 159). Agency is possible because social actors have to actively embrace one, and not another, subject position which is offered to them by a discourse, thereby stabilising the social relations provided by this discourse. ‘[T]he political subject is forced to take decisions – or identify with certain political projects and the discourse they articulate … it is in the process of this identification that political subjectivities are created and formed’ (Howarth and Stavrakakis, 2000: 13). The decision taken by the subject through identification and the discursive and thus social consequences of this decision are particularly powerful in situations when the discursive structure is severely destabilised, and several hegemonic projects are released which seek to rearticulate social reality (Howarth and Stavrakakis, 2000: 15; Laclau, 1990: 44) (see in more detail below). It is here that a new discourse is articulated and social reality is particularly shapeable, so that any identification and thus any decision for one and against another discourse and for one and against another particular articulation of that discourse entails far-reaching consequences. While identification through articulation is an important component of the constitutive power of discourse and the co-constitution of discourse and social practices, it is not the only product of this power. Apart from subject positions, discourses also produce and legitimise social practices by defining and naturalising them. It is only because we have an idea of what praying is, for instance, that we are able to actually pray. In other words, by defining and thus creating certain practices, discourses enable us to act in the first place, as they create spaces and techniques for action and the

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knowledge about them, and thus enable actors to carry these acts out. Apart from producing social practices, discourses also legitimise these practices by positively relating them to the empty universal. As will be demonstrated in the next chapters, the equivalential relationship that is articulated between the empty universal and certain practices in a discourse establishes these practices as means towards the achievement of the empty universal and therewith as a good and legitimate thing to do. This is an important aspect for the production of social norms, as it is here, on the level of discourse, that a practice is conveyed with normative authority. These productive powers of discourse are always to be seen in a close interplay with social practices, however. Whenever we carry out a practice which is defined and legitimised in discourse, we confirm its social validity and legitimacy, thus rearticulating the discourse which produced them. Overall, the appraisal of the power of discourse in discourse theory can be summarised as follows. On the one hand, we can say that discursive power is constitutive of social reality and empowers social agents, as discourses provide the knowledge about this reality and make it possible to act in the first place. Only if subjects, objects and practices are established in discourse can we have an idea of them, identify with a certain subject position or carry out a particular practice. On the other hand, however, discursive power has a repressive side to it, and the subjects, objects and practices produced by discourse are not unproblematic. Instead, as Howarth and Stavrakakis point out, ‘[d]iscourses and the identities produced through them are inherently political entities that involve the construction of antagonisms and the exercise of power’ (Howarth and Stavrakakis, 2000: 9). The process of discursive formation is not only productive in that it constitutes a certain kind of social reality, subject positions and legitimate practices, it is also exclusive in that it represses alternative interpretations of the social world and constructs certain identities or practices as a threatening or undesirable Other. Overall, as outlined above, discourses institute only a contingent social order and the formation of one particular discourse is a reduction of all possible constructions of reality except that which is established through the discourse (Dyrberg, 2004; Howarth and Stavrakakis, 2000: 4). Laclau and Mouffe therefore argue that discourses and all social objectivity produced by them are inherently political, their formation is an act of power and their sedimentation is the institutionalisation of power relations (Dyrberg, 2004; Howarth and Stavrakakis, 2000; Laclau, 1990). This appraisal of the power of discourse and its co-constitution with social practices has consequences for how we analyse and evaluate the social world. In regard to analysis and interpretation, it means that, in contrast to the agent-centric approaches to normative change outlined above, purposeful action of social agents cannot precede the constitution of meaning in discourse, but that both are co-constitutive. In other words, while

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agent-centric approaches understand normative change as being crucially initiated by norm entrepreneurs who had an early insight into a desirable practice, discourse theory holds that this practice first has to be discursively produced and legitimised in order for norm entrepreneurs to embrace it at all and act purposefully in its name. Social agents do not precede but are co-constitutive with and empowered by discourses. With regard to evaluation and critique, the concept of power and agency suggested by discourse theory is crucial for the attribution of responsibility in the social world. If social actors, through each act of identification and articulation, participate in the production of a contingent version of social reality, this implies that they carry a degree of responsibility for the way the world is. Consequentially, the appraisal of the power of discourse is where the critical potential of discourse theory sets in. Power, as Stefano Guzzini points out, ‘is a counterfactual which implies that things could have been otherwise’ (Guzzini, 2000: 171). Hence, to attribute power to somebody ‘is not simply to describe his role in some perfectly neutral sense, but is more like accusing him of something, which is then to be denied or justified’ (Guzzini, 2005: 511). By describing a discourse as powerful and assuming the involvement of social agents in the (re)production of this discourse whenever they identify with and further articulate the discourse, we imply that this discourse and the particular social order it institutes is contingent and must be justified. Exposing the constructed nature of a discursive reality helps to understand the productive power of discourse and to question the given-ness of social reality. While new identities and practices are produced by new discourses, over time these practices are more and more taken as given once the discourses sediment. Here, as Jenny Edkins points out, a process of ‘technologisation’ takes place in which the discursively produced practices are increasingly ritualised and their discursive production becomes invisible (Edkins, 1999: 9–14). A discourse theoretical account then seeks to expose the coming into being of these practices and to retrace the process of technologisation.

The dislocation of discourses and the possibility of social change The above argued, firstly, that discourses produce social reality as it is through discourse that meaning is temporarily stabilised and arranged in a relational system of signification. Thereby, secondly, discourses constitute social reality in that they produce the subjects, objects and practices of social life and establish them as social objectivity. This act of discursive constitution, thirdly, can be understood as an act of power as it realises one contingent version of social reality while excluding others. The following paragraphs will now illuminate how hegemonic discourses can be destabilised and how thereby social change becomes possible.

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While discourses are provisional and historically contingent institutionalisations of social reality, they can be destabilised and change. Laclau and Mouffe conceptualise the destabilisation and failure of a discursive structure as its dislocation (Laclau, 1990: 39–45). Dislocation stands for the interruption of a discursive formation through events or experiences it cannot meaningfully accommodate and interpret according to its rules of interpretation. Not all social actors will conform to the one or the other identity category provided by the discourse and not all events can be interpreted and classified according to existing understandings of what can possibly happen. Instead, each discourse will constantly be threatened by resistance discourses which challenge its constructions through alternative interpretations of the world and which have the potential of destabilising it. Jacob Torfing describes dislocation in the following words: [A] stable hegemonic discourse becomes dislocated when it is confronted by new events that it cannot explain, represent, or in other ways domesticate. Most discourses are flexible and capable of integrating a lot of new events into their symbolic order. But all discourses are finite and they will eventually confront events that they fail to integrate. (Torfing, 2005: 16)

While discourses are always already dislocated to a certain degree in that social reality can always also be articulated otherwise, the dislocation of a discourse can manifest itself in three ways, depending on the flexibility of the discourse to deal with it. Firstly, discourses can exclude the identities and meanings they cannot interpret and construct them as a constitutive exterior, that is as what the discourse is not. This kind of dislocation leads to the construction of neutral discursive limits (Stäheli, 2004) and stabilises the discourse temporarily as it can signify itself, that is constitute itself against its exterior (Laclau and Mouffe, 2001: 143–144). Secondly, discourses can construct those identities and meanings which challenge it in terms of social antagonism, that is they can consign them to the discursive limits and construct them as an enemy, as a threatening Other to the positive identities of the discourse (Stäheli, 2004; Thomassen, 2005). The construction of social antagonism happens through ‘the exclusion of a series of identities and meanings that are articulated as part of a chain of equivalence, which emphasises the “sameness” of the excluded elements’ (Torfing, 2005: 15). A third manifestation of dislocation occurs once resistance discourses get strong enough so that neither neutral exclusion nor the construction of social antagonism can stabilise the discourse. In this case, Laclau speaks of structural dislocation as the discursive structure as such cannot be upheld. Structural dislocation shows itself through an organic crisis of the discursive structure, in which the contingency of the hitherto valid meanings and identities is unveiled and the ultimate contingency of the whole discursive structure is exposed (Laclau and Mouffe, 2001: 131; Laclau, 1990: 39–45;

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Torfing, 2005: 16). The consequence of dislocation is the pressing need for the production of new empty signifiers that restructure discourse and bind the destabilised meaning of other signifiers in relation to themselves. As Laclau points out: As a result [of dislocation], something radically irrepresentable within the rules [of discourses] is going to circulate among their constituent elements. This is the moment in which ‘emptiness’ enters the picture – an emptiness which results, as can be seen, from irrepresentability … this irrepresentability acquire[s] a certain form of discursive presence through the production of empty signifiers which, as in the mystical discourse, name an absent fullness – in socio-political analysis, the fullness of the community. (Laclau, 2004: 280)

Structural dislocation makes social change possible as it stands for the failure of a discursive structure and makes it necessary to reorganise the social around new empty signifiers. Here, the structural determination of social life is severely inhibited and there is no structurally fixed social ideal which could function as the telos of any social transformation and reorganisation. Dislocation therefore leads to absolute contingency in regard to the constitution of a future social order. As Laclau puts it, dislocation is the very form of possibility and freedom. There is now ‘a set of new possibilities for historical action which are the direct result of structural dislocation. The world is less “given” and must be increasingly constructed’ (Laclau, 1990: 40–45).

Hegemonic struggles, social reorganisation and the production of new discourses The reorganisation of the social and the formation of new discourses after structural dislocation take place through an exemplary form of articulatory practices which Laclau and Mouffe call hegemonic struggles (Howarth, 2004: 258–261; Laclau, 2004: 318–321; Laclau and Mouffe, 2001: 135–142). Hegemonic struggles are attempts to build a new discourse by advancing new signifiers as empty universals and position them as nodal points of a discourse. They ‘aim to establish a political and moral-intellectual leadership through the articulation of meaning and identity’ (Torfing, 2005: 15). What is at stake in a hegemonic competition is the occupation of the structural position of the discursive nodal point with one particular signifier. Importantly, hegemonic struggles should not be understood in terms of strategic action or planned and rational decisions about the discursive structure by political actors. Rather, hegemonic struggles manifest themselves in a series of de facto political demands and decisions which step by step forge a hegemonic discourse around a new social ideal (Nonhoff, 2005: 210; Torfing, 2005: 15). In other words, the hegemonic discourse that is

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articulated here is the result of de facto political struggles and demands. However, the dynamics or strategies of hegemonisation are to be located not in the rationality or intentionality of autonomous individuals, but on the level of discourse and meaning (cf. Nonhoff, 2005: 209–211). Hegemonic strategies are the dynamics of meaning formation by which an empty universal eventually occupies the position of the discursive nodal point, arranges other signifiers in an equivalential relation to itself and constructs competing signifiers as undesirable Others. While the strategic and intentional action of social agents does not determine the outcome of such a process of hegemonisation, agency in the sense of identification through articulation is nevertheless crucial here as any act of articulation and identification contributes to the formation of a new social order and thus to the emergence of a new powerful discourse which institutes a certain kind of social relations. Each act of articulation and identification of an actor with either the one or the other hegemonic project entails particularly far-reaching consequences in situations of structural dislocation as it contributes to the formation of the one, and not the other particular construction of social order and social relations which might later be accepted as natural and given. Each individual social actor who takes part in the articulation of a hegemonic project thus carries responsibility for her articulations and identifications as she contributes to the formation of a particular social order. Coming back to the dynamics of hegemonic struggles, that is the discursive strategies which contribute to the hegemonisation of a certain empty signifier and a certain interpretation of social reality, this process can be divided (for analytic reasons only) into three stages, which should be thought of as closely intertwined. In the first stage of the hegemonic struggle a number of signifiers will be produced by several hegemonic forces and compete to become a nodal point of the new social order. In order to qualify for this position, these signifiers must be presented as referring to an absent state of society which marks a desirable difference to the present state of affairs. What makes a particular signifier credible as a potential empty signifier is its signification of a constitutive lack, something which is absent but seems highly desirable in the present. A hegemonic force can thus qualify its particular goal/signifier as an empty signifier if it succeeds to empty it of its particular content and to establish it in contrast to a present negative state of affairs. In the second stage, a hegemonic force has to establish the signifier that stands for its particular political goal as a hegemonic social ideal. In other words, the signifier has to succeed in representing the social ideal of more than only one social group. It has to be universalised and presented by a hegemonic force as a political goal that subsumes other struggles (cf. Nonhoff, 2005: 214–215). According to Laclau, this demands that a successful empty

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signifier manages to establish chains of equivalence between the goals of several particular struggles and to unify them in their common opposition to the present negative state of affairs (Laclau, 2007). Here, a bifurcation of the discursive space sets in. On the one hand, those signifiers that can be subsumed in one hegemonic project are reduced to differential positions within the signifying chain of the dominant empty universal. They are, thus, positive parts of the hegemonic discourse. On the other hand, however, those signifiers and political forces that cannot be successfully subsumed under the emerging hegemonic project are excluded from the discourse. They are constructed in terms of contrast and opposition as the undesirable or threatening Other and are confined to the limits of the emerging discourse in terms of social antagonism (cf. Nonhoff, 2005: 215–216). Once the relations of equivalence and difference are constructed, the third stage sets in and the empty signifier establishes a new discourse, that is it binds as many floating signifiers as possible in a chain of equivalence so that a new meaning structure emerges of which the empty signifier is the nodal point. Once an empty universal has gained hegemony and is accepted as a dominant social ideal, it structures a discourse and functions as a temporary nodal point of social order. The hegemony of a particular empty universal has severe effects as the empty universal performs on two different levels, on the level of meaning and on the level of social life. On the level of meaning, as mentioned above, the empty universal modifies meaning as it redefines the meanings of all other signifiers in a relation to itself. In other words, all subjects, objects and social practices which are produced and naturalised by the discourse are constructed and redefined in relation to the empty signifier. On the level of social life, the empty universal has two kinds of consequences. Firstly, by redefining meaning the empty signifier constructs social reality. It makes certain political practices seem plausible and legitimate and thus creates spaces for social practices and for actors to carry them out. Secondly, empty signifiers are important for the possibility of collective action. Due to their vagueness, empty universals can subsume the specific political goals of a number of groups and parties. Because the empty signifier is tendentially empty, that is particularly vague and indeterminate, various political parties can interpret it according to their ideals and accept it as a universal goal. The empty universal thus brings together a diverse and polarised political landscape by subsuming all their particular goals and integrating them into one political project (Laclau, 2007). Having specified the dynamics by which a signifier can turn into an empty universal and anchor a hegemonic discourse, the question remains now where an empty signifier comes from. According to Laclau any hegemonic success is ultimately contingent, as the dislocated structure does not determine the direction of the construction process anymore but represents a situation of undecidability. As Laclau puts it, ‘[u]ndecidability should be literally taken

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as that condition from which no course of action necessarily follows. This means that we should not make it the necessary source of any concrete decision in the ethical or political sphere’ (Laclau, 2007: 78). Critics hold however that, while the precise shape of a successful hegemonic decision cannot be predicted, the ‘infrastructure of undecidability’ (Norval, 2004: 140) can yet be specified (cf. Thomassen, 2005). In other words, hegemonic struggles do not take place in a meaning vacuum but ‘between multiple, but determinate possibilities’ (Norval, 2004: 147). This means, however, that the emergence of a new social ideal does not happen in total freedom and independence from a discursive framework but ‘de facto it is limited by the terrain of the given’ (Norval, 2004: 148). In other words, the process in which a signifier is turned into a new empty universal begins at a point when the new empty universal already exists, albeit as a signifier of another sedimented discourse. The process of hegemonisation is then the transformation of this ‘normal’ signifier into a social ideal and its reinterpretation and association with other signifiers. While an empty signifier can succeed in hegemonising a discourse, its success is never finite but unstable and reversible. As Dirk Nabers points out, ‘[t]he tension between universality and particularity [that is between the particular political vision of one group and the universal social ideal as such] remains unresolvable’ (Nabers, 2007: 20) and the hegemony of a particular signifier as an empty universal is ‘never total and always reversible’ (ibid.). Therefore, ‘[t]he more specific the content of a [sic] empty signifier becomes, the more it will be contested, which leads to the failure of a hegemonic project’ (Nabers, 2007: 23). In the end, there seem to be two possible fates of a hegemonic project: on the one hand, as indicated above, the project can fail and be dislocated; on the other hand, it can sediment and reach the status of social objectivity.

Discourse theory and the investigation of normative change in global politics The preceding sub-sections reconstructed some central discourse theoretical concepts of how social meaning is produced, how it constitutes social reality and how it can be destabilised and reconstructed, so that social change becomes possible. This last sub-section will now transfer these concepts into a research framework and point out how the discourse theoretical concepts can be used to inquire into the emergence and performance of a global reconciliation discourse. Basically, it can be argued from the perspective of discourse theory that social meanings, including (new) norms, are the products of (new) discourses, so it is with the birth of a new discourse that an inquiry into the emergence of meaning should begin. The first step of analysis should

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thus focus on the emergence of a new discourse and look at situations of severe social crisis when existing discourses are dislocated and new empty signifiers are advanced by different social groups. It is important here to reconstruct how a new discourse is articulated around an empty universal, that is which empty universal gains dominance and how this universal binds other meanings in relations of equivalence and difference. In the following analysis, reconciliation will be conceptualised as the empty universal of the reconciliation discourse which anchors the discourse and binds other signifiers in a relation to itself. The early articulation of the reconciliation discourse will be examined in chapter 2. Discourses are constituted when signifiers are arranged in a relational system through relations of equivalence and difference. So, the relations between meaning units are important as they are constitutive for the new discourse and for the production of subjects, objects and legitimate social practices. Analysing the global reconciliation discourse thus implies an examination of the relations that are established between reconciliation and the other signifiers of the discourse. A method to analyse these relations empirically will be suggested below. In the case of the reconciliation discourse for instance, truth-telling and the creation of truth commissions were produced as central practices of reconciliation and powerful norms in global politics, as these practices were positively related with the reconciliation ideal and thus legitimised. As the next chapters will show, these practices were produced and legitimised by being constructed as a way towards the realisation of reconciliation and thus as a valuable and good thing to do. Overall, empty universals can be seen as prior to and fundamental for the emergence of legitimate practices, as they convey meaning to practices and thus produce them in the first place while simultaneously helping to classify certain acts as legitimate or appropriate. A discourse theoretical research design not only asks how the reconciliation discourse is constituted, that is how its signifiers are arranged, but also what the reconciliation discourse does, that is how it performs in global politics by producing social reality. The reconciliation discourse, for instance, produced in particular public truth-telling and the creation of truth commissions as meaningful and desirable practices, because it established them as means of reconciliation. Thus, the discourse makes purposeful action possible. Here, the constitutive power of discourse comes into play. By producing social practices, that is by defining them and conveying them with (normative) meaning, a discourse provides spaces for action, thus making it possible for social actors, such as norm entrepreneurs, to act purposefully in the name of reconciliation. It is only once the discourse has established truthtelling and truth commissions as meaningful and legitimate practices that social actors can know of these practices and promote them as good and appropriate things to do in global politics. Once an ideal or a practice is

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produced through discourse, it becomes possible for social actors to identify with it, to position themselves as advocates of – or in opposition to – this ideal or practice and to purposefully promote it in global politics. In other words, the discourse is constitutive here as it produces spaces for political intervention in the name of the meanings it displays. Chapter 4 will inquire into this aspect in more detail. When adopting a discourse theoretical perspective on the global reconciliation discourse, it is important to take seriously the critical potential of discourse theory and to look at the power of this discourse in global politics. As mentioned above, discourse theory helps to adopt a critical perspective towards the meaning it investigates. The discourse perspective holds that the constitution of a discourse is totally contingent and that it represents a radical institution of social reality rather than its necessary manifestation. Discourses and the social reality they produce are therefore interpreted as socially accepted and hegemonic ideologies which make certain acts and practices seem valuable and legitimate, thereby instituting these practices and excluding or delegitimising others. Discourse theory, insofar, cannot claim to be neutral towards the objects it investigates. Instead, a discourse theoretical perspective invites us to question the legitimacy and given-ness of the meanings under investigation and to remain sceptical towards their empirical validity and their global sharedness. This can be done in two ways. Firstly, discourse theory invites us to ask how a discourse produces social reality, what consequences this reality entails and, importantly, which alternative interpretations of social reality are repressed by it. In other words, it is important to examine what difference this discourse makes in global politics. Secondly, the discourse theoretical perspective suggests looking for protest, resistance and counter-discourses to the hegemonic constructions. Looking for alternative interpretations of legitimate practice is thus an important part of a discourse theoretical inquiry in order to make visible the inherent power and hegemony of the dominant construction.

Method of analysis and selection of the text corpus The following four chapters of this book aim to reconstruct how the global reconciliation discourse was articulated and interpret how this discourse performed by producing and repressing certain versions of social reality. In order to carry out such a study, some methodological deliberations are necessary on how to operationalise and apply the concepts developed above to empirical data and observations. In this section, I suggest discourse analysis as a way to do that. Discourse analysis is useful here, as it helps to analyse and interpret textual data in order to reconstruct possible discursive structures in which

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politics and social life are embedded. It thereby uses text as its basic empirical material, as it is through texts that meaning is produced and reproduced. As Jennifer Milliken points out, discourse can be understood as ‘a structure of meaning-in-use’ (Milliken, 1999: 231), which is constantly reenacted through language practices. Accordingly, an empirical analysis of language practices helps ‘to draw out a more general structure of relational distinctions and hierarchies that orders persons’ knowledge about the things defined by the discourse’ (Milliken, 1999: 231). When applying discourse analysis, decisions have to be taken in regard to the selection of the text corpus, the units of analysis, the method of data analysis and the criteria for their interpretation (Keller and Viehöver, 2006: 107–109; Milliken, 1999). These decisions, as the following sub-sections point out, were taken here in close connection with the theoretical concepts outlined above and with the specific research interest in the reconstruction of a global reconciliation discourse. The concept of articulation was used to specify the empirical material that was examined; the concept of discourse presented above helped to decide on the concrete method of text analysis, and the specific empirical research interest in the global reconciliation discourse was central to the selection the text corpus for the following analysis.

Discourse analysis and the centrality of explicit articulations Discourses, as pointed out above, are produced through the practice of articulation. With Laclau and Mouffe, articulation can be defined as ‘any practice establishing a relation among elements [that is meaning units that are not bound in a discourse] such that their identity is modified as a result of the articulatory practice’ (Laclau and Mouffe, 2001: 105). Every social practice contains an articulatory dimension, as each social action confirms and thereby reconstructs some meanings while at the same time challenging and modifying others (Laclau and Mouffe, 2001: 113). Based on these theoretical assumptions, the following analysis will take articulatory practices as its starting point for a discourse analysis, and look at linguistic as well as non-linguistic practices as acts of discursive articulation. On the one hand, then, explicit linguistic articulations constitute the empirical material of the analysis. As Lene Hansen also points out, the methodology of discourse analysis is ‘located at the level of explicit articulations’ (Hansen, 2008: 41), and it is the ‘explicit articulation of signs within a wider web of signs’ which is ‘the methodological starting point for discourse analysis’ (Hansen, 2008: 44). Discourses are produced and reproduced through language, and it is through an analysis of these linguistic practices and how they produce and reproduce certain relations between signs that a discourse can be analytically reconstructed. Thus, spoken and written texts are the basic material that needs to be examined.

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On the other hand, however, as Laclau and Mouffe point out non-linguistic social practices contain an articulatory dimension. Thus, a way has to be found to include them in the analysis and to analyse the articulations they make. The difficulty with non-linguistic practices is that the analyst runs the risk of pressing his or her own interpretations onto the practice, without being able to find out how the practice is understood and interpreted by the actors involved. The following analysis therefore combines linguistic and non-linguistic data and looks at how practices are carried out, but also at how they are linguistically established. For instance, as will be demonstrated in the next chapters, reconciliation is linguistically related to the practice of public truth-telling and the creation of truth commissions. Thus, these practices, if carried out, can be considered as acts of articulation of the reconciliation discourse. They are particularly strong articulatory practices if they are even explicitly carried out in the name of reconciliation, for example when a truth commission is explicitly called a truth and reconciliation commission.

Empty universals, the logics of equivalence and difference and the analysis of semantic relations The next question is how to analyse the textual data and articulatory practices once we have found them (the selection of text and empirical material will be described in the next sub-section). In other words, how can we reconstruct the reconciliation discourse out of the empirical material? Here, the concepts of discourse, empty universal and the logics of equivalence and difference are important. Based on the theoretical deliberations above, discourse can be understood as the relational arrangement of social meaning. Discourses, as outlined above, are constituted by arranging signifiers around an empty universal which forms the nodal point of the discourse. The empty universal can thus be understood as a central element, or ‘key signifier’ (Jørgensen and Phillips, 2002: 50), of that discourse. As Marianne Jørgensen and Louise Phillips point out, such key signifiers offer a good starting point for a discourse analysis, as the composition of a discourse can be well analysed ‘by investigating how the key signifiers are combined with other signs’ (ibid.). Based on the research interest of this book, which is the investigation of the global reconciliation discourse, reconciliation will be conceptualised as the empty universal, the key signifier, of the discourse that is to be reconstructed. The goal of the analysis is then to examine how reconciliation is filled with meaning, that is how other signifiers are arranged around this empty universal so that a reconciliation discourse is constructed. Here, as several authors suggest, it is useful to focus on the logics of equivalence and difference that are established between the empty universal and other signifiers and thus constitute the discourse (cf. Glasze, 2007; Jørgensen and

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Phillips, 2002; Nonhoff, 2007). As pointed out above, relations of equivalence and difference among signifiers of a discourse are the fundamental mechanisms with which meaning is produced (Angermüller, 2007). These relations arrange signifiers in a relational system which forms the discourse, whereby the empty universal is related to all other signifiers within the discourse in a relation of equivalence, while the other signifiers are related with each other in a relation of difference (see also Figure 1 above). In order to reconstruct the reconciliation discourse and examine the relations of equivalence and difference that bind the signifiers of the discourse together, the discourse analysis conducted in the subsequent chapters will focus on the semantic relations that are established between ‘reconciliation’ and other signifiers. Such a procedure is suggested for instance by Norman Fairclough (Fairclough, 2003: 87–98), according to whom [e]quivalence and difference are in part textual relations, and it is fruitful to ‘operationalize’ this rather abstract theoretical point in text analysis, looking at how entities of various sorts (people, objects, organizations, and so forth) are differentiated in texts, and how differences between them are collapsed by ‘texturing’ relations of equivalence between them. (Fairclough, 2003: 88)

Equivalence and difference can be represented by two broader classes of semantic relations, which will be called here positive and negative semantic relations respectively. In order to find out how reconciliation is positively constructed, that is what signifiers are included within the reconciliation discourse and in its chain of equivalence, it can be analysed what signifiers are put in a positive semantic relation with reconciliation (= relation of equivalence) and fill the empty universal with meaning. Positive semantic relations are all kinds of relations that construct two signifiers as belonging together, such as synonymy/substitution (x = y), part-whole relations (x is part of y), cause relations (x causes y, contributes to y), relations of purpose (x in order to y, x in purpose of y) or role relations (x is agent of y, x does y) (Fairclough, 2003; Madsen et al., 2001). For instance, numerous texts that are analysed below construct a positive semantic relation between reconciliation and the practice of truth-telling or truth-seeking by putting these signifiers in a causal semantic relation or a semantic relation of purpose with each other. For instance, the sentence ‘[i]ts [the TRC’s] major purpose will be to give effect to reconciliation by seeking the truth and reality of South Africa’s past’ (Boraine, 2000: 32) contains two types of positive semantic relations with reconciliation: ‘it’, that is the TRC, is related to reconciliation in a semantic relation of purpose, while ‘seeking the truth’ is related to reconciliation in a causal semantic relation. Both, however, are positively related to reconciliation and included in its chain of equivalence, as they are presented as contributing to or leading towards the empty universal ‘reconciliation’.

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In contrast to positive semantic relations, negative semantic relations that are constructed between reconciliation and other signifiers can help to identify the signifiers that are constructed as the radical opposite of reconciliation, that is those signifiers that constitute the radical Other and stabilise the desirable idealistic character of reconciliation in opposition to themselves. Negative semantic relations that are established between reconciliation and other signifiers can comprise antonymic relations (x ≠ y), relations of contrast (x but not y; x instead of y) or inhibitive relations (x destroys y, x makes y impossible). For example, in the academic discourse on reconciliation and transitional justice, reconciliation is often opposed to certain kinds of justice which are described as retributive justice. The sentence ‘[r]econciliation can stem only from a form of justice that is inclusive and uniting rather than exclusive and dividing; that is survivor-oriented rather than slanted toward either perpetrator or victim’ (Mani, 2007: 36–37) illustrates well how reconciliation is put in a semantic relation of contrast with elements which ascribe to retributive justice, namely a form of justice that is exclusive and dividing as well as one-sided. These elements are thereby established as the undesirable Other of reconciliation and excluded from the reconciliation discourse. The semantic relations that are established between reconciliation and other signifiers help to identify the elements that belong to the reconciliation discourse, as well as those that are excluded from it thus forming the (antagonist) limit of the discourse. Importantly, they also help to ‘fill’ the empty signifier reconciliation with meaning, as it is through these signifiers that reconciliation gains meaning. As Jørgensen and Phillips point out in regard to key signifiers, ‘[w]hat the key signifiers have in common is that they are empty signs: that is, they mean almost nothing by themselves until, through chains of equivalence, they are combined with other signs that fill them with meaning’ (Jørgensen and Phillips, 2002: 50). The examination of semantic relations thus not only helps to reconstruct the reconciliation discourse, they also help to understand how reconciliation itself is constructed.

Three analytical settings and the selection of the text corpus The last methodological aspect to be discussed here is the selection of the text corpus, that is the criteria according to which texts (with the term text I include linguistic as well as non-linguistic acts of articulation) are considered and analysed as articulatory contributions and reproductions of the global reconciliation discourse. For the following analysis, this selection was based on two criteria: firstly, the distinction of three articulatory arenas, which served as analytical settings for the examination of the reconciliation discourse and as analytical frames for the selection of the text corpus;

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secondly, the specific research interest of this book which is focused on the signifier reconciliation. Both criteria will now be considered in turn. In this study, the selection of texts was preceded by a comprehensive research on the issue of reconciliation in the academic literature, which was meant to collect information about the contexts in which the reconciliation discourse was articulated. Based on the insights gained, an investigative division was made into three articulatory arenas that served as analytic settings in which the global reconciliation discourse could be examined. These three levels of analysis were derived inductively, as suggested for example by Reiner Keller and Willy Viehöver (Keller and Viehöver, 2006: 107) based on a careful reading of the academic literature on transitional justice and UN peacebuilding as well as primary texts from South Africa, the UN and several NGOs. According to the academic literature, the reconciliation discourse was first articulated in South Africa, from where it spread to the global level and proliferated to various other transitional countries. Hence, the first analytical setting in which the articulation of the reconciliation discourse will be examined is a local arena, and can be specified as the national arena of South Africa. According to the academic literature on reconciliation, the reconciliation discourse came up in the context of the South African transition, and it is here that the analysis of the articulation of the global reconciliation begins. Hence, chapter 2 reconstructs the emergence of the reconciliation discourse on the national level and examines how this discourse emerged and developed during the political transition in South Africa in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Here, linguistic as well as non-linguistic practices will be considered. The second analytical setting is the global arena. Here, the reconciliation discourse was articulated in particular in the academic transitional justice debate and in UN debates on post-conflict peacebuilding and thus emerged as a transitional ideal beyond the confines of South Africa. Chapters 3 and 4 analyse the global articulations of the reconciliation discourse. Chapter 3 focuses on the linguistic articulations and provides a detailed analysis of the language of reconciliation spoken on the global level. Chapter 4, in turn, focuses on the non-linguistic practices of articulation and examines how reconciliation emerged as a global technology in the context of post-conflict peacebuilding. The third analytical setting is again local. However, local here refers not to South Africa, but to those local post-conflict situations to which the reconciliation discourse is eventually deployed as a part of post-conflict peacebuilding. Chapter 5 inquires into this local articulation of the reconciliation discourse using Sierra Leone as an example. Here, linguistic as well as non-linguistic practices will be considered in order to examine how the reconciliation discourse was articulated.

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The three analytic settings outlined above not only serve as a pragmatic analytical distinction, which makes it easier to reconstruct the articulation of the global reconciliation discourse, but they also serve as an analytical frame for the selection of the text corpus. In each analytical setting, that is the local South African setting, the global setting and the local Sierra Leonean setting, empirical material was selected as articulatory contributions to the reconciliation discourse. According to Dietrich Busse and Wolfgang Teubert, the corpus of a discourse comprises all those texts which deal with a common issue or topic, obey certain social, communicative or temporal criteria or relate to each other through explicit or implicit cross references (Busse and Teubert, 1994: 13). As the goal of this study is to analyse specifically the emergence and construction of a reconciliation discourse, the first criterion for the selection of a text was the appearance of the term reconciliation in the text or, in regard to non-linguistic practices, the signification of a certain practice as an instrument of reconciliation. For instance, policy documents or scientific articles were then selected as part of the text corpus, when they deal explicitly with the issue of reconciliation after conflict or repression. Similarly, practices carried out in post-conflict countries were then selected as articulatory practices, when they were explicitly carried out in the name of reconciliation (e.g. a truth commission that carried the signifier reconciliation in its name). For each level of analysis those available texts on reconciliation were selected and examined which contain the term reconciliation in one or more sentences and which appeared within a certain period of time. In the case of South Africa, these texts include in particular political statements, speeches and other documents which were published shortly before and during the transition period from September 1989 until the passing of an interim constitution in 1993, and which deal explicitly with reconciliation in at least one passage. Moreover, they comprise numerous political demands and statements related to reconciliation that were made during the preparation and working of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. In regard to the global level, the research suggested that academic and political texts functioned as contributions to the global articulation of the reconciliation discourse. Accordingly, the corpus consists, on the one hand, of numerous books, book chapters and scientific articles which deal at length with the issue of reconciliation in times of transition. On the other hand, it includes numerous policy documents and country reports published for instance by the UN and other inter- and transnational organisations, such as the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ), Amnesty International or the EU, which deal with the issue of reconciliation in more than one paragraph. In regard to the non-linguistic practices, those practices were selected for each analytical setting that were carried out explicitly in the name of

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reconciliation. On all three levels, this included predominantly ‘truth and reconciliation commissions’ which are often established as primary practices of reconciliation in the linguistic texts of the reconciliation discourse, and which then reinforce and reproduce these linguistic constructions through their workings and their processes. As chapter 5 will argue, truth commissions and their primary process of public truth-telling further articulate the reconciliation discourse in that each truth commission which is erected in the name of reconciliation and each public ritual of truthtelling, healing and forgiveness that is conducted in its context reproduce the dominant constructions of reconciliation. Thus, the goal of the analysis of these non-linguistic practices is to see in how far they reproduce, or challenge and modify, the dominant constructions that are produced through linguistic articulation practices.

Conclusion: discourse theory and normative change This chapter presented a discourse theoretical framework for the analysis of the emergence and performance of the global reconciliation discourse. It argued that discourse theory offers useful concepts to theorise the ways in which social meanings, such as reconciliation, are discursively produced, gain hegemony and produce social reality. Based on the discourse theory of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, it suggested that new social meanings emerge particularly in times of severe social crisis when existing hegemonic discourses which order society are destabilised and new discourses are articulated around new social visions. These visions usually take the shape of empty universals, vague but powerful social ideals which unify different social and political groups around a shared reference point and produce meaning by arranging other signifiers in relations of difference and equivalence. Once a discourse has been shaped, it produces – that is defines and provides with meaning – subjects, objects and practices, and thus makes purposeful action possible. It is here that social actors, such as norm entrepreneurs, can position themselves in relation to these meanings and purposefully promote them, such as truth-telling or reconciliation, in new settings. It is through the discursive production of meaning that political intervention becomes possible. Importantly, as outlined in this chapter, the discourse theoretical perspective makes it possible to adopt a critical perspective on social meanings as it doubts their empirical necessity and validity and pays attention to the productive and exclusive powers of discourses. Hegemonic discourses always repress other interpretations of reality that would have equally been possible, so a discourse analysis should also imply the investigation of those discourses that are marginalised by the hegemonic discourse. The remainder of this book will apply the discourse theoretical concepts developed here to the emergence of the global reconciliation discourse. The

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next three chapters offer a theoretically informed reading of the career of reconciliation in global politics. Each chapter draws on some of the concepts and theoretical aspects discussed above. Chapter 2 inquires in depth into the issues of dislocation, hegemonic struggles and discourse formation. It examines how reconciliation was promoted as a vague social vision in the transition process in South Africa and how a hegemonic interpretation of reconciliation in terms of truth-telling in a truth commission was formed in this context. Chapter 3 focuses on the dynamics of discourse formation and hegemonisation on the global level and further examines how reconciliation was articulated in the context of the global discourse on transitional justice. Chapter 4 then has two intentions. On the one hand, it continues the inquiry of chapter 3 and looks how the proliferation of the reconciliation language was accompanied by the spread of reconciliation practices and how these practices further articulated the reconciliation discourse. On the other hand, it is interested in the productive power of the reconciliation discourse and examines how the reconciliation discourse made it possible for reconciliation agents to emerge and intervene in global politics. Chapter 5 will then focus on the performance of reconciliation in local post-conflict settings. It examines how the reconciliation discourse sought to institutionalise a particular kind of post-conflict reality in Sierra Leone, what alternative interpretations it repressed and what resistance discourses were articulated against the dominant interpretation of reconciliation there.

Notes 1 ‘die erwarteten Argumentationsvorgänge sind immer schon funktional bezogen auf die Durchsetzung inhaltlich vorab bestimmter Normen.’ 2 See e.g. Diez, 1999; Fierke, 2009. However, also Stefano Guzzini’s reconstruction of (radical) constructivism (Guzzini, 2000) is compatible with the assumptions outlined here. 3 ‘vielmehr konstituiert sich das Subjekt überhaupt erst vor dem Hintergrund immer schon vorhandener Diskurse und im Zuge seiner diskursiven Aussagen bzw. Artikulationen.’

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The emergence of reconciliation as an empty universal in South Africa The quest for reconciliation in global politics

Reconciliation as an empty universal in South Africa

The global reconciliation discourse, according to the literature on reconciliation and transitional justice, originated at the national level. Specifically, the beginning and the early contours of the global reconciliation discourse can be located in South Africa in the early 1990s when the country faced a severe political and social crisis while undergoing a process of political transition (cf. Hirsch, 2007; Humphrey, 2002; Moon, 2008; Rotberg and Thompson, 2000). This chapter aims at retracing the emergence of the reconciliation discourse in South Africa. Building on the discourse theoretical concepts described in the last chapter, it offers a reading of the South African regime transition as an organic crisis of the apartheid ideology representing the dominant socio-political order that had governed the country for decades. In this context of structural dislocation, the chapter argues, reconciliation emerged as an empty universal and as the nodal point of a new ordering discourse. According to this reading, the breakdown of the apartheid ideology and political system left South Africa with a lack of social order and made it necessary to find new ideals and visions to help reorganise politics and society. In this situation of crisis, reconciliation emerged as an empty universal, a semantically vague but powerful social ideal. Reconciliation came up in the course of the transitional negotiations where it served the major antagonistic parties, the ANC and the NP, as a vague reference point to which they could appeal. Due to its vagueness and flexibility, reconciliation could be interpreted by both parties according to their goals and needs and helped them to justify political demands and decisions, find a common ground and reach a tentative consensus. The ideal of reconciliation eventually helped to forge a decision on an amnesty law which was codified in the Interim Constitution and justified in the name of national reconciliation. In the years after the Interim Constitution, civil society took up the ideal of reconciliation as a justification for their demands to establish a truth

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commission and reprocess the country’s past. During the preparations and the working of the truth commission, which was tellingly entitled Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), a far-reaching reinterpretation of reconciliation took place. While during the transitional negotiations, reconciliation was associated with things such as political cooperation and compromise or the release of political prisoners, it was now increasingly related to terms such as truth-telling, forgiveness or healing. It was this interpretation which eventually gained hegemony in South Africa and became the foundation for today’s global reconciliation discourse. The following paragraphs will reconstruct the emergence and the development of reconciliation as an hegemonic ideal in South Africa, starting with the breakdown of apartheid. The first section describes the events leading up to the emergence of reconciliation as an empty universal and interprets the end of the apartheid system and the political transition as a situation of organic crisis in which the dominant apartheid discourse was severely destabilised and the stage was set for the emergence of reconciliation as an anchor point for a new ordering discourse. The second section looks at the transitional negotiations which were conducted in particular between the NP and the ANC, and explores the discursive dynamics through which reconciliation materialised as an empty universal. An analysis of several letters, background papers and statements circulated by the ANC and the NP between 1989 and 1993 illustrates how reconciliation was used and constructed in the course of the negotiations. The third section analyses how the reconciliation discourse was further articulated and stabilised after the transitional negotiations, in the period between 1995 and 1998. It retraces the contributions of civil society actors to the reconciliation discourse and shows how reconciliation was increasingly related to more spiritual ideas such as forgiveness or healing. The chapter concludes by discussing how this new shape of the discourse was then reproduced and stabilised through the language and the practices of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and became the hegemonic interpretation of reconciliation in South Africa.

The organic crisis of apartheid and the need for new social ideals In the early 1990s, South Africa went through a period of political transformation and turned from a racist and repressive system into a multiracial democracy. The transition marked the end of apartheid as the ruling ideological discourse in South Africa and made it necessary for South Africans to find new social ideals and to build a new social order. From a discourse theoretical perspective, South Africa’s transition can be read as a period of structural dislocation or organic crisis of apartheid as the discourse underlying the existing socio-political order. The social constructions and categories provided by apartheid were not able to interpret the social

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dynamics anymore and so the need for new meaning systems and ideals arose which could help to reinterpret and reorganise politics and society. In South Africa, these developments laid the foundation for the emergence of a reconciliation discourse, as during the transitional negotiations reconciliation emerged as a powerful empty universal and reference point for the reorganisation of the South African society.

Apartheid as the ordering discourse of the South African society Introduced and institutionalised in 1948 by the NP, apartheid was an ideology and a system of strict racial segregation and discrimination which provided the alleged white population of South Africa with numerous privileges and considerable wealth, while simultaneously exploiting and oppressing the so-called Indian, coloured and in particular the black population in order to maintain white supremacy. The apartheid system built upon a social ideology of racial difference, which constructed the ‘white’ population of South Africa as a chosen people and drew a clear boundary between ‘black’ and ‘white’ (Nkomo et al., 1995; Thompson, 1995).1 The apartheid ideology was politically realised through a set of social, political and geographic policies and legislations which were rigidly enforced through coercive means. The black population was without political rights and representation and all political organisations categorised as black were prohibited. Opposition groups to apartheid, such as the ANC, the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) or the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), were outlawed in the 1960s and their leadership either detained or forced into exile (Kaussen, 2003). In their daily lives, blacks could be subject to repression, violence and detention at any time. In order to keep away from whites, blacks had to take separate buses, were not allowed to use the same toilets as whites and similarly for all other kinds of public facilities, and mixed marriages between blacks and whites were prohibited. Following the Bantu Education Act from 1953, white universities were prohibited to accept black applicants, and blacks instead became subject to a special education scheme which was meant to prepare them for their lives as servants and physical labourers. The geographic separation between blacks and whites was reached through a complex geo-political legislation codified in the Group Areas Act from 1950 which forced blacks to live outside the cities in the so-called homelands and allowed them access to the cities only for seventy-two hours or when they were able to produce a passport with a working contract by a white company. In 1958, the homelands were declared self-governing regions, so that black Africans lost their South African citizenship and became foreigners in the (white) South African cities (Thompson, 1995).

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The disintegration and organic crisis of apartheid ideology In the 1970s, the apartheid system began to crumble as the formerly stable rule and the privileges of whites were increasingly challenged and destabilised. Resistance against apartheid was articulated internationally, as international pressure steadily increased, and nationally through the increasing politicisation of the black population against the apartheid system. These counter discourses forced the government to compromise the strict separation between blacks and whites, which gradually led to the dissolution of the social categories and distinctions established by apartheid and to the decrease of its interpretive power (Howarth, 2000). Four sets of developments can be seen as contributions to and manifestations of this crisis. Firstly, a perceived economic crisis at the end of the 1970s was responded to by turning to the black population as available labourers and potential consumers, and the government gave Africans the right to settle permanently in or around the cities. This new practice challenged the former strict distinction between the rural blacks in the homelands and the urban whites. As Aletta Norval and David Howarth argue, this process cut across the black and white categories established by apartheid, as blacks were now divided, on the one hand, into a privileged class of black urban insiders, who were allowed to settle in the cities and gained the right to own homesteads, and, on the other hand, the rural outsiders who had to stay in the homelands and had no permission to work or settle in the city (Howarth, 2000: 170; Norval, 1994: 125). Secondly, resistance was also actively practiced by black workers, in particular in the mining industry, and the increasing number of strikes in this sector was responded to by the government by legalising African trade unions. Thereby the government unwillingly helped to establish the foundation for the legal political organisation of blacks, which had been strictly prohibited before, and displaced the identity of blacks as a non-political class of foreigners. As Leonard Thompson notes, the unions provided Africans with first experiences in democratic organisation and became important sources of political power and identity. ‘By 1986, both federations were politically militant. African Unions had become a central force in the struggle for power in South Africa’ (Thompson, 1995: 225). Thirdly, in the early 1980s, internal resistance against apartheid grew and further blurred the separation between blacks and whites. Internal resistance reached a first climax in August 1983 when the United Democratic Front (UDF) was founded as an organisation to coordinate the internal opposition. The UDF was composed of delegates of all races and further transcended the racial categories and divisions that had structured South African society before (Howarth, 2000; Thompson, 1995: 228–229). With the political organisation of the resistance, violence began to grow in the townships and

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the government responded with increasing coercion and repression. In July 1985, a state of emergency was announced in large parts of the country and was renewed in 1986. Violence and arbitrary arrests, in particular affecting the black segments of the population, increased. Numerous detainees were tortured and killed by the police, soldiers were deployed in the townships and many people, including children, were randomly imprisoned (Howarth, 2000; Thompson, 1995). Fourthly, the violence committed by agents of the state nurtured international condemnation of the apartheid regime. The UN General Assembly increasingly criticised South Africa for its racist policies and between 1977 and 1989 several economic and diplomatic sanctions were imposed in order to enforce reforms (Klotz, 1995: 39–54). Other international actors joined the criticism. In the United States, for example, anti-apartheid demonstrations gained more and more momentum, which led the US Congress to pass the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act in 1986. The act imposed sanctions on South Africa and explicitly demanded the elimination of apartheid legislation and the release of Nelson Mandela. In 1985 and 1986, almost forty American companies withdrew from their South African enterprises in order to protest against apartheid (Thompson, 1995: 233). The international reactions affected the apartheid regime in two ways. On the one hand, they contributed to the intensification of South Africa’s economic problems and challenged the identity of the apartheid state as an efficient, progressive and ‘dynamic regime of accumulation’ (Howarth, 2000: 170) and growth. On the other hand, the repeated condemnation of the racist regime further delegitimised apartheid as a political and social ideology and contributed to its eventual defeat as a hegemonic discourse in South Africa. Overall, these four sets of resistance against apartheid can be understood as contributions to and manifestations of the organic crisis of apartheid, as they led to the dissolution of the interpretations and social constructions established and maintained by the apartheid discourse. In the late 1980s, apartheid as a meaning system was so weakened that it could neither provide credible explanations or interpretations of the events nor authoritative prescripts on how to overcome the crisis. As David Howarth puts it, the crisis was organic in the sense ‘that it could not be repaired within the confines of the existing system, but required a more fundamental restructuring of the state’ (Howarth, 2000: 169). Apartheid had lost its capacity to guide South African politics and society, to make sense of the social relations between blacks and whites and to serve as a credible and effective means of power. At the end of the 1980s, the apartheid system was so fundamentally weakened that the stalemate between the government and the resistance groups could only be maintained by brute force, and more and more influential whites began to think about alternatives to apartheid and interact with ideas surrounding the ANC (Thompson, 1995).

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The emergence of reconciliation as an empty universal in the transitional negotiations The organic crisis of apartheid set the stage for the emergence of reconciliation as a new social ideal and as an anchor for social reorganisation. Shortly before and during the regime transition, reconciliation was increasingly appealed to by political actors from almost all parties and articulated as a vague political ideal and reference point for political demands. Of course, the term reconciliation was not new in South Africa at the time but had long been part of sedimented discourses in this largely Christian country (cf. Moon, 2008: 32–35). In 1985, for instance, a possible political role of reconciliation was already discussed in the so-called Kairos Document, which was published by theologians from different religious denominations in order to comment on the political crisis in South Africa from a religious perspective (Kairos, 2007). The Kairos Document was utterly skeptical towards reconciliation, however, and argued that in a situation as in South Africa, where the violent oppression of the weak by the strong was the dominant political practice, ‘[t]o speak of reconciling these two is not only a mistaken application of the Christian idea of reconciliation, it is a total betrayal of all that Christian faith has ever meant’ (Kairos, 2007). Reconciliation could only play a positive role in South Africa, the Document argued, if ‘true reconciliation’ was pursued, that is if reconciliation was reached on the basis of justice, which meant that the members of the apartheid state had to repent their sins and accept punishment for the wrongs they had perpetrated. As the Kairos Document argued, ‘no reconciliation is possible in South Africa without justice’ (Kairos, 2007; cf. Moon, 2008: 32–35). The articulation of reconciliation suggested by the Kairos Document changed considerably in the time that followed, when, in the context of the socio-political reorganisation of the late 1980s and early 1990s, reconciliation emerged as a central political buzzword in South Africa and was constantly rearticulated and emptied of its meaning. Appeals to reconciliation came up in 1989 when Frederik Willem de Klerk became the new President of South Africa and, although the ANC and de Klerk’s NP were still inveterate political adversaries, secret talks were held between representatives of the government and the detained president of the ANC, Nelson Mandela (Kaussen, 2003). In these early communications, reconciliation was used by both politicians in order to appeal to a shared vision and justify their respective political demands in the name of a mutually accepted yet vague ideal. Appeals to reconciliation continued during the transitional negotiations which officially began in 1991 and became the major site where reconciliation was stabilised as a powerful ideal in the name of which political consensus could be forged. The meaning of reconciliation remained vague and shifting during this time however as, depending on the political questions and problems at

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stake, different political demands were related to reconciliation at different moments of the negotiation process.

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Reconciliation as an empty universal in the informal negotiations The term reconciliation was introduced as a central political buzzword by Frederik Willem de Klerk in his inaugural address in 1989. In this speech, de Klerk presented reconciliation as a desirable contrast to the then present state of South Africa which was marked by violence and instability. In his response to de Klerk’s speech, Nelson Mandela picked up the ideal of reconciliation and used it as a justification strategy for his political demands. Thereafter, reconciliation emerged as a vague but increasingly accepted ideal which the ANC and the NP, but also several other political actors of the transitional negotiations, referred to in order to justify and advance their political demands and facilitate consensus. In his inaugural address in September 1989, de Klerk referred to reconciliation as the only possible path to a peaceful South Africa and put reconciliation in a clear contrast to the then present violent and instable situation of the country: Protest regarding past injustices or alleged injustice does not bring us closer to solutions either. Nor do unrest and violence. There is but one way to peace, to justice for all: That is the way of reconciliation; of together seeking mutually acceptable solutions; of together discussing what the new South Africa should look like; of constitutional negotiations with a view to a permanent understanding. (De Klerk, 2007: 66; see also Doxtader, 2003: 132)

In this passage, de Klerk constructs reconciliation as a clear contrast to South Africa’s then present situation which he describes as ‘protest regarding past injustices’ and ‘unrest and violence’. He thereby establishes reconciliation as a positive counterpart, a desirable Other to the violence, repression and social unrest that existed in the country at the time. Thereafter, de Klerk uses the newly established ideal of reconciliation for the reinforcement of his political demands. Here, reconciliation is equalised with de Klerk’s demand for cooperation and negotiations with his political adversaries. Claims like ‘together seeking mutually acceptable solutions’, ‘together discussing what the new South Africa should look like’ and ‘constitutional negotiations with a view to a permanent understanding’ are presented as parts of reconciliation and reinforced. In other words, after referring to the need for reconciliation in South Africa, he presents his demands for political cooperation and negotiations as parts of such reconciliation and thereby conveys them with moral authority. De Klerk’s appeal to reconciliation was effective insofar as the ideal of reconciliation was picked up by Nelson Mandela in his response to de Klerk’s

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speech. Three months later, in December 1989, Mandela sent a Document to Create a Climate of Understanding to de Klerk, in which he wrote: It is the Government, and not the ANC, that started civil war in this country, and that does not want reconciliation and peace. How does one work for reconciliation and peace under a State of Emergency, with black areas under military occupation, when people’s organisations are banned, leaders are either in exile, prison or restricted, when the policy of apartheid with its violence is still being enforced, and when no conditions for free political expression exist? (Mandela, 1989)

In this passage, Mandela refers to reconciliation as a desirable ideal which the ANC also respects and desires. However, he constructs reconciliation quite differently than de Klerk by relating and contrasting it to different words and phrases. Reconciliation is here contrasted not to violence and unrest in general but, specifically, to government-led violence and legislation, such as ‘[government-led] civil war in this country’, ‘the State of Emergency’, ‘the policy of apartheid with its violence’ and ‘no conditions for free political expression’. Mandela thus falls back on the same foundation as de Klerk, namely reconciliation, in order to delegitimise the South African status quo and to call for reforms. Thereby, Mandela uses reconciliation as a device to reinforce his political demands for an end to apartheid legislation and for negotiations and cooperation. He even directly refers to de Klerk’s inaugural speech and his appeal to reconciliation and negotiation and tries to forge a consensus on this: In your inaugural address on 20 September 1989, you made an important statement which must have had a formidable impact inside and outside the country … The cornerstone of that address was the idea of reconciliation, in which you pleaded for a new spirit and approach. By reconciliation, in this context, was understood the situation where opponents, and even enemies for that matter, would sink their differences and lay down their arms for the purpose of working out a peaceful solution, where the injustices and grievances of the past would be buried and forgotten, and a fresh start made. (Mandela, 1989)

The communication between Mandela and de Klerk reflects how reconciliation served as a useful ideal to which both men could appeal in order to find a vague common reference point and to justify their political demands, even though these demands differed considerably. The statements were issued in a politically difficult time when South Africa was caught in a cycle of violence, and rapprochement between the two major political players the NP and the ANC was necessary to overcome the crisis. The NP fought violently against the struggle of the ANC and simultaneously urged Mandela to retreat from the political struggle and live silently in his home area at the Eastern Cape. The ANC, meanwhile, kept on pursuing the violent struggle of its armed section Umkonto we

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Sizwe and made clear that a suspension of its struggle and the beginning of negotiations would only be possible if the state of emergency was lifted, the political restrictions and apartheid legislation were eliminated and the political prisoners would be released (Kaussen, 2003: 107–111). While the positions of both parties seemed to be caught in a deadlock, the statements quoted above nevertheless reflect that reconciliation was a first common reference point which helped to construct these demands as aiming towards a shared goal. In the course of further political developments in South Africa, reconciliation came to serve as an ideal and a justification for difficult and controversial political demands of several actors in all kinds of situations. In 1990, de Klerk announced his highly surprising and strongly contested decision to end the ban of the ANC, the PAC and most other forbidden organisations, to lift the four-year-old state of emergency and to arrange for the release of a number of political prisoners, one of them Mandela (Bell and Ntsebeza, 2003: 250–271; Berat, 1995; Mungazi, 1998: 187–192). When announcing and justifying these contested decisions, he again appealed to reconciliation as the overarching goal of these measures. In his opening speech to the South African Parliament in 1990 for instance, de Klerk declared that the end of the ban of the ANC, the release of a number of political prisoners and the lifting of the state of emergency were necessary because they were important contributions to reconciliation in South Africa: The season of violence is over. The time for reconstruction and reconciliation has arrived … Practically every leader agrees that negotiation is the key to reconciliation, peace and a new and just dispensation … Against this background I committed the Government during my inauguration to giving active attention to the most important obstacles in the way of negotiation. Today I am able to announce far-reaching decisions in this connection … these decisions are justified from a political point of view as well. Our country and all its people have been embroiled in conflict, tension and violent struggle for decades. It is time for us break out of the cycle of violence and break though the peace and reconciliation. (de Klerk, 1990)

In this statement, de Klerk presents his decisions as instruments or ‘keys to’ reconciliation which ‘are justified’ because of their contributions to this goal. Moreover, de Klerk again establishes reconciliation in contrast to the violence raging in South Africa and thus as the distant yet desired peaceful time to come.

The construction of reconciliation in and beyond CODESA2 Appeals to reconciliation remained a common pattern in the statements of political groups and politicians in the time that followed. In September

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1991, the NP, the ANC and the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), a political organisation representing in particular the rural blacks from Kwa-Zulu Natal, became the major signatories of the National Peace Accords and agreed on the formation of a negotiation forum for the future talks on the country’s transition. During the so-called CODESA talks, which were held from 20 to 21 December 1991 (CODESA I) and in May 1992 (CODESA II), and included representatives of about eighteen political parties, the future shape of South Africa was negotiated (Bell and Ntsebeza, 2003; Berat, 1995; Kaussen, 2003; Zimmermann, 2004). Throughout the CODESA talks and beyond, reconciliation continued to serve as a reference point and justification for political claims and demands. In his opening address to the first round of CODESA I, Chief Justice Corbett declared for example, that reconciliation had to be the overarching goal of the negotiations if they were to succeed: The need to achieve reconciliation … is also of paramount importance today. The turbulent history of our country over the past 80 years has inevitably scarred society and has created within it divisions, antagonisms and suspicions. But a kingdom divided against itself cannot stand. It is imperative that as far as possible these divisions be healed, these antagonisms resolved and these suspicions removed. That should be one of the most important if not the most important goal of this Convention. For I believe, it is only if the parties approach these talks in a spirit of reconciliation that true success can be achieved. (Corbett, 1991)

Despite these appeals however, the negotiations turned out to be difficult. The parties were divided over most of the issues that were debated, such as the organisation of the future state (centralism v. federalism), the decisionmaking mechanisms, minority protection (which essentially meant a veto provision for the white minority), possible power-sharing arrangements and the question of how to deal with the human rights violations of the past (Berat, 1995; Kaussen, 2003; Zimmermann, 2004). In 1991, at the end of CODESA II, no compromises had been reached and the negotiations were on the verge of breaking down. In this difficult political situation, de Klerk and Mandela again fell back on reconciliation in order to keep the bilateral negotiations going and to find agreements on the most difficult aspects of the negotiations: a power-sharing agreement, the release of further political prisoners and some kind of amnesty provision for past violations of human rights. The demand for a power-sharing agreement in the shape of a Government of National Unity was advanced by the NP and was particularly controversial to the ANC as it was seen as an attempt to maintain white power despite the expected black majority in a future parliament (Thompson, 1995: 247–249). In his Statement on the Timetable for Further Constitutional Reform from 26 November 1992, de Klerk addressed this problem and established a link

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between a Government of National Unity and the overarching yet vague goal of reconciliation: There is a growing awareness that it will be difficult for any one party to govern South Africa effectively. The immense challenge of national reconciliation and reconstruction can be successfully carried out only with the co-operation of all leading parties. Their involvement is a prerequisite for peace and stability. To us power-sharing is a constitutional arrangement ensuring that all parties with significant support will have meaningful participation in all areas of government at all levels. A Government of National Unity is accordingly becoming a key concept. (de Klerk, 1992b)

In this statement, a power-sharing agreement is causally related to reconciliation by saying that reconciliation ‘can be successfully carried out only’ through the establishment of a Government of National Unity. Thereby de Klerk established power-sharing as an indispensable step towards reconciliation. Similar discursive patterns can be found in regard to the contested issue of the release of political prisoners. Throughout the negotiations it had been a central demand of the ANC that the political prisoners, predominantly the ANC or PAC activists as well as members of other opposition groups, be released by the government as an important precondition for a peaceful transition. The NP had tried to link this demand with its own claims for a general political amnesty which had caused protest within the ANC (Berat and Shain, 1995). In a letter sent to Nelson Mandela on 24 September 2002, de Klerk finally announced that the NP government had decided to give in on this issue, again in the name of reconciliation: We have given careful consideration to the matter and wish to inform you that the government has decided to do the following …  the Government’s position has been that all political prisoners have been released in terms of agreed upon and internationally accepted guidelines. In a spirit of reconciliation, we will now also release all prisoners falling outside those guidelines who have committed crimes with a political motivation. This will apply to prisoners irrespective of their political affiliation … [the legislation] will deal aquitably [sic] with those prisoners whose release can make a contibution [sic] to reconciliation. (de Klerk, 1992a)

Two days later, de Klerk and Mandela met at the World Trade Centre at Johannesburg and signed a Record of Understanding in which they repeated their mutual commitment to reconciliation and reinforced the plan to cooperate in the spirit thereof: The two parties also commit themselves to the strengthening of the Peace Accord process, to do everything in their power to calm down tensions and to finding ways and means of promoting reconciliation in South Africa. (de Klerk and Mandela, 1992)

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The negotiations on an amnesty provision turned out to be particularly difficult. The NP, as mentioned above, desperately wanted an amnesty provision. It increasingly seized upon an amnesty plan put forward by the United Nations and proposed that the ANC accept such a policy in exchange for the release of its own members who were detained as political prisoners (Berat and Shain, 1995: 272–273). The ANC opposed a blanket amnesty as well as a linkage between an amnesty provision and the release of political prisoners. Within the ANC, some voices called for Nuremberg style trials to be held for the former high-ranking members of the apartheid regime (VillaVicencio, 2001). Officially, however, the ANC suggested that a discussion of amnesty should be reserved for an interim government of National Unity, and that any amnesty provision had to be accompanied by the disclosure of past violations of human rights (Berat and Shain, 1995; Kollapen, 1993; Villa-Vicencio, 2001). Due to the deadlock in regard to the interests of both negotiating parties, the amnesty question was negotiated in secret talks between representatives of the NP and the ANC (Thompson, 1995; Wilson, 2001), so no documents are available in order to reconstruct the role of reconciliation in these talks. However, reports by analysts of the South African transition and in particular the postscript to the Interim Constitution from 1993, which was the product of these secret talks, suggest that, again, reconciliation served as the vague ideal in the name of which compromise became possible. Jody Narandran Kollapen for instance, a member of the organisation Lawyers for Human Rights, who contributed a position paper on the issue of a general amnesty to the South African negotiations, writes that ‘[t]he debate and discussion on how to deal with past human rights abuses has remained somewhat superficial in South Africa, with the major political players burying the issue under sweeping and generous notions of reconciliation’ (Kollapen, 1993: 3). Appeals to vague ideas of reconciliation, according to Kollapen, were a means to avoid a new and massive crisis of the negotiation process and helped both parties to stick to their ‘own idea’ (Kollapen, 1993: 4) of dealing with human rights violations. After difficult negotiations, the secret talks eventually led to the drafting of a postscript to the Interim Constitution, in which an amnesty clause was vaguely codified. The amnesty provision of the postscript is again justified by reference to reconciliation as the overarching goal of the provision: The pursuit of national unity, the well-being of all South African citizens and peace require reconciliation between the people of South Africa and the reconstruction of society … These can now be addressed on the basis that there is a need for understanding but not for vengeance, a need for reparation but not for retaliation, a need for ubuntu but not for victimization. In order to advance such reconciliation and reconstruction, amnesty shall be granted in respect of

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acts, omissions and offenses associated with political objectives and committed in the course of the conflicts of the past. (South Africa, 1993)

Overall, it can be concluded that during the transitional negotiations reconciliation emerged as an increasingly accepted political ideal and powerful vision in the name of which controversial political demands could be advanced and tentative compromises could be reached. Nevertheless, reconciliation itself remained utterly vague throughout the negotiations and no particular meaning was attached to the term. Instead, a number of different demands and meaning units, such as negotiations, cooperation, an end of apartheid legislation or release of political prisoners, were related to reconciliation and conveyed it with a shifting meaning. The next section will shed more light on the discursive dynamics that occurred during the negotiations and will retrace in more detail how exactly reconciliation was constructed and used over time by looking at the semantic relations that were established between reconciliation and other meaning units.

The dynamics of the early reconciliation discourse: emergence, expansion and stabilisation of reconciliation as an empty universal In the documents analysed above, reconciliation was constructed predominantly through three types of semantic relations: contrast, elaboration and causality. Each kind of semantic relation contributes to the construction of reconciliation in a certain way and an analysis of the semantic relations therefore helps to understand the role reconciliation played in the particular political context of the South African transition. Importantly, the analysis moreover suggests that the frequency of occurrence of each kind of semantic relation changes over time so that a considerable dynamic in the reconciliation discourse can be observed. Semantic relations of contrast were particularly dominant in the early stages of the reconciliation discourse. They contribute to the hegemonisation of the reconciliation discourse by helping to establish reconciliation as a potential empty universal in South Africa. By being contrasted to a negative present state of affairs, reconciliation turns into a positive and desirable Other, a state that liberates from and is preferable to this present situation. In the early South African discourse, reconciliation was predominantly contrasted to ‘violence’, ‘apartheid legislation’, ‘civil war’ or ‘social unrest’, depending on the respective speakers and their individual interpretation of the then present situation. Whereas de Klerk contrasts reconciliation for instance to ‘violence and unrest’, Mandela put it in opposition to ‘apartheid policy’ or ‘state of emergency’ (see above). While the speakers neither agreed on their interpretation of the present nor on their respective political

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demands, they were nevertheless united in their mutual renunciation of the present situation and their desire to overcome it. Here, reconciliation served as a term to signify this desirable other situation, even though its own meaning and content remained vague. Thus, in the early stages of the reconciliation discourse semantic relations of contrast established reconciliation as a desired yet absent ideal which stands in a clear opposition to the situation in South Africa at the time. Semantic relations of elaboration can also be found particularly in the early times of the reconciliation discourse. For instance, de Klerk initially elaborates reconciliation in terms of ‘together seeking mutually acceptable solutions’ and generally in terms of cooperation and negotiations. Mandela, on the other hand, elaborates the word in terms of ‘opponents, and even enemies for that matter, would sink their differences’ or as ‘the injustices and grievances of the past would be buried and forgotten’ (see above). Relations of elaboration contribute to the expansion of the reconciliation discourse and to the forging of political coalitions as they present reconciliation as being synonymous with a number of political demands and thereby gave these demands a common discursive representation. On the one hand, political actors could find a common ground and a common point of reference, vague as it might be, by presenting reconciliation as a synonym for their different political demands. On the other hand, due to its vagueness reconciliation could be related to a number of different demands. The reconciliation discourse was thereby expanded and the process of hegemonisation of reconciliation was continued. Finally, semantic relations of causality dominated the reconciliation discourse after the year 1991, when a minimal consensus on negotiations had been found and the CODESA talks and the bilateral negotiations between the ANC and the NP had begun. De Klerk, in his letter to Mandela, justifies the release of further political prisoners by presenting it as a means of reconciliation. De Klerk and Mandela strengthen their commitment to the peace accords by constructing them as a ‘means of promoting reconciliation in South Africa’. Finally, the postscript of the Interim Constitution includes amnesty and justifies this by establishing amnesty as a necessary means ‘in order to advance such reconciliation’ (see above). The dominance of semantic relations of causality points at two more developments of the reconciliation discourse. On the one hand, they continue the expansion of the reconciliation discourse, and thereby the process of hegemonisation of reconciliation as an empty universal. Just as with semantic relations of elaboration, causal relations help to construct more and more political demands and decisions as contributions to reconciliation and thereby articulate more and more signifiers and phrases as parts of reconciliation. On the other hand, the dominance of causal relations suggests that, at this point, reconciliation was already accepted as a valid social ideal by a number of actors. Causal

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semantic relations are a powerful means of justification and legitimation, as they present certain acts and demands as instruments for a certain desirable goal, in this case reconciliation (Fairclough, 2003: 91–92). While in the beginning of the talks between the ANC and the NP reconciliation still needed to be legitimised by setting it off against the negative present state of affairs and presenting reconciliation as a desired future ideal, in the later stages of the negotiations reconciliation was already sufficiently accepted to serve as the major legitimation strategy for a large number of different demands.

The development of the reconciliation discourse in the context of the TRC The transitional negotiations had effectively laid the foundation for the South African reconciliation discourse. They established reconciliation as a powerful yet vague ideal that was widely accepted as a reference point in the name of which political demands could be advanced and tentative compromises could be reached. The Interim Constitution from 1993 marked the end of the transitional negotiations and can be seen as a symbol for the difficult compromises that have been achieved. However, the Interim Constitution was also important in another sense: it represented a central caesura insofar as it was the beginning of the institutionalisation of the South African reconciliation discourse and formally codified reconciliation as the ideal and overarching goal of the amnesty provision that still was to be realised under the Government of National Unity. In the time after the Interim Constitution, the construction of the reconciliation discourse changed in a number of ways. Firstly, it was now predominantly civil society that further articulated the reconciliation discourse and related a number of different social demands to this ideal, thereby articulating it into the emerging reconciliation discourse. Secondly and relatedly, the quality of the reconciliation discourse changed considerably as a number of new and different meaning elements were articulated in relation to reconciliation. While in the early stage of the South African transition reconciliation was discursively related, for example, to political negotiations, cooperation or the release of political prisoners, the interpretation of reconciliation changed fundamentally after the end of the transitional negotiations when the question had to be dealt with on how the country should deal with the legacy of its past. Following the amnesty provision of the Interim Constitution, a number of demands were raised, this time by actors from civil society, on how this provision should be realised and how reconciliation was to be understood. These demands eventually led to and were incorporated in a number of governmental and parliamentary texts, which inaugurated the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and defined

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its central structure and practices. These documents are important sources and manifestations of the reconciliation discourse and reflect striking new developments as reconciliation was increasingly constructed in therapeutic and theological terms as healing, forgiving or truth-telling. Thereafter, when the TRC was established as a specific institution for the facilitation of reconciliation, the TRC’s shape, language and practices would become the symbol for reconciliation worldwide.

The articulation of the reconciliation discourse through the claims of civil society The further development of the reconciliation discourse was essentially initiated and propelled by South Africa’s civil society. In the months after the ratification of the Interim Constitution, in February and July 1994, the non-governmental organisation Institute for a Democratic Alternative for South Africa (IDASA)3 organised two conferences entitled Dealing with the Past and The Healing of a Nation?, where South African politicians and social elites came together with lawyers, politicians and activists from other transitional states, for instance from South America or Eastern Europe, as well as members of international NGOs in order to exchange experiences and reflect on possibilities as to how South Africa could approach the difficult task of implementing the amnesty provision of the Interim Constitution. These conferences became an important arena for the further articulation of the reconciliation discourse, as they provided a pool of ideas and served as a forum for the forming of the political will of an active part of civil society. Again, the vague notion of reconciliation served as a common reference point in the name of which demands could be raised and justified; the concrete constructions of reconciliation, as will be seen, were, however, considerably different from those of the transitional negotiations.4 When the first conference was held in February 1994, it was still quite unclear how South Africa would approach its past and implement the amnesty provision. Several demands and suggestions that went beyond amnesty had been raised in particular within the ANC, among them the establishment of a truth commission and the establishment of Nuremberg style trials (Boraine, 2000; Villa-Vicencio, 2001). During the workshop, three dominant demands were raised and justified in the name of reconciliation: forgiveness, justice and truth-telling and acknowledgement of the past. The claims for justice were rather weak and raised by only few participants. Justice was demanded, for example, by John de Bruchy, a Cape Town based Professor of Christian Studies or Juan Méndez, an Argentine lawyer and important figure of Human Rights Watch, who held that justice was an important means of reconciliation and that ‘reconciliation can only be achieved after some measure of justice has occurred’ (Mendez, 1997: 92).

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In general however, the majority of participants did not establish justice as an important element of reconciliation, as the Kairos Documents had done, for instance. Instead, punishment and punitive justice were increasingly articulated in a relation of contrast to reconciliation and thus turned into an undesirable Other to reconciliation, whereas truth-telling and the acknowledgement of the past were established as the central mechanisms thereof. José Zalaquett for example, a Chilean lawyer and member of the Chilean truth commission, established reconciliation as a preferable alternative to punishment and brought up the claim for forgiveness and revealing the truth: Forgiveness and reconciliation should thus be understood as the conclusions of a process of reconstructing the moral order that is more healthy than punishment … A society cannot reconcile itself on the grounds of a divided memory … It would thus be important to reveal the truth and so build a moral order … without truth and acknowledgement reconciliation is not possible. (Zalaquett, 1997: 11–13)

A similar link between reconciliation and the demand to reveal the truth was established by the former ANC executive director, Albie Sachs, who related his claims for truth-telling to reconciliation and simultaneously established ‘forgetting’ as a contrast to reconciliation: [T]he amnesty [of the Interim Constitution] is balanced out with the concept of reconciliation and reconstruction. It is not a reconciliation to bury and forget the past, which means to continue with the past; it is to assume responsibility for the past and correct the imbalances and injustices. (Sachs, 1997b: 128)

The positive relation between reconciliation and the demand to reveal the truth about and acknowledge the past as well as the contrast between reconciliation and forgetting was established by a number of other participants and became the dominant construction of reconciliation that reoccurred throughout the workshop. In the later stages of the workshop, truth-telling and acknowledgement were replaced more and more by demands for a truth commission, which was soon generally referred to as a ‘truth and reconciliation commission’ whose role should be to bring about the reconciliation of South Africans. Albie Sachs for instance argued: I do believe it is absolutely vital to have a commission of reconciliation and truth, perhaps as the very first act of our government … the constitution makes it clear that reconciliation must take place in the context of reconstruction and that the past should not be forgotten and buried … there is a powerful thrust inside our organisation in favour of a commission of truth and reconciliation. We want it; our people want it. (Sachs, 1997a: 145–146)

The demand for a truth commission was not new and had been raised for years by the ANC. In 1993, the ANC’s National Executive Committee

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(NEC) officially called for a general truth commission to be set up by the government in order to fully investigate the abuses that had occurred under the apartheid system. In the document, the NEC already established the link between the truth commission and reconciliation and suggested that the role of the commission should be ‘to identify all abuses of human rights and their perpetrators, to propose a future code of conduct for all public servants, to ensure appropriate compensation to the victims and to work out the best basis for reconciliation’ (NEC, 1993). This connection was reinforced and stabilised in the workshops. At the end of the February workshop, the creation of a truth commission had emerged as the major demand of civil society which was submitted to President Nelson Mandela in a letter. In the letter, Boraine again emphasised the necessity of such a commission for the facilitation of reconciliation in South Africa and tried to justify his demand by an appeal to reconciliation: South Africa is a deeply divided society and a major aim for the new Government of National Unity will be to work urgently towards national reconciliation. It is with this central aim in mind that it is proposed that a Commission of Truth and Reconciliation be appointed as a matter of urgency. Its major purpose will be to give effect to reconciliation by seeking the truth and reality of South Africa’s past. (Boraine, 2000: 32)

After Mandela had consented to the idea, a second workshop was held in which the idea of the truth commission was further developed. While truthtelling was generally confirmed and stabilised as a major discursive element of reconciliation, three more elements were brought up and articulated into the reconciliation discourse: the claim for forgiveness, the claim for healing and the contrast between reconciliation and punitive justice. An exemplary statement in this regard is the opening statement by the Minister of Justice Dullah Omar who included these elements in his construction of reconciliation: [W]e are fortunate in having a president who is committed to genuine reconciliation in our country … President Nelson Mandela believes, and many of us support him in this belief, that the truth concerning human rights violations in South Africa should not be suppressed or forgotten. Such violations should be investigated, recorded and made known. Therefore the president supports the setting up of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission … There is now a commitment to break with the past, to heal the wounds of the past, to forgive but not to forget, and to build a future based on respect for human rights. (Omar, 1995: 2–3)

The demand for healing and forgiveness in the name of reconciliation was rearticulated by several speakers throughout the conference, and the ideas of healing and forgiveness became a common claim raised in regard to reconciliation. Kader Asmal, a professor of human rights law and member

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of the ANC’s constitutional committee, for instance reinforced the demand for forgiveness in his speech:

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Truth alone is not enough to attain the further goal of national reconciliation. Forgiveness is also indispensable … It is the commission’s hope that the sense of justice that truth gives voice to, will in time help them to forgive. (Asmal, 1995: 29)

Mamphela Ramphele, deputy vice-chancellor of the University of Cape Town, in turn, brought up the healing metaphor and emphasised the need to heal and to clean the wounds from the past in order to reach reconciliation: A medical metaphor best captures what I perceive to be the issue facing us in relation to ‘appeasing the past’. An abscess cannot heal properly unless it is thoroughly incised and cleaned out. But the process of incision and cleansing is not without pain, even with modern anaesthesia. Pain is thus an integral component of the cleansing process which precedes healing … If the desired goal is reconciliation then the incision must be wide enough yet it must spare the vital organs. (Ramphele, 1995: 34–36)

Moreover, as mentioned above, the contrast between reconciliation and punitive justice was increasingly reinforced in this second workshop. Kader Asmal, for instance, emphasised in his speech that ‘[t]he whole idea behind a Truth and Reconciliation Commission is that a punitive process against the perpetrators would not be the right way to go about dealing with the past’ (Asmal, 1995: 28). In a similar fashion, José Zalaquett clearly distinguished between both issues: Punishment or forgiveness are thus not ends in themselves … there is a long-standing tradition, both religious and humanistic, that establishes a moral superiority of forgiveness and reconciliation over punishment. (Zalaquett, 1995: 46)

The dynamics of the second phase of the reconciliation discourse: expansion, limitation and institutionalisation Looking at the statements made in the two workshops, it becomes clear that the participants drew quite a different picture of reconciliation than the major parties of the transitional negotiations had done. Whereas in the transitional negotiations reconciliation was related to specifically political demands, such as the release of political prisoners, cooperation or an end to violence, the workshop participants raised demands that were much more emotional and spiritual, and constructed reconciliation as the goal of elements such as truth and acknowledgement, forgiveness and healing. The significant change in the quality and content of the reconciliation discourse in this second phase again suggests that the term reconciliation in itself was

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sufficiently vague and flexible to be related to a number of different claims and meanings, depending on the context and the issue at stake. However, discursive dynamics can also be observed across the two workshops if one looks at the quality and change of the semantic relations that were dominant in this second phase of the reconciliation discourse. Just as during the transitional negotiations, contrast, elaboration and causality were the dominant kinds of semantic relations that construct the reconciliation discourse, in the first workshop relations of causality coincide with relations of elaboration and contrast, and all three kinds of semantic relations are used throughout the conference. The constant use of relations of causality suggests that reconciliation was considered as an accepted social ideal from the very beginning, as it was used as a legitimation strategy for several political demands. The use of relations of contrast and elaboration suggests that the meaning of reconciliation was limited and expanded simultaneously. On the one hand, reconciliation was set in opposition to forgetting and punishment and thus limited, as forgetting and punishment were clearly excluded from the reconciliation discourse. On the other hand, the relations of elaboration expand the reconciliation discourse, as more and more elements are established as member units of the discourse. In this regard, another qualitative dynamic can be observed, as in the second workshop reconciliation is increasingly limited and contrasted to punitive justice or revenge rather than forgetting. Overall, in the second workshop punitive justice is increasingly established as an immoral Other to reconciliation. This discursive frontier that is drawn reflects another difference in the construction of reconciliation compared with the articulations from the early phases of the transitional negotiations, where reconciliation was predominantly contrasted with the present state of violence or apartheid legislation (see above). As the following chapters will show, such a shifting or rearticulation of the discursive frontiers, or the limits of the reconciliation discourse, can be observed throughout the further articulation process, including the global level. The demands raised in the two workshops and the constructions of reconciliation that emerged from them were eventually codified and institutionalised in the legal documents that inaugurated the TRC. Soon after the end of the second workshop, in 1995, Parliament passed the Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Bill (hereafter: the Bill), which was enacted by the government as the Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act (hereafter: the Act) on 26 July the same year. Both documents are crucial components of the reconciliation discourse, as they establish and legitimise the TRC with all its Committees and Procedures as the central institution for the facilitation of reconciliation and they codify and institutionalise the construction of reconciliation that was negotiated in the workshops. In their central passages, the Bill and the Act inaugurate the TRC and establish it as

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the central body for the facilitation of reconciliation in South Africa. The Act reads:

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The objectives of the Commission shall be to promote national unity and reconciliation in a spirit of understanding which transcends the conflicts and divisions of the past by (a) establishing as complete a picture as possible of the causes, nature and extent of the gross violations of human rights which were committed during the period from I March 1960 to the cut-off date, including the antecedents, circumstances, factors and context of such violations, as well as the perspectives of the victims and the motives and perspectives of the persons responsible for the commission of the violations, by conducting investigations and holding hearings; (b) facilitating the granting of amnesty to persons who make full disclosure of all the relevant facts relating to acts associated with a political objective and comply with the requirements of this Act; (c) establishing and making known the fate or whereabouts of victims and by restoring the human and civil dignity of such victims by granting them an opportunity to relate their own accounts of the violations of which they are the victims, and by recommending reparation measures in respect of them; (d) compiling a report providing as comprehensive an account as possible of the activities and findings of the Commission contemplated in paragraphs (a) (b) and (c), and which contains recommendations of measures to prevent the future violations of human rights. (South Africa, 1995b)

The Act establishes semantic relations of elaboration between reconciliation and ‘understanding’ that will ‘transcend the conflicts and divisions of the past’. Causal relations are established between reconciliation and the truth commission that was to be created as well as to all the competences and responsibilities this commission was to have. Thereby, the Act constructs reconciliation as relying on four different procedures, all of which were to be accomplished by the TRC: (1) developing a narrative of South Africa’s violent past from the perspective of the victims and perpetrators of this violence, (2) granting amnesty to those who tell the whole story about their politically motivated acts of violence, (3) finding out about and making known the fates of the victims and (4) compiling a report about its findings. In other words, the TRC and its processes and responsibilities were constructed as the path to reconciliation.

In the accompanying memorandums to the Bill, the demands raised in and beyond the workshops reappear, and it is emphasised that truth-telling

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and acknowledgement, forgiveness and healing are central components of reconciliation. The Memorandum on the Objects of the National Unity and Reconciliation Bill, for instance holds that [t]he granting of amnesty per se cannot, however, have a reconciliatory effect and could in fact lead to a perpetuation of existing divisions, unless it is granted with due regard to certain requirements and principles. In order to achieve a lasting unity and a morally acceptable reconciliation it is necessary that the following requirements be complied with: first, that the truth about gross violations of human rights … be established by official investigations, secondly, that the truth about gross violations be fully and unreservedly acknowledged by those responsible for the commission thereof, thirdly, that the truth about such violations, and the identity of the planners or perpetrators and the victims of such violations be made publicly known. (South Africa, 1995c)

While the Memorandum on Objects focuses on truth-telling and acknowledgement, the Explanatory Memorandum to the Parliamentary Bill adds the construction of reconciliation through forgiveness and healing: The purpose of the Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Bill, 1995, is to bring about unity and reconciliation by providing for the investigation and full disclosures of gross violations of human rights committed in the past. It is based on the principle that reconciliation depends on forgiveness and that forgiveness can only take place if gross violations of human rights are fully disclosed. What is, therefore envisaged is reconciliation through a process of national healing. The Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Bill, 1995, seeks to find a balance between the process of national healing and forgiveness, as well as the granting of amnesty as required by the interim Constitution. (South Africa, 1995a)

In this text, amnesty is only indirectly related to reconciliation, while direct causal relations are established between reconciliation and ‘providing for the investigation and full disclosures of gross violations of human rights committed in the past’, ‘forgiveness’ and ‘national healing’. As will be shown below, the close relationship between reconciliation, forgiveness and healing that is codified in this document became particularly important later as it was to become the underpinning of the practices and the language of the TRC.

The (re)construction and stabilisation of the reconciliation discourse through the language and practices of the TRC After the setting up of the TRC in 1995, the commission became the major site where the reconciliation discourse was further articulated and stabilised. While, as some authors report, the commission remained anxious not to provide a clear definition of reconciliation and left the term semantically

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vague and ambiguous (Verdoolaege, 2008; Wilson, 2001), it nevertheless represented the central symbol of reconciliation in South Africa and further articulated, stabilised and institutionalised the reconciliation discourse through its public visibility and through its language and practices. The language used by the TRC was an important propeller of the reconciliation discourse and reinforced the discursive links between reconciliation, forgiveness and healing.5 Throughout its existence the TRC used the language of reconciliation outlined above and thereby further articulated and stabilised the reconciliation discourse (cf. Moon, 2007; 2008; Verdoolaege, 2008; Wilson, 2001). As Claire Moon points out in her comprehensive analysis of the South African case, the image of healing the wounds from the past and the idea of forgiveness were central elements of the TRC’s language throughout its workings: Throughout the public hearings at which victims and perpetrators testified, the many public declarations by officials of the TRC, and the narrative of the TRC Report, the metaphor of the wound and the language of healing were repeatedly iterated to evoke the legacy of apartheid violence. (Moon, 2007: 164)

According to Moon the language used by the TRC also points at another central element of the reconciliation discourse which can also be found in some of the statements reviewed above and which should remain a prominent component of the reconciliation discourse on the global level: the consistent reference to the victims and perpetrators of human rights violations as the central subject positions of the reconciliation discourse. Throughout the final report the commission talks about victims and perpetrators as the subjects that had to be reconciled (Moon, 2008: 50–51; Verdoolaege, 2008: 117–123). For instance, when elaborating on the expected effects of truthtelling as the alleged central practice of reconciliation, the commission refers to victims and perpetrators as the predominant targets of and participants in this practice: The telling of the truth about past gross human rights violations … facilitates the process of understanding our divided pasts, whilst the public acknowledgement of ‘untold suffering and injustice’ (Preamble to the Act) helps to restore the dignity of victims and afford perpetrators the opportunity to come to terms with their own past. (TRC, 2003: Volume 1, 49)

Similar passages and references to victims and perpetrators can be found throughout the report, and in the daily practices of the TRC. As Annelies Verdoolaege points out, ‘[t]he people who appeared before the Human Rights Violations Committee were identified first and foremost as victims of gross human rights violations that had taken place under apartheid’ (Verdoolaege, 2008: 117–118). In turn, those responsible for human rights violations were often addressed as perpetrators by the leading commissioners (Verdoolaege,

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2008: 118). Overall, as Claire Moon confirms, the TRC relied on the victim and perpetrator as the subjects that were ‘authorized to speak the “truth about the past”. Victims and perpetrators were elected as the key agents and witnesses of South Africa’s history of “human rights violations”’ (Moon, 2008: 50–51). Apart from language, the TRC also rearticulated the reconciliation discourse through its practices and procedures and the whole commission can in fact be understood as an important component of the reconciliation discourse, as it was established explicitly as an institution for and a facilitator of reconciliation in South Africa. The Act explicitly inaugurated the TRC as an institution whose main objective should be ‘to promote national unity and reconciliation’ (South Africa, 1995b) and thereby constructed a discursive relation of equivalence between the commission and the goal of reconciliation. Moreover, the Act defined the commission’s tasks and competences that would later become the central practices of the TRC, that is the investigation of past atrocities, the granting of amnesty, the recommendation of reparations for victims and the compilation of a final report, as practices that would contribute to reconciliation (see above). These practices were not only established as material practices the TRC had to deliver, but they, together with the other discursive components like forgiveness and healing, were also articulated as important components of the reconciliation discourse. In other words, the reconciliation discourse that was constructed in and beyond the legal documents created the knowledge of what a reconciliation practice could and ought to be like and determined that these practices should be provided by the TRC. The procedures of the TRC, that is the institution’s filling out of its official reconciliation tasks, thus became central acts of articulation of the reconciliation discourse in South Africa (cf. Moon, 2008; Verdoolaege, 2008). The most prominent and most visible practices of the TRC were the so-called Human Rights Violations Hearings, where the victims of human rights violations could come forward and tell the commissioners and the wider public about their experiences and sufferings (Humphrey, 2002: 111; Wilson, 2001). In the hearings, a strong emphasis was put on the idea of reconciliation, healing and forgiveness, so that the hearings, with the practices of public truth-telling by the victims as well the commissioners’ listening to the stories and experiences of the victims and consolidating them, were discursively tied back to these terms. After being sworn in by a commissioner, the victims were usually asked to tell their story in their own words (Moon, 2008), a process that was frequently accompanied by tears and mourning. After listening to the stories and asking questions, the commissioners often expressed their empathy and compassion for the suffering of the victims and pointed at the importance of the testimonial for the wider reconciliation process. One illustrative example

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for this is a victim hearing held in Cape Town on 23 April 1996, where a woman named Nomvuyo Priscilla Zantsi told the story of her brother, Sonny Boy Zantsi, who was shot by the police in a student riot. After having listened to Pricsilla’s story, the chairperson concluded the session with words of understanding and consolation and pointed at the healing effect of the testimonial: Priscila [sic] and you mamma thank you very much, we know that this – this revival of all this [sic] atrocities – we know that all these hurt. We hope that by doing this, that this is going to heal you too, all your wounds will also be healed. The reason why we tell all these stories is because we want our nation to know everything that was done in the past. So that what we have today, this new freedom, so that everybody should know that we got it at a very high price, thank you.6

In another hearing held in King William’s Town on 12 May 1997, a woman named Mrs Nomakhosazana Gladys Papu told the story of her husband being killed by a politically motivated group. After listening to her story and her wish that her husband’s murderers would come forward and tell the commission about their deeds, the commissioners again concluded the hearing by bringing up the idea of reconciliation and asking her whether she was able to forgive: ‘You are saying that reconciliation can be built if they can come forward? … if they can come forward you will forgive them? … Thank you.’7 The discursive link between reconciliation, healing and forgiveness was made repeatedly by the commissioners during the hearings, and similar statements as the two examples mentioned above can be found in many other victim hearings. As Richard Wilson reports, several victim hearings would end with the commissioners stressing their hopes that [t]he experience of coming before the TRC would ‘heal wounds’ and smooth over resentments. Once individual suffering was valorized and linked to a national process of liberation, it was possible to urge victims to forgive perpetrators and abandon any desire for retaliation. (Wilson, 2001: 119)

Annelies Verdoolaege similarly writes that reconciliation, healing and forgiveness tended to be emphasised during the hearings. According to her comprehensive discourse analysis of the language used at the victim hearings, the commissioners ‘sometimes urged the victims to speak out in favour of reconciliation – in particular having the testifiers pronounce terms such as “reconciliation” or “forgiveness” appeared to be of the utmost concern’ (Verdoolaege, 2008: 61; emphasis in original). The extensive use of the reconciliation language during the TRC’s victim hearings had two major effects for the reconciliation discourse. Firstly, it emphasised the role of the public testimony of victims as a central reconciliation practice, as it was this practice that was explicitly related to

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reconciliation though the TRC’s language. The central role the victim hearings played for reconciliation was reinforced by the strong public visibility of the hearings which finally became ‘the public face of the commission’ (TRC, 2003: Volume 5, 7) and therewith the face of reconciliation in South Africa. Secondly, the language used by the commissioners reinforced and stabilised the discursive link between reconciliation, forgiveness and healing, as it was these discursive components that were constantly emphasised. While reconciliation was never explicitly defined in the course of the TRC’s proceedings, the articulation of the reconciliation discourse and the indirect construction of reconciliation were nevertheless continued during the TRC’s existence. Claire Moon, in her extensive discourse analysis of the language used during the TRC process, finds out that psychotherapeutic metaphors of the wound or healing were used throughout the TRC’s existence and ‘shaped the assumptions central to reconciliation, namely, that the TRC was mandated to heal the individual and social body and to repair the nation psyche, assumptions that were compounded by the co-presence of Christian discourses on forgiveness’ (Moon, 2007: 163). Overall, the TRC process reproduced and stabilised the discursive construction of reconciliation as truth-telling, forgiveness and healing and consolidated the truth commission as central institution and practice of reconciliation.

Conclusion: the South African reconciliation discourse This chapter argued that the emergence of reconciliation as a powerful ideal and the construction and stabilisation of a reconciliation discourse can be interpreted as the product of an organic crisis of the hegemonic apartheid discourse in South Africa and of the hegemonic struggles that took place in that context. The destabilisation of the apartheid discourse as the organising meaning system of South African politics and society made it necessary to find new social ideals according to which society could be reorganised. In the course of the transition, reconciliation emerged as such a new ideal, a new empty universal in South Africa and was predominantly constructed through political demands that were raised in its name. Two factors propelled the success of reconciliation as an empty universal. On the one hand, reconciliation could be constructed as a positive social vision, a desirable Other to the then present South African situation marked by violence, instability and social division. On the other hand, due to its semantic vagueness and indeterminacy, reconciliation could serve as an accepted reference point to which the antagonistic parties, the ANC and the NP, could appeal in order to justify their different political demands and reach tentative compromises. At the end of the transitional negotiations, reconciliation remained vague and floating, but it was nevertheless codified as the overarching ideal of the amnesty process in the Interim Constitution.

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Violence/ Retribution

(Antagonistic) Other Reconciliation

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ES

S1

S2

S3

S...

Sx

Healing

Truth-Telling

Victim

Perpetrator

Forgiveness

Relation of Equivalence

Relation of Difference

(Empty) Signifier

Limit of the Discourse (neutral or antagonistic)

2 The South African reconciliation discourse

After the transitional negotiations, it was, in particular, actors from civil society who continued the articulation of the reconciliation discourse and took up the ideal of reconciliation as a justification for their political demands. Reconciliation was now related to more spiritual and emotional meanings and claims, for example calls for forgiveness, for the healing of the wounds derived from the past or for the establishment of a truth commission. These claims of civil society were again codified in legal documents which eventually established the TRC as an institution for the facilitation of reconciliation. In the course of the TRC process, the TRC itself with its processes and practices came to be a symbol of reconciliation and an important component of the reconciliation discourse in South Africa. Moreover, through its language and its practices the TRC reinforced the spiritual–emotional character of the reconciliation discourse and stabilised the close discursive relations that had been created between reconciliation, forgiveness, healing, truth-telling and the truth commission itself. Overall, at the end of the South African transition period reconciliation was firmly associated with the truth commission as an archetypical institution for the facilitation of reconciliation, with the practices of truth-telling and victim hearings, with the notions of forgiveness and healing and with the central subject positions of victims and perpetrators (see Figure 2). The reconciliation discourse that was articulated and became hegemonic

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in the South African transition to democracy is important, as it became the template for the global reconciliation discourse which now effectively shapes international transitional justice and peacebuilding initiatives all over the world. After the South African transition to democracy, the reconciliation discourse with its language and its practices was transported to the global level, where it fed into a larger discourse which is commonly known as transitional justice. In this context, reconciliation was articulated as a general transitional ideal with normative authority beyond the South African confines, while the knowledge and the practices of reconciliation that were established in South Africa developed into a global technology that is now deployed to ever new post-conflict situations. The processes and developments that contributed to the expansion of the reconciliation discourse on the global level will be the focus of the next two chapters.

Notes 1 For a comprehensive discourse analysis of apartheid, see in particular Norval, 1996. 2 CODESA stands for Convention for a Democratic South Africa. 3 IDASA was founded in 1989 by Alex Boraine, a former President of South Africa’s Methodist Church and former South African parliamentarian together with his parliamentary colleague Frederik van Zyl Slabbert. In the time before the transitional negotiations, IDASA had the major objective to work towards negotiation politics and a just political system (Boraine, 2000: 25). 4 The speeches delivered and the discussions held at the workshops are published in two books. For the February workshop, see Boraine et al., 1997; For the July workshop, see Boraine and Levy, 1995. 5 The South African TRC, its language and its workings have already been thoroughly researched from a discourse theoretical perspective (see e.g. Moon, 2004; 2006; 2007; 2008; Verdoolaege, 2008). In this section, I largely fall back on these analyses. 6 The transcript of this hearing is available at: www.justice.gov.za/trc/hrvtrans/ heide/ct00707.htm [9 February 2012]. The transcripts of all hearings are available at: www.justice.gov.za/trc/hrvtrans/index.htm [9 February 2012]. 7 The transcript of this hearing is available at: www.justice.gov.za/trc/hrvtrans/ kwtown/papu.htm [9 February 2012].

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The global proliferation of the reconciliation language in the context of the transitional justice discourse The quest for reconciliation in global politics

Reconciliation language and transitional justice discourse

The reconciliation discourse that became hegemonic in South Africa did not remain limited to that country, but gained a more global reach in the years that followed the South African transition. From the end of the 1990s onwards the language of reconciliation, truth-telling and healing penetrated the discussions of scholars and political practitioners and came to be spoken in numerous political and academic debates and in several transitional situations around the globe. Conferences and workshops on reconciliation were organised which brought together scholars and practitioners from all over the world, and from the beginning of the new millennium onwards reconciliation increasingly became an issue in UN debates and documents, culminating in 2007 in the proclamation by the General Assembly of the International Year of Reconciliation, 2009 (UN, 2007). This chapter examines the process by which the hegemonic project of reconciliation was carried from South Africa to a more global level, and how the reconciliation discourse was further constructed and modified in this process. It argues that the South African reconciliation discourse was part of and fed into an emerging global discourse which is commonly known as transitional justice, in the context of which it was further articulated. The proliferation of the reconciliation ideal and discourse was made possible by the dislocation of justice as the nodal point of this young discourse; the dislocation paved the way for discursive innovation and for new empty universals, such as reconciliation, to be promoted as alternative transitional ideals. In the course of the further articulation of reconciliation, two dominant discursive tendencies can be observed which were central for the global understanding of reconciliation. Firstly, reconciliation was articulated in a close but highly disputed relation to justice whereby both are generally constructed as competing transitional ideals. The disputed opposition between these signifiers mirrors a hegemonic struggle between them and

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manifests itself in shifting frontiers that are drawn between, predominantly, reconciliation, justice and impunity. Secondly, the global articulation of reconciliation was dominated by the reproduction and stabilisation of the South African constructions of truth-telling, healing and the truth commission as central components of the reconciliation discourse and by the rearticulation of victims and perpetrators as central subject positions thereof. These constructions of reconciliation, as this chapter argues, were consequential insofar as they legitimised truth-telling and the creation of truth commissions as good and desirable reconciliation practices in global politics. They thereby reinterpreted the meaning of the truth commissions from being second-best solutions in transitional situations to being first-class responses to past human rights violations with normative authority in their own. The following pages will discuss these arguments in more detail. The next section focuses on the emergence of the global transitional justice debate as the discursive context in which the reconciliation language was spread. It reconstructs the dislocation of justice as the anchor point of this debate and shows how reconciliation emerged as an alternative transitional ideal. The second section examines the further articulation of reconciliation in the global transitional justice discourse, focusing on the two discursive tendencies sketched above. The final section then focuses on the effects of the reconciliation language and indicates the legitimising consequences of the global reconciliation discourse which established truth-telling and the creation of truth commissions as authoritative and legitimate responses to past human rights violations.

The transitional justice discourse In order to understand the global proliferation of the reconciliation language, it is important to see how the South African transition and the reconciliation discourse that emerged in this context fed into a more global development and discourse, which emerged from the late 1980s onwards and became known as the discourse on transitional justice (cf. Philpott, 2006b: 12; Wilson, 2003: 368). The early debate on transitional justice was triggered by the so-called ‘third wave’ of democratisation (Huntington, 1991a), which began in the mid 1970s with the democratisation processes in Southern Europe. Following the regime changes in Greece, Portugal and Spain, several Latin and Central American states turned into democracies in the mid 1980s, for example Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay or Guatemala, paralleled, after the breakdown of the Soviet Union, by similar developments in Eastern and Central Europe. Shortly after the regime changes in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Romania or (East) Germany,

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the African continent witnessed some democratic movements, with the South African transition in the early 1990s being the most popular example (Barahona de Brito, 2001; Elster, 2004: 60–76; Huntington, 1991b: 21–26; Roth-Arriaza, 2006). The regime changes of the third wave raised the interest of human rights activists, advocates, legal scholars, journalists and political scientists who saw them as a ‘new historical era [which] offers the most exciting opportunity for durable peace since the end of the First World War’ (Smith, 1995: xv). Importantly, what brought these diverse actors together was a common interpretation of the transitions as a distinct set of shared dilemmas confronting each of them in their respective countries (Arthur, 2009; Kritz, 2004; Leebaw, 2008). These dilemmas arose from a double interpretation of the transitional countries as striving towards democracy, on the one hand, and having to cope with a legacy of human rights violations and injustice under the previous regime, on the other. As a consequence, several difficult questions dominated the transnational discussions: How was it possible, for example, to combine justice and prudence in times of political transition or, more specifically, how was it possible to balance the moral imperative of justice after severe repression and human rights violations with the equally legitimate imperative of democracy, political stability and social peace (Arthur, 2009: 323)? How was it possible moreover, to prosecute former human rights violators given that a majority of the population had potentially participated in the crimes? How could justice be understood at all, given that some of the crimes and injustices that had to be dealt with were not even illegal under the previous regime? (Kritz, 2004: xx). Triggered by these questions and dilemmas a transnational debate developed in the late 1980s which focused on the ways in which transitional states and societies should address systematic human rights violations from the past in order to overcome social divisions and establish a new and legitimate legal and political order (Arthur, 2009; Bell, 2009; Call, 2004; Elster, 2004; Leebaw, 2008). The debate was maintained and propelled through a series of workshops and conferences that were organised in the late 1980s and early 1990s,1 with one of them being the South African civil society workshop Dealing with the Past (see in more detail the last chapter). The conferences brought together actors from all over the world in order to compare the experiences from different countries and to discuss the various options. It was in the context of this debate that the South African experience and the constructions of reconciliation that were hegemonic in South Africa came to be articulated on a more global level, and reconciliation came to be constructed as a valid and desirable transitional ideal beyond the South African confines.

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The dislocation of justice as a possible anchor point of the debate The proliferation of reconciliation within the transitional justice discourse can be understood as a discursive innovation that was made possible by the dislocation of ordinary justice as a tentative anchor point of the emerging discourse. From the very beginning of the transitional justice debate – which was not named as such until 1995 – justice was a central signifier. The early debates on ‘justice in times of transition’ (Arthur, 2009: 325) were marked by a strong legal bias and centred on the question of how punishment and redress for human rights violations were possible against the background of political instability and democratisation. Scholars predominantly constructed justice in legal terms and strongly related it to the principles of international law. Accordingly, bringing perpetrators to justice was commonly elaborated in terms of their criminal prosecution and punishment as prescribed by international law (Orentlicher, 1991; Roth-Arriaza, 1990). Despite their interest in justice, however, scholars found it hard to determine what is just and what unjust in the context of political transition and emphasised ‘a unique set of dilemmas’ (Leebaw, 2008: 100) which led to the subversion of justice as a transitional ideal. Two broader dilemmas identified by transitional justice scholars are indicative for this dislocation. The first dilemma which undermines the position of justice as a nodal point of the transitional justice discourse arises from the subversion of the discursive relations between justice and law. Scholars often write about the difficulty to base justice either on national or on international criminal law, on international human rights law, on humanitarian law or on some kind of natural law, as all are seen as potentially conflicting with justice in transitional situations (Bell et al., 2004; Huyse, 1995; Kritz, 2004; Offe, 1992; Teitel, 2000). The transformation of national law during the transition from illiberal rule to democracy is considered to make it difficult to take national law as the point of departure for justice. Judging members of the old regime according to the new law would mean punishing them for acts which were not illegal at the time they were committed. The same problem arises when natural or international law is taken as a point of departure as here, too, the rules that legalised some acts in the past are declared invalid in the present and people would be judged for acts that were explicitly legal at the time. As Bell points out: [a]lthough often described as complementary, these [legal] regimes are distinct and have competing claims to governing transitional justice dilemmas. They can produce converse conclusions on the legality or illegality of certain measures because their standards and mechanisms of imposing accountability are not the same. (Bell, 2009: 19)

The second dilemma which undermines the nodal position of justice in

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the transitional justice discourse is produced by the destabilisation of the discursive relations between justice and the philosophical principles that are usually associated with it. Scholars often discuss whether transitional justice should be backward-looking and focus on the proportionate punishment of the wrongs committed in the past, or rather forward-looking and focus on the social good of liberal rule, peace and harmony (Huyse, 1995; Teitel, 2000; 2003). As David Little points out, this debate resembles the more traditional conflict between utilitarian and deontic principles of justice (Little, 1999). In the discourse on transition, it seems that the discursive associations between justice and its ethical foundations are subverted however, as neither the one nor the other set of principles is firmly related with the notion of justice and both undermine each other. On the one hand, the focus of the transitional justice discourse on the importance of human rights generally furthers a deontic perspective. It argues for the necessity of backwardlooking justice and promotes prosecutions or purges after repression and human rights violations. On the other hand, however, the preference for liberal democracy and the rule of law makes scholars appreciate the consequentialist perspective. It emphasises the importance of forward-looking justice for a transitional society and stresses the necessity of peace, social harmony and political stability after civil war and repression (Huyse, 1995; Little, 1999; Méndez, 2001; Roth, 2001). The perceived dilemmas led to the destabilisation of justice as a useful ideal in times of transition and overall led to a broadening of the debate to include insights from disciplines other than the law. Overall, as Christine Bell observes, the mid 1990s were marked by an attempt to ‘decolonize law’s hold on the discourse’ (Bell, 2009: 21). The responses to the dislocation will be discussed in more detail below.

Responses to the dislocation: the articulation of transitional justice and the promotion of reconciliation as an alternative transitional ideal The dislocation of justice in the debate on dealing with the past created a space for discursive reinterpretation and innovation. As argued in chapter 1, the dislocation of a discourse opens the door for the proliferation of new empty universals and for discursive reinterpretations. As Laclau puts it, in situations of severe dislocation ‘something irrepresentable within the rules [of the discourse] is going to circulate among [its] constituent elements. This is the moment in which “emptiness” enters the picture’ (Laclau, 2004: 280), and new empty universals can be advanced which temporarily stabilise the discourse by symbolising the absent but desired ideal. In the case of the debate on transition, the dislocation of justice was countered, predominantly, by two discursive responses. On the one hand,

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scholars and practitioners attempted to stabilise the discourse by trying to redefine justice in terms of transitional justice, a special kind of justice that was particular to transitional situations. One popular example for such an attempt is Ruti Teitel’s benchmark work on the topic in which she tries to establish transitional justice as a particular conception of justice, ‘a sui generis paradigm of transformative law’ (Teitel, 2000: 6) which can offer guidance in regard to the particular challenges posed in times of transition. According to Teitel, transitional justice should be seen as different and detached from established understandings of law and justice and instead as determined by the particular conditions set by a transitional context (cf. McGrattan, 2009: 165): ‘The conception of justice that emerges is contextualized and partial: What is deemed just is contingent and informed by prior injustice’ (Teitel, 2000: 6).2 Teitel’s effort to redefine justice in regard to transition is representative for a broader tendency in transitional justice research. It mirrors the writings of a number of scholars who struggle to find an understanding of justice which can meaningfully be applied to the perceived problems of transitional contexts (Bell et al., 2004; Boraine, 2006; McEvoy, 2007). Meanwhile transitional justice has emerged as an umbrella term of the discourse and is – seemingly as the hegemonic empty signifier – used and accepted as a representative term of the struggle for accountability in transitional situations (Bell, 2009). Apart from the articulation of transitional justice, in a second and parallel response to the destabilisation of justice, some participants of the debate began to promote reconciliation as an alternative ideal of the transitional justice discourse. Here, the South African reconciliation discourse served as an important driver and template of the global articulations. In the third wave debate, South Africa was one of the countries that was discussed and compared to the new countries in transition. It came to be interpreted as an authoritative example of reconciliation and of a successful transition, and the South African constructions of truth-telling, healing and forgiveness were reproduced and stabilised as authoritative interpretations of reconciliation valid beyond the borders of South Africa. The impact of the reconciliation ideal as a competing objective to justice began to surface in the mid to late 1990s, when several contributions to the transitional justice debate cautiously argued for the central importance of reconciliation in times of transition and suggested that this ideal should be subject to more research. One article published in 1999 writes for instance that [j]ustice and reconciliation often figure in conflict settlements and the establishment of negative peace, but are of fundamental importance in minimising the chances of a return to conflict and in peace-building. They are seen as issues

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of increasing importance in transitions to democracy … Nonetheless, there is no consensus about how to assess the strength of either justice or reconciliation, and comparative research has as yet only yielded limited lessons. Moreover, no common understanding has yet emerged of the political conditions under which efforts at reconciliation should be restrained and justice promoted, or vice versa, in order to achieve the ‘best’ peace. (Pankhurst, 1999: 239–240)

This early appraisal of reconciliation and the call to elaborate on the concepts of reconciliation and justice and explore their relevance in time of political transition was responded to by a number of authors and practitioners in the following years. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, numerous academic books and articles were published which discussed the role of reconciliation in times of transition and contributed to the further articulation of the reconciliation discourse (see below). Moreover, from the late 1990s onwards the issues of reconciliation and transitional justice also began to penetrate other discursive forums and were increasingly talked about, for example in the context of UN debates on post-conflict peacebuilding. The import of the reconciliation and transitional justice discourse into the UN discussions can be traced back to a larger process of reconceptualisation of the international community’s peacebuilding missions which began, roughly, after the end of the Cold War. Following a call by the Security Council in 1992, analysts and practitioners began to search for some conceptual underpinning and for normative principles to guide future UN peacekeeping missions (Ramsbotham, 2000; Ryan, 2000: 30). Three important documents were published in this context which sought to provide conceptual clarity for UN peacebuilding. In 1992, Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali presented An Agenda for Peace and three years later the Supplement to an Agenda for Peace. While the latter document for the first time noted that ‘the promotion of national reconciliation’ (Boutros-Ghali, 1995: 4) was to be a central part of international inventions, reconciliation was also addressed five years later in the so-called Brahimi Report, which was commissioned by Secretary-General Kofi Annan in 2000 in order to improve the international community’s performance in its peacekeeping missions after the perceived failures in Somalia and Rwanda (Gray, 2001). The Brahimi Report for the first time established reconciliation as a central part of post-conflict peacebuilding (Brahimi, 2000: 3) and recommended a doctrinal shift in the use of civilian police and related rule of law elements in peace operations that emphasizes a team approach to upholding the rule of law and respect for human rights and helping communities coming out of a conflict to achieve national reconciliation. (Brahimi, 2000: ix)

While the Brahimi Report only touches on reconciliation as an important component of post-conflict peacebuilding, the years 2003 and 2004 showed

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with particular clarity the growing prominence of the reconciliation discourse for the world community. In these years, the UN Security Council held several debates on the issues of transitional justice and post-conflict reconciliation and discussed the UN’s role in this regard (see below). Both, the scholarly texts and the political debates and documents on transitional justice and reconciliation were important contributions to the global proliferation of the reconciliation ideal and carried the hegemonic project of reconciliation from South Africa to the global level. Both will therefore be reviewed in more detail below.

The articulation of reconciliation in the context of the transitional justice discourse The articulations of reconciliation in the context of the transitional justice discourse partly reproduced the constructions of reconciliation from South Africa but they also led to some modifications of the reconciliation discourse on the global level. While the following pages certainly cannot capture all kinds of articulations of reconciliation made by scholars and practitioners, they nevertheless suggest that two dominant discursive tendencies can be observed across most books, articles, and documents on reconciliation and transitional justice. Firstly, a hegemonic struggle between reconciliation and justice as competing transitional ideals took shape. This struggle manifests itself in a strong, but disputed, opposition that was articulated between reconciliation and justice across most texts. Over time it seems that this opposition is increasingly weakened, however, and another set of articulations constructs reconciliation and justice as combinable and intertwined and draws a new discursive frontier which centrally excludes impunity for grave human rights violations as the undesirable Other. Secondly, most texts and documents reproduce and stabilise the South African experience and constructions of reconciliation as authoritative templates of reconciliation. In other words, the creation of a truth commission and the practice of truth-telling by victims and perpetrators were generalised beyond the South African context and established as good and legitimate practices of situations of political transition per se.

Reconciliation v. justice? The disputed discursive relation between competing transitional ideals The promotion of reconciliation as a genuine transitional ideal beyond the South African confines implicitly increased the normative claim of the reconciliation ideal in the discourse on transition. Reconciliation was now not only promoted as an important objective of South Africans, but as an authoritative empty universal of political transition per se. This growing normative

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claim fuelled a hegemonic struggle between justice and reconciliation as competing empty signifiers of the discourse which, in the texts reviewed here, manifests itself in a highly disputed relationship between reconciliation and justice as two transitional objectives. In the transitional justice discourse, the disputed relationship between justice and reconciliation tends to appear in two different sets of articulations: either, justice and reconciliation are articulated as incommensurable and potentially conflicting objectives of political transitions, or they are constructed as two interdependent and combinable goals, whereas their concrete relation remains shifting. In regard to the first kind of articulation, an opposition between both ideals is usually constructed by reinterpreting justice in a relation to reconciliation in two ways: on the one hand, a retributive and punitive understanding of justice is opposed to reconciliation as an ‘undesirable Other’ through negative semantic relations, and, on the other hand, a restorative understanding of justice is articulated as part of and contribution to reconciliation through positive semantic relations. For instance, it is often argued that [r]econciliation involves a different kind of justice – a form of restorative justice that does not seek revenge, but that also does not countenance impunity. This kind of justice allows both for the capacity for evil and for the capacity for good that resides within humanity. It accepts moral and political responsibility for redressing the needs of victims, as well as the needs to ensure that perpetrators become responsible members of society. (Villa-Vicencio, 2001: 248–249)

The concrete differences between retributive justice and restorative justice are seen to lie predominantly in their respective objectives – reconciliation or retribution and accountability. For instance, retributive justice is elaborated as an impersonal and abstract kind of justice which ignores the needs of victims, perpetrators and society at large: The objective [of retributive justice] is to establish ‘offender accountability’, determined with reference to past violations and in a way that ignores both the victim and the broader moral, social, and economic context in which crime occurs. (Little, 1999: 66)

Restorative justice, in contrast, is seen as focusing on social relations and strives towards future reconciliation: ‘[Restorative Justice] defines crime interpersonally and focuses on future reconciliation and the restoration of relations between victim and perpetrator, and with the society at large’ (Little, 1999: 66). A similar distinction between different types of justice can be found in other texts, where not restorative but reparative justice is established as a concept that is essential for reconciliation but different from transitional justice: Reconciliation can stem only from a form of justice that is inclusive and uniting rather than exclusive and dividing; that is survivor-oriented rather than slanted

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toward either perpetrator or victim; that is permanent and incremental rather than transitional, that is, by implication, temporal and incomplete. The concept of ‘reparative justice’ is proposed as a response to the complex and shifting realities of societies torn apart by conflict and the varied and often contradictory claims for justice that arise therein … The concept of ‘reparative justice’ rather than transitional justice provides this, and its application could pave the way toward reconciliation with justice and peace. (Mani, 2007: 36–37)

The passages illustrate how the two kinds of justice are established by their respective relations to reconciliation. Restorative or reparative justice is constructed as being positively related to reconciliation as an overarching ideal of political transition. It is moreover established as an explicitly social, inclusive and complete kind of justice and thus as a desirable thing in times of political transition. Retributive justice, in contrast, is put in a relation of opposition to reconciliation. It is abstract, exclusive and incomplete and is rather constructed as an undesirable Other to reconciliation and restorative justice in a transitional context. Whereas the concrete qualifications of justice as retributive or transitional, on the one hand, and reparative or restorative or sometimes even specifically African,3 on the other hand, may vary, the frontier that is drawn between reconciliation and (punitive) justice is a strong element of the construction of reconciliation in the global discourse. It refines the limits of reconciliation and brackets its identity through the exclusion of that which it is not, namely retributive justice. While the opposition between reconciliation and (punitive) justice as two competing and incommensurable transitional ideals can be found in numerous texts of the debate, there are several contributions that refuse to follow this line of argumentation and articulate the relationship between justice and reconciliation in quite a another way. Reconciliation and justice, it is argued, are not mutually exclusive but they can rather be understood as interdependent and mutually reinforcing whereby both can only be achieved in a balanced, albeit difficult, combination. The difficult balancing process between justice and reconciliation was addressed, for instance, by Kofi Annan in his opening statement to the 4833rd debate of the Security Council on the role of reconciliation in post-conflict situations: ‘At times, the goals of justice and reconciliation compete with each other. Each society needs to form a view about how to strike the right balance between them’ (UN, 2003a: 3). The construction of reconciliation and justice as basically combinable is achieved through several strategies. One articulatory strategy that can be found reinterprets justice as holistic or transitional, that is as a kind of justice that goes beyond and encompasses reconciliation. For instance, one text which seeks to offer ‘a holistic interpretation’ (Boraine, 2006: 17) of transitional justice argues that

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we need to embrace a notion of justice that is wider, deeper and richer than retributive justice … To achieve a just society, more than punishment is required. Documenting the truth about the past, restoring dignity to victims and embarking on the process of reconciliation are vital elements in the creation of a just society. (Boraine, 2006: 20)

A similar discursive move is made by Kai Ambos who suggests thinking about justice ‘in a broader sense’ (Ambos, 2009). According to Ambos, justice ‘understood broadly’ goes ‘beyond mere criminal justice’ (Ambos, 2009: 19) and also includes elements of reconciliation, restoration and truthtelling (Ambos, 2009: 19–23). Overall, this discursive move relies on justice as the overarching signifier of the discourse and reduces reconciliation to be part of its signifying chain. Related to this kind of articulation is the insistence of criminal prosecution and punishment as not the only but an essential part of the transitional process, while other elements such as truthtelling can be added if necessary. A second articulatory strategy that makes it possible to construct justice and reconciliation as combinable transitional ideals is the rearticulation of the discursive frontier. Here, a new and different opposition is articulated not between reconciliation and justice, but between reconciliation and justice, on the one hand, and impunity for human rights violations, on the other hand. The following passage argues for example that reconciliation should not be considered as the overarching ideal of transitional situations, but rather as part of a whole cluster of equivalent transitional ideals, including reconciliation, justice and truth, with all of these ideals being mutually opposed to human rights violations: There is great difficulty in defining ‘reconciliation’ … especially because the word has been recklessly used many times to attempt the justification of blatant impunity … Even if reconciliation is a worthy goal, it should not be the centrepiece of any policy of truth and justice. If we make it the centrepiece, reconciliation becomes the factor that validates or invalidates all aspects of the policy … In my view, truth, justice, and reconciliation are all objectives of the policy [of dealing with human rights violations], and no one of them should be considered instrumental to the others. (Méndez, 2001: 28)

The text goes on to further distinguish impunity from reconciliation and justice, simultaneously establishing the interdependence between truth, justice and ‘meaningful reconciliation’: If well-known perpetrators are allowed to remain in positions of authority [and are not prosecuted], the stigma that their actions deserve is transferred to the communities they belong to. In this fashion, the blame for past wrongs is placed with whole communities, sometimes generations removed, and true reconciliation between ethnic groups never takes place. In contrast, investigation, prosecution, and punishment of the irresponsible leaders who exploit ethnic

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tension for political gain separate wrongdoers from the community in whose name they committed the crimes … A promise of impunity may well lead to a cease-fire; but a lasting peace can only be built over a foundation of truth, justice, and meaningful reconciliation. (Méndez, 2001: 32)

The passage quoted here shows how the articulation of a new opposition between truth, justice and reconciliation, on the one hand, and impunity for human rights violations, on the other hand, makes it possible to establish reconciliation and justice as combinable. In comparison to the articulations mentioned above, a similar yet reversed process of rearticulation can be observed. While above reconciliation is established as the overarching ideal and justice is reinterpreted in terms of restorative justice, here it is not justice but reconciliation which is qualified and reinterpreted in terms of ‘true reconciliation’ or ‘meaningful reconciliation’ which does not a priori exclude punitive justice but rather stands in a positive relationship with justice and prosecutions. Both reinterpretations reflect the attempted quilting of signifiers or the production and reinterpretation of meaning which occurs, according to Laclau, once a signifier is articulated as an empty universal (see chapter 1). The frontier between reconciliation and justice, on the one hand, and impunity for human rights violations, on the other hand, remains a central element in academic and political texts and clearly gains momentum in international debates on the issue that took place from 2004 onwards. Tendentially, the relationship between reconciliation and justice is articulated in a more cautious and inclusive way, with reconciliation and justice being no more articulated as essentially incommensurable ideals, but combinable objectives that need to be balanced. The redefinition of the discursive frontier, that is the construction of impunity as the undesirable and illegitimate Other thereby remains the central articulatory strategy to achieve this.4 For instance, it is argued that [a]t the heart of the process of national reconciliation often lie … serious political and moral dilemmas in terms of justice … We believe that the solution to these dilemmas always lies in the establishment of the rule of law, with all of the force and breadth inherent in that concept … National reconciliation often requires a balance between the imperatives of justice and the defence of universal values, on the one hand, and taking into account the circumstances inherent in a situation or a particular culture, on the other … Such non-jurisdictional instruments as truth and reconciliation commissions may make a valuable contribution. However, that which is inviolate must be respected: There can be no impunity for serious crimes under international criminal law. (UN, 2004b: 16–17; see also UN, 2004b: 11, 12; UN, 2003b: 5)

Another statement illustrates well the opposition that is often articulated between impunity/blanket amnesties, on the one hand, and justice and reconciliation, on the other hand:

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Punitive Justice

(Antagonistic) Other Reconciliation

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ES

S1

S2

S3

S...

Sx

TRC

Truth-Telling

Healing

Victim

Perpetrator

Relation of Equivalence

Relation of Difference

(Empty) Signifier

Limit of the Discourse (neutral or antagonistic)

3 The global reconciliation discourse Amnesty clauses in peace agreements must exclude amnesties for war crimes, genocide, crimes against humanity and other serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law. Blanket amnesty clauses are inconsistent with the twin goals of justice and reconciliation. (UN, 2004a: 4)

Both statements quoted here suggest that reconciliation and justice were increasingly reinterpreted as combinable ideals by defining impunity as the undesirable other, which is opposed to both, reconciliation and justice. They are now seen as ‘twin goals’ which are united in their mutual rejection of blanket amnesties. Overall, two different constructions of the relationship between reconciliation and justice can be distilled from the passages above. Firstly, reconciliation and justice are strictly opposed with reconciliation being articulated as the authoritative transitional ideal; here, punitive justice is reduced to the undesirable Other, as divisive and exclusive. Against punitive justice stands the notion of restorative justice, however, which is positively understood as it is seen as contributing to and standing in the service of reconciliation (see Figure 3). Secondly, reconciliation and justice are constructed as generally combinable, with transitional justice being articulated as the authoritative transitional ideal; here, transitional justice tends to be constructed as holistic and as including punitive justice as well as reconciliation. According to this

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Impunity

(Antagonistic) Other Transitional Justice

ES

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Reconciliation

Justice

ES‘‘

ES‘

S1 S1‘

S2‘

S...‘

S1‘‘

S2‘‘

S...‘‘

TRC

Truth-Telling

Ect.

Prosecution

Punishment

Etc.

Relation of Equivalence

Relation of Difference

(Empty) Signifier

Limit of the Discourse (neutral or antagonistic)

4 The global transitional justice discourse

construction, punitive measures are an essential response to past human rights violations as are reconciliatory means. Reconciliation and justice are constructed as generally combinable and as twin goals which are mutually reinforcing. This construction is achieved by articulating a new kind of discursive frontier which does not divide justice and reconciliation but opposes both to the new undesirable Other impunity (see Figure 4). The two different constructions of the relationship between reconciliation and justice suggest that the transitional justice discourse is a highly dynamic one, which is still marked by a hegemonic struggle between justice and reconciliation, and that in different contexts, different hierarchies and thus meanings of these transitional ideals can become hegemonic. If, in a particular transitional situation, reconciliation emerges as the dominant signifier and ideal and is understood in opposition to justice, it can potentially delegitimise judicial prosecutorial measures in this particular context as they might be understood as inhibiting the facilitation of reconciliation. However, if an understanding of reconciliation and justice becomes hegemonic that articulates both ideals as combinable, it is easily possible that punitive and reconciliatory responses to past human rights violations will be initiated. The actual difference here, as is explicit in the latter articulations quoted above, is the legitimacy or illegitimacy of amnesty provisions. If punitive justice is generally ruled out through the particular understanding of reconciliation,

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a blanket amnesty is possible and appears legitimate if restorative measures are initiated. In contrast, if a more cautious and combinable understanding of reconciliation and justice dominates and impunity is ruled out and constructed as illegitimate, a blanket amnesty will seem impossible, while amnesties for minor crimes can be accepted in combination with reconciliatory measures. Overall, it can be argued that the inclusion of reconciliation in the transitional justice discourse changed the terms of the debate on transitional justice. From a critical perspective, it can be argued that reconciliation makes it possible to repudiate ‘justice as we know it’ and to introduce a ‘justice compromised’ (Moon, 2008: 5) in the shape of restorative justice. From an affirmative point of view, it can be argued that reconciliation expands the variety of legitimate responses that can be given to human rights violations in a transitional situation and thus creates new options in regard to non-judicial and non-punitive mechanisms, which are presented as morally acceptable instruments for dealing with human rights violations. What these mechanisms are, that is what practices are positively related to reconciliation in the transitional justice debate, will be outlined in more detail in the next sub-section.

Reconciliation through truth: the stabilisation and authorisation of the South African constructions of reconciliation The promotion of reconciliation as a transitional ideal beyond the South African confines not only increased the normative punch of the reconciliation ideal, it also entailed a normative upgrading of the South African experience and the South African constructions of reconciliation which are continuously rearticulated in most texts. Throughout the transitional justice debate, the South African reconciliation discourse served as an important driver and template for the construction of reconciliation, and central aspects of the South African reconciliation discourse – in particular the close semantic relation between reconciliation, truth-telling and the truth commission – were rearticulated and stabilised. Simultaneously, the South African case is stylised as an authoritative example for reconciliation in situations of political transition. The construction of the South African case as an authoritative example of reconciliation began during and right after the South African transition. In the years after the TRC process, numerous books and articles were published which reflected on truth and reconciliation in South Africa (Borer, 2004; Chapman and Van der Merwe, 2008; Chicuecue, 1997; Gibson, 2004; Graybill, 1998; Minow, 1998; 2000) and asked whether the South African experience should be considered as a ‘miracle or model’ (Graybill, 2002) of reconciliation. Similarly, texts dealing not specifically with the South

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African case but with reconciliation more generally often construct the South African experience as an archetypical example of reconciliation in transitional situations. The authority of the South African case in regard to reconciliation is mirrored, for instance, in its role as a unique example for reconciliation in numerous texts. Several articles build on the TRC as a prototypical instance for reconciliation and argue, for example, that [t]he TRC was a beginning, a necessary and significant effort to set the processes of truth finding and reconciliation in motion in South Africa. It made a significant contribution as a bridge between the apartheid past and a more inclusive and democratic future. (Chapman, 2001: 266)5

An even more explicit construction of the South African experience as a prime example for reconciliation is provided by an edited volume on reconciliation and truth published in 2000, which uses the South African TRC as an authoritative case study in most of its chapters. The introduction which is tellingly entitled Truth Commissions and the Provision of Truth, Justice and Reconciliation, explains this choice by writing that [t]he South African commission has become the model for all future commissions … Most commissions have not tried to reconcile the old, which oppressed, with the new, which enshrines democracy. But the Chilean commission did, and the South African version had as its primary mission the seeking of reconciliation through acquiring and displaying the truth, and, in its chairman’s religious design, requesting atonement. Thus, for him and for the other commissioners, uncovering the facts – the truth – of the past was a necessary if not sufficient stage that could prepare the new South Africa to be reconciled, and whites and blacks to be reconciled to one another. (Rotberg, 2000: 6–7)

Finally, Archbishop Tutu’s foreword to the very first edition of the International Journal of Transitional Justice (IJTJ), the mouthpiece of the transitional justice community, reinforces the role of South Africa as the leading example for reconciliation: It is fitting … that the publication [the IJTJ] will have its home in South Africa, a country that has made such a foundational contribution to the field of transitional justice through its own experiences. While each country emerging from a divided past must pursue its own course, South Africa stands as a living example that no matter how deep the divisions, reconciliation is possible where both truth and forgiveness are present … South Africa today stands as a model of merciful justice; of what can be achieved when enemies choose dialogue over violence. In the years since our TRC process, other countries emerging from civil conflict have embarked upon their own such commissions. Many, drawing from the South African experience, have incorporated the goal of reconciliation explicitly in both the name and mandate of their institutions. (Tutu, 2007: 6–7)

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As already suggested by the passages quoted above, the stylisation of the South African experience as an archetype of reconciliation was accompanied by the reproduction of the South African constructions of reconciliation as authoritative interpretations of reconciliation beyond the South African context. In particular, truth-telling, forgiveness and the institution of the truth commission are stabilised as primary components of reconciliation. For instance, it is often argued in the academic debate that forgiveness and reconciliation require coming to terms with the past, not attempting to forget or repress it. Establishing a shared truth that documents the causes, nature, and extent of severe and gross human rights abuses and/ or collective violence under antecedent regimes is a prerequisite for achieving accountability, meaningful reconciliation, and a foundation for a common future. (Chapman, 2001: 250)

Similarly, other texts focus on truth-telling and forgiveness in their accounts on reconciliation: Any reconciliation programme must re-examine the past, the underlying causes of the conflict and the behaviour of all the parties throughout it. However, reconciliation must go beyond a mere historical account. It is indispensable to create an atmosphere that promotes thinking, contrition and forgiveness, both collectively and individually, in order to provide an outlet for demands for justice and revenge. (UN, 2004b: 20, 33)

Overall, truth-telling and truth commissions are the dominant components of the reconciliation discourse also on the global level, as a third example further confirms: Truth commissions can play a crucial role in forging reconciliation, fostering mutual understanding and providing assistance to victims. By providing victims with a platform to tell their stories of suffering, they reveal the terrible human cost of war and dictatorship. (van Zyl, 1999: 667)

In all the passages, the central constructions of reconciliation from the South African discourse are reproduced. Truth-telling, the truth commission and forgiveness are related to reconciliation through semantic relations of causality or purpose, while simultaneously being opposed to ‘forgetting the past’. The truth commission is established as an archetypical instrument for reconciliation which serves in particular the victims of human rights violations as a platform for revealing their suffering in the past. In other texts, the idea of healing is particularly dominant in regard to reconciliation and it is usually closely related to truth commissions. By revealing the stories of their suffering and experiencing acknowledgment of their pain, victims are supposed to overcome their traumas and psychological wounds inflicted in the past and be rehabilitated as healthy members of the society. As one text puts it for instance, ‘[k]now the truth and it will

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set you free; expose the terrible secrets of a sick society and heal that society’ (Minow, 2000: 243). Overall, reconciliation and the healing of victims and society are seen to be closely intertwined as it is assumed that ‘the acknowledgment of personal suffering is crucial to healing and the restoration of individual dignity’ (van Zyl, 1999: 659). The construction of reconciliation as healing and the authorisation of truth-telling and the truth commission as legitimate reconciliation practices are not the only accomplishments of the reconciliation discourse, but these developments are accompanied by the rearticulation of the corresponding categories of victim and perpetrator as central subject positions of reconciliation and truth-telling. Most of the passages quoted above take as given the categories of victim and perpetrator as the subjects of reconciliation, as it is them who can allegedly carry out truth-telling and who are to be reconciled. For instance, it is argued that truth commissions provide ‘victims with a platform to tell their stories of suffering’, thereby ‘reveal[ing] the terrible human costs of war and dictatorship’ (van Zyl, 1999: 667). Reconciliation and restorative justice are constructed as seeking the ‘restoration of relations between victim and perpetrator’ (Little, 1999: 66). Here, ‘victim testimony’ (Villa-Vicencio, 2001: 237) is seen as the most central element of a reconciliation process which is tendentially ‘victim centred’ (Mallinder, 2007: 224) but also aims at the ‘involvement of the perpetrators’ (Mallinder, 2007: 224) to ‘ensure that perpetrators become responsible members of society’ (VillaVicencio, 2001: 248–249). Particularly illustrative for the quasi-automatic association between reconciliation and victims and perpetrators is a handbook on Reconciliation After Violent Conflict which was published by the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA) in 2005 (Bloomfield et al., 2005). In one of its central sections, the book announces to deal with ‘the people’ of reconciliation, then deals exclusively with the two central categories ‘victims’ and ‘offenders’ (Bloomfield et al., 2005: 54–76). Victims, according to the handbook, are at the heart of all dimensions of the reconciliation process in societies emerging from years of violent conflict. It is crucially important that policy makers and civil society leaders are aware of the many faces of victimhood. (Bloomfield et al., 2005: 54)

At the other end of the reconciliation scale, violent conflict produces a wide variety of offenders … Ideally, the processes aimed at reconciliation should touch them all. In practice, many of them will remain outside the reach of healing, truth-telling, justice and reparation initiatives … Whatever the situation, it is essential to understand and recognize their role and motives. It is also in the interests of a post-conflict society that perpetrators be reintegrated in their community. (Bloomfield et al., 2005: 67)

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In general, victims and perpetrators are closely related in the global reconciliation discourse. The discursive construction of reconciliation builds upon the central categories of victim and perpetrator to which it designates crucial roles and functions in a reconciliation process: reconciliation can only be attained if victims speak out about past experiences and perpetrators show their willingness to reintegrate into society (Moon, 2008). In particular, the victims are established as the central subjects and carriers of a reconciliation process. They are authorised to tell the stories of their suffering in order to teach the whole society about the costs of past violence. As Michael Humphrey points out, ‘the idea of reconciliation is politically focused on the social recovery of the victim with the purpose of reconstituting the national whole. The threshold of moral vision is adjusted by recognizing the victims in the testimony of their suffering’ (Humphrey, 2002: 106). In sum, it can be concluded that the constructions of reconciliation produced in South Africa are largely rearticulated on the global level, so that the close causal connection between truth-telling, truth commissions, healing and reconciliation is reinforced and stabilised, as are the subject positions of the victim and the perpetrator as the crucial subjects of reconciliation. The global discourse thus confirms the normative authority of truth-telling as a central mechanism of reconciliation and the truth commission as an archetypical institution for reconciliation. By generalising these institutions and the practice of truth-telling as reconciliation practices beyond the South African context, the global discourse established them as good and legitimate practices in times of political transition per se.

Science and discourse: the production of reconciliation as a truth The stabilisation and generalisation of the South African constructions of reconciliation were not the only accomplishments of the global discourse, but the global debate also seemingly objectified these constructions by presenting them in terms of scientific knowledge. In other words, the global articulations of the reconciliation discourse further strengthened the constructions of reconciliation from South Africa by making them appear as the truth about reconciliation. Scholars writing about the construction and social relevance specifically of meaning that is considered as scientific knowledge emphasise that this kind of discourse is fundamental for our modern notion of truth (Aronowitz, 1988: vii; Foucault, 1980: 109–133; Litfin, 1994: 14–51). According to Michel Foucault for instance, the ‘“political economy” of truth’ in our modern society ‘is centred on the form of scientific discourse and the institutions which produce it’ (Foucault, 1980: 131). Science is expected to distinguish reliably between claims that are true and claims that are false and thus to confirm and develop true and seemingly valid insights (Foucault, 1980: 131;

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Litfin, 1994: 24). This process of validation, according to Stanley Aronowitz, takes place specifically through the use of scientific methods, in particular observation and experiment (Aronowitz, 1988: viii, 8, 338). In the social sciences, humanities and legal sciences, one might want to add systematic comparison, process tracing and structured argumentation as other often used tools, which makes discursive constructions appear to be scientifically founded and thus true or at least plausible. In the case of the global reconciliation discourse, much of the articulation took place in the academic debate on political transition and transitional justice, which often made the constructions of reconciliation appear in terms of scientific knowledge. The majority of the texts on reconciliation verify their articulations by means of structured argumentation as many are written in the disciplines of (international) law or political philosophy (cf. Brahm, 2007: 17–18). Thus, many of the texts quoted above derive their arguments from legal, religious, philosophical or, often, psychological insights which are used to underpin the assumptions that underlie the constructions of reconciliation (cf. Humphrey, 2002: 105–124). Martha Minow for instance, in her discussion whether truth commissions can contribute to healing and reconciliation cites several therapeutic texts in order to support her arguments. While acknowledging that individual healing processes are different from collective ones where entire nations are involved, she notes that ‘[t]here do seem to be compelling analogies’ (Minow, 2000: 241) between the two. Accordingly, she refers to ‘parallels between truth commissions and the therapeutic process that helps individual victims deal with post-traumatic stress disorders’ (Minow, 2000: 241) and holds that telling one’s story to someone who listens seriously and validates the experience with official acknowledgement might not only be appropriate for individuals but also for the reconciliation of a whole nation. Other authors seek to test and verify the alleged causal relationship between truth-telling and reconciliation, thereby supporting and objectifying the reconciliation discourse through the use of statistical methods and empirical tests (see e.g. Gibson, 2004; Gibson, 2006; Bachmann, 2010). One often-cited text for instance takes the assumption ‘that getting people to understand the past will somehow contribute to reconciliation’ (Gibson, 2004: 201) as its point of departure, and announces to test the hypothesis which centrally underlies the reconciliation discourse. Based on ‘data collected in a 2001 survey of over 3,700 South Africans’ (Gibson, 2004: 201), the author created a ‘Reconciliation Index’ and conducted several calculations on the statistical correlations between truth-telling and reconciled attitudes among the respondents (Gibson, 2004: 206). In the end, he largely stabilises the assumptions of the reconciliation discourse by concluding that ‘those who accept the “truth” about the country’s apartheid past are more likely to hold reconciled racial attitudes’ (Gibson, 2004: 201).

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Overall, the examples given above were meant to show that the global articulations of the reconciliation discourse not only reproduced and stabilised the dominant interpretations of reconciliation from South Africa, but also allegedly verified them by constructing these interpretations in terms of true statements about reconciliation. The underpinning of the underlying assumptions of the reconciliation discourse through seemingly objective tests or insights from other disciplines contributed to the strengthening of the reconciliation discourse on the global level and constructed it in terms of scientific knowledge.

Reconciliation and its critics While the construction of reconciliation in terms of truth-telling and healing can be observed as a strong tendency in the global discourse, the truth and plausibility of this interpretation are not accepted uncritically by all scholars and practitioners. In fact, several critical voices can be found which question the value of reconciliation as a valid ideal in post-conflict situations and the plausibility of its interpretation in the transitional justice discourse. One central target of critique is the constructed causal relationship between reconciliation and truth-telling, which is often criticised as insufficiently proven or as implausible. For instance, it is argued that the assumed causal relationship between truth-telling and reconciliation has rarely been examined empirically and no proof about this relationship exists. As Tristan Anne Borer points out for example, the correlation between these two variables ‘is so taken for granted that often little attempt is made – beyond the provision of anecdotal evidence – to determine whether it is in fact true, either in general or in specific cases’ (Borer, 2006: 30). While this kind of criticism does not question the general possibility of the assumptions underlying reconciliation, it nevertheless questions its status as true and valid scientific knowledge. In addition, other authors have argued that, on a second glimpse, these seemingly self-evident assumptions not only lack empirical proofs but also plausibility. Why, as some authors ask, should truth-telling and reprocessing the past lead to reconciliation and the closure of a conflict? Is it not at least as plausible to believe that digging up painful experiences or listening to the confessions of a perpetrator of severe human rights violations will lead to even more hatred and a desire for revenge, in particular if the perpetrator will receive no punishment after his confession? Andrew Rigby for example argues that ‘[a]t a common-sense level it would seem obvious that most people want to forget the pains of the past and get on with their lives. Why should anyone want to relive past traumas by talking about them?’ (Allen, 1999: 317; Rigby, 2001: 1). Claire Moon moreover contends that ‘[w] hilst powerful, the truth claims generated by the TRC in particular … are

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anything but evident in political practice, and important cases challenge and contradict them’ (Moon, 2008: 6). Overall, as these authors argue, there is only little reason to believe that the assumptions inherent in the reconciliation paradigm represent some wider truth. The criticisms raised against the global constructions of reconciliation show that the reconciliation discourse is not unquestioned. Nevertheless, the normative authority of the reconciliation ideal and its interpretation in terms of truth-telling in a truth commission have gained widespread acceptance in global politics. How this hegemonic interpretation of reconciliation plays out, that is what this interpretation does in global politics, will be the focus of the next section.

Reconciliation and the authorisation of the truth commission The preceding sections identified two articulatory tendencies which centrally shaped the construction of reconciliation on the global level. They argued that the global understanding of reconciliation is determined (a) by its difficult and disputed relationship to justice as a competing transitional ideal, and (b) by the rearticulation and stabilisation of the South African constructions of truth-telling, truth commissions, victims and perpetrators as central categories of reconciliation. This section now focuses on the general effects of these constructions and reflects how the reconciliation discourse plays out in global politics. It centrally argues that both sets of articulation predominantly performed by authorising the truth commission as a legitimate political tool that can be applied to transitional and post-conflict situations. The construction of reconciliation in a close, yet disputed, relation to justice suggests that both ideals are normatively equivalent. If reconciliation and justice can enter a normative competition which cannot be resolved in favour of the one or the other, both ideals are established as desirable transitional objectives with a more or less equivalent normative authority. Similarly, if reconciliation and justice can be established as twin goals in the mutual struggle against impunity, which have to be brought in a difficult balance, both are constructed as having a similar normative weight that has to be brought into equilibrium. Overall, the close relation that was articulated between reconciliation and justice turns reconciliation, which had not been a particularly relevant ideal in the political debates before, into a normatively powerful objective in transitional situations. While the close semantic relation between reconciliation and justice establishes the normative authority of the reconciliation ideal, its interpretation in terms of truth-telling in a truth commission conveyed these practices with considerable normative authority in transitional settings. This is predominantly reached through the articulation of relations of purpose or causality between truth-telling, the truth commission and

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reconciliation. If truth-telling and truth commissions ‘play a crucial role in’ achieving reconciliation, are proposed ‘in order to’ reach reconciliation, or are constructed as ‘prerequisites for’ reconciliation (see above), they are established as rational and appropriate techniques of reconciliation. Overall then, the normative authority of the reconciliation ideal and its interpretation in terms of truth-telling in a truth commission produced the truth commission as a means of reconciliation and turned it into a valuable policy in transitional and post-conflict situations. This is not to say, however, that the truth commission was born as a new transitional instrument by the reconciliation discourse; rather that this institution was bestowed with a new legitimacy. In fact, truth commissions were no new phenomenon in the context of regime change in the mid to end 1990s. The first (modern) truth commission is generally dated back to 1974, when the Ugandan commission named Commission of Inquiry into the Disappearances of People in Uganda since 25 January, 1971 began its operation (Hayner, 1994: 611–612; Hirsch, 2007: 184; Ranft, 2010: 11).6 In the following years, and in particular during the so-called third wave transitions in Latin America in the mid and late 1980s, truth commissions were often created as the result of a bargaining process and a power-political stalemate between the outgoing and the incoming elite (Barahona de Brito, 2001; Hayner, 1994: 611–612). However, in these days truth commissions were seen as a prudent means of political compromise and political stability rather than as morally acceptable institutions by themselves. They were considered acceptable only in situations where the imperative for justice had to be balanced with the need to coopt and tame the still powerful members of the previous regime and the military and criminal prosecutions seemed impossible. Often, truth commissions were considered only as preliminary mechanisms that would one day lead to trials (Hirsch, 2007: 191–192). Against this background, the South African TRC and the subsequent globalisation of the reconciliation discourse marked a normative turning point in regard to truth commissions (cf. Moon, 2008: 1–16; Hayner, 2001: 5). Truth-telling and the truth commission were now constructed as means of reconciliation rather than compromise formulas of accountability, and reconciliation was more and more articulated into an equivalent transitional ideal to justice. Taken together, both discursive developments produce truthtelling and the creation of a truth commission as authoritative and legitimate practices in transitional and post-conflict situations. By being articulated into the reconciliation discourse and being firmly related to the reconciliation ideal, truth commissions and truth-telling became legitimate first-class tools of dealing with the past. Their creation in transitional and post-conflict countries is no back-up plan anymore, but it has become an allegedly appropriate and often ‘expected response’ (Moon,

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2008: 2; emphasis in original) to human rights violations. Overall, truth commissions are now, as Michael Ben-Josef Hirsch points out, positioned ‘on equal grounds with their judicial alternative’ (Hirsch, 2007: 194). It was through the globalisation of the reconciliation discourse and the global expansion of reconciliation’s normative claim that these institutions were elevated from secondary compromise solutions to legitimate and morally valuable responses to human rights violations. The normative upgrading of truth-telling and truth commissions manifests itself in several political and legal practices that could be observed in world politics in the recent years. On the one hand, as the next chapter will show in more detail, the rise of the global reconciliation discourse was accompanied by qualitative and quantitative changes in the creation of truth commissions all over the world. More and more truth commissions were established in transitional or post-conflict countries with the growing support by a wide range of trans- and international actors. The normative upgrading of truth-telling also manifests itself in the legal codification of the right to the truth that was adopted, for example, by the UN Commission on Human Rights in April 2005 and by the Organization of American States (OAS) in June 2006 (Moon, 2008: 142–143). In a report prepared on this topic, the OHCHR concludes, for example, that the right to the truth about gross human rights violations and serious violations of human rights law is an inalienable and autonomous right, linked to the duty and obligation of the State to protect and guarantee human rights, to conduct effective investigations and to guarantee effective remedy and reparations. (OHCHR, 2006b: 2)

While the OHCHR recommends all kinds of institutions for the guarantee and implementation of this right, such as truth commissions, criminal tribunals, or commissions of inquiry, the OAS specifically welcomes ‘non-judicial or ad hoc mechanisms, such as truth and reconciliation commissions, that complement the justice system, to contribute to the investigation of violations of human rights and of international humanitarian law’ (OAS, 2006: 3; see also Moon, 2008: 143). In sum, while the institution of the truth commission had long been known as an available instrument in situations of regime change or post-conflict, the global expansion of the reconciliation discourse led to a reinterpretation and normative re-evaluation of this institution. Firstly, the truth commission was established as an instrument of reconciliation in transitional and post-conflict situations. Secondly and thereby, it was turned into a morally valuable and recommendable policy in situations of political change. Both interpretations established truth-telling and the creation of truth commissions as good and legitimate practices in the context of transition and post-conflict situations.

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Conclusion: the global proliferation of the reconciliation language This chapter aimed to reconstruct the process in which the reconciliation language proliferated beyond the borders of South Africa and came to penetrate academic and political debates around the globe. It argued that the South African experience fed into a more global discourse on justice and regime transition in the context of which the globalisation of the reconciliation language took place. In this transitional justice debate, reconciliation was articulated as a disputed normative competitor to (retributive) justice while, simultaneously, the South African interpretation of reconciliation in terms of truth-telling in a truth commission and the healing of victims and perpetrators was reproduced and stabilised. As a consequence of the global reconciliation discourse, the institution of the truth commission emerged as an authoritative transitional tool which can legitimately be applied to any transitional situation beyond South Africa. As argued above, truthtelling in a truth commission was linguistically established as a central tool and practice of reconciliation while reconciliation was simultaneously constructed as a normative equivalent to (retributive) justice in times of transition. Thus, the reconciliation discourse overall increased the variety of political tools that are available in transitional situations. Punitive justice or ‘justice as we know it’ is no more the only legitimate possibility of dealing with human rights violations, but the punitive imperative can be circumvented through the reconciliation discourse, as there is a choice between reconciliation and justice. While this chapter has focused on the language of reconciliation and examined how this language proliferated on the global level, the next chapter will complement this analysis by examining how an accompanying set of reconciliation practices diffused in global politics. In particular, it focuses on the spread of truth commissions as a global technology of reconciliation and explores how these institutions turned into standard as well as standardised instruments of post-conflict peacebuilding.

Notes 1 The first of these conferences took place in 1988. It was organised by the Aspen Institute and dealt with the topic State Crimes: Punishment or Pardon. The second Conference took place in 1992 in Salzburg, Austria. It was organised by the Charter 77 Foundation and was entitled Justice in Times of Transition. The third conference was the 1994 South African civil society workshop Dealing with the Past, that was discussed in more detail in the last chapter (cf. Arthur, 2009: 325). 2 For a critical response to the conceptualisation of transitional justice as a special kind of justice, see e.g. Allen, 2004; Posner and Vermeule, 2004.

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The quest for reconciliation in global politics 3 Some texts establish restorative justice as a specifically African concept of justice and oppose it to so-called Western notions of justice which are understood in the sense of criminal justice. For instance, it is argued that ‘Western notions of criminal justice undermine the commitment to communal reconciliation that lies at the heart of most traditional African justice systems, which aim to reintegrate both the offender and the victim into society’ (Villa-Vicencio, 2001: 239). 4 The construction of reconciliation in terms of restorative justice, which was dominant in the academic discourse, was mentioned only a few times in the UN debates (see e.g. UN, 2004b: 12, 19). Here, it is striking that restorative justice was reinterpreted too: it was not opposed to retributive justice anymore, but rather established as lying in between a blanket amnesty and retributive justice. The delegate from Brazil, Mr. Sardenberg, for instance argued in the 4903rd debate, that restorative justice can be understood as ‘a middle ground between retributive justice and a blanket pardon’ (UN, 2004b: 19). 5 Other authors focus not on the TRC’s truth practices but on its amnesty process and construct the TRC as an authoritative example of reconciliation more generally (see e.g. Slye, 2000: 179). 6 For more information about the Ugandan and numerous other truth commissions, see the website of the United States Institute for Peace, available at: www.usip.org/publications/truth-commission-digital-collection [9 February 2012].

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The proliferation of reconciliation practices and the rise of a global reconciliation coalition The quest for reconciliation in global politics

The rise of a global reconciliation coalition

The spread of the reconciliation language as examined in the last chapter is not the only manifestation of the proliferation of reconciliation discourse, but it is accompanied by the diffusion of a corresponding set of reconciliation practices in global politics. More specifically, the proliferation of the language of reconciliation through truth-telling in truth commissions was paralleled by the diffusion of truth commissions as standard institutions of reconciliation and established components of post-conflict peacebuilding efforts in transitional and post-conflict settings all over the globe. Importantly, the reconciliation discourse thereby contains a global as well as a local dimension, both of which are crucial for its articulation and performance. On the one hand, reconciliation practices in the shape of truth commissions are obviously particularly pertinent at the local level as it is here that they are deployed and supposed to take effect. Reconciliation practices aim at the reconciliation of particular societies which are usually geographically bounded and nationally defined. Accordingly, truth commissions are established not as global or international institutions but in the country where violent conflict or repression have occurred. On the other hand, however, the reconciliation project has a global dimension insofar as it appears as a global phenomenon in at least three respects. Firstly, as mentioned already in the last chapter, truth commissions in the name of reconciliation have become a common response to past violence across numerous countries. They have been created not only in one, but in many post-conflict countries in the past decades so that post-conflict truth-telling can be considered as a global trend, rather than merely a local phenomenon. Secondly, the global dimension of the reconciliation project is reflected in the increasing assimilation of reconciliation practices across countries. As will be examined in more detail below, many truth commissions seem to be increasingly standardised in that they correspond to and thus reproduce many of the linguistic constructions of reconciliation

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that were found in the last chapter. Thirdly, reconciliation practices contain a global dimension, in that they are often promoted, planned or even implemented by a set of global actors that emerged as agents of reconciliation in global politics. These agents now crucially participate in the proliferation of the reconciliation discourse and bring it to ever new local settings. As both, the global and the local dimension are important aspects of the practice side of the reconciliation discourse, both will be examined in more detail in the remainder of this book. While the local performance of the reconciliation discourse will be the topic of the next chapter which inquires into the initiation, implementation and performance of reconciliation in Sierra Leone, this chapter focuses predominantly on the global dimension and examines how the global reconciliation trend manifests itself in the proliferation and increasing standardisation of reconciliation practices across countries as well as the emergence of global agents of reconciliation. The chapter is organised as follows. The next section provides an overview of the global practices of reconciliation. Looking at the quantitative and qualitative development of truth commissions across several countries it shows how the global reconciliation discourse is further articulated through the growing number of truth and reconciliation commissions and how this development reflects the technologisation of reconciliation as a ritualised and accepted post-conflict practice. The second section then shows how the global reconciliation discourse was co-constitutive of a range of reconciliation agents in global politics. It introduces the members of the global reconciliation coalition, that is those global actors who emerged as agents of reconciliation and now carry the hegemonic project of reconciliation forward. It shows how these agents could constitute themselves as norm entrepreneurs on the global level because the reconciliation discourse provided them with a normative meaning in the name of which they can intervene and with knowledge and expertise about the corresponding reconciliation practices, that is truth-telling and truth commissions, which are frequently supported, planned or even organised and implemented by these actors.

The emergence of truth commissions and truth-telling as global technologies of reconciliation Since the South African reconciliation experience and the following spread of the corresponding knowledge about reconciliation and truth-telling, truth commissions and truth-telling practices proliferated across numerous countries that have been categorised as transitional or post-conflict. From 1999 onwards, truth commissions have been established for example in Sierra Leone, East Timor, Nigeria, Liberia, Kenya, Ghana and the Solomon Islands, to mention just a few cases. Many of these commissions announced that reconciliation should be the overarching goal of their procedures and

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many, in their language and their practices, reproduced central aspects of the linguistic constructions of reconciliation that were found in the last chapter. Theoretically, the proliferation of truth commissions is important in two respects. Firstly, it is an central act of articulation of the reconciliation discourse because, as Laclau and Mouffe point out, every social practice contains an articulatory dimension as each social action confirms and thereby reconstructs some meanings while at the same time challenging and modifying others (Laclau and Mouffe, 2001: 113; see in more detail chapter 1). Truth commissions and truth-telling, which are linguistically established as central reconciliation practices, further articulate the reconciliation discourse in that each truth commission which is erected in the name of reconciliation and each public ritual of truth-telling, healing and forgiveness that is conducted in its context reproduces the dominant constructions that were articulated in South Africa and proliferated in the global sphere. Secondly and simultaneously, the diffusion and the corresponding standardisation of truth commissions as mechanisms of reconciliation are important, as they reflect the increasing technologisation of reconciliation as an accepted and naturalised practice of post-conflict peacebuilding. As Jenny Edkins points out, once a new discourse begins to sediment, to be accepted as valid social reality, what follows is a process of technologisation of this discourse (cf. Edkins, 1999: 1–20). The practices and mechanisms that are established through the discourse are increasingly institutionalised and ritualised and become a ‘bureaucratic technique of governance elaborated through recognized expertise’ (Edkins, 1999: 4). In other words, the discursive constructions and the practices that are established by them are increasingly taken as given and are applied automatically to ever new settings and situations. What gets hidden in the process of technologisation however, is the political character of the discourse, its contingency and contestability and the power it exerts as a contingent but accepted social meaning. Such a process of technologisation can also be observed in regard to the reconciliation discourse which establishes the knowledge about truth commissions and public truth-telling as a globally standardised and powerful way of how to do reconciliation. This technology of reconciliation is now, as a relatively stable discursive structure, transported to ever new local settings, irrespective of different local needs and contexts. Post-conflict situations per se are categorised as being in need of reconciliation and, accordingly, it seems plausible to apply the reconciliation technologies established by the global reconciliation discourse. The technologisation of reconciliation, as will be outlined in more detail below, is reflected in two major developments in regard to truth commissions: on the one hand, in a quantitative leap in the number of truth commissions in the time after South

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Africa, which suggests that this institution turned into a standard instrument of peacebuilding; on the other hand, in a qualitative assimilation of truth commissions across countries, which suggests that these commissions are increasingly standardised according to the central linguistic constructions of reconciliation discussed in the last chapter.

Truth commissions as standard technologies of reconciliation in post-conflict settings The rise of the global reconciliation discourse established the truth and reconciliation commission as a standard technology in post-conflict settings. As pointed out in the last chapter, truth-telling in a truth commission is generally constructed as a central technique of reconciliation. The global reconciliation discourse thereby naturalised and legitimised the truth commission as an appropriate and important institution in transitional and post-conflict situations. Looking at the global practice of truth commissions and truth-telling, it seems that the importance and acceptance of truth commissions has indeed grown in the past fifteen years. This is indicated by the steadily rising number of commissions that have been created around the globe since the mid 1990s. Since the South African experience gave birth to the global reconciliation discourse, the creation of truth commissions in transitional or post-conflict countries has become ever more frequent (cf. Hayner, 2001; Hirsch, 2007; Moon, 2008; Ranft, 2010) . While around forty truth commissions have been established worldwide since the first institution of that kind was erected in Uganda in 1974, twenty-two of them have been created in the past fifteen years.1 Broken down into five-year periods, this means that an average of four truth commissions were created every five years before the South African reconciliation process took place in the mid 1990s. After the South African experience in 1995, this number almost doubled with an average of seven truth commissions being established every five years. Importantly, this general increase in the number of truth commissions has been accompanied by a parallel growth of the number of those commissions that were erected explicitly in the name of reconciliation. According to the database of the United States Institute for Peace (USIP), of the eighteen truth commissions that were created in the twenty-one years before the South African TRC, only one, the Chilean Commission, was interested in reconciling society. In the fifteen years since the South African experience, in contrast, twenty-two truth commissions have been established with twelve of them being explicitly erected in the name of reconciliation. Truth and Reconciliation Commissions were created in Peru, Serbia and Montenegro, Sierra Leone, Congo, Liberia, Kenya and the Solomon Islands. Other truth commissions carrying the goal of reconciliation in their names were

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established in Rwanda (National Unity and Reconciliation Commission), Cote d’Ivoire (Mediation Committee for National Reconciliation), East Timor (Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation), Ghana (National Reconciliation Commission), Morocco (Equity and Reconciliation Commission) and Kenya (Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission).2 The role of truth and reconciliation techniques as standard instruments in post-conflict settings is also suggested by the frequent appearance of national reconciliation as a guiding objective in peace agreements in recent years. For instance, the Lomé Peace Agreement that was signed by the warring parties of Sierra Leone on 7 July 1999 recognised ‘genuine national unity and reconciliation’ as an ‘imperative need’ (Sierra Leone, 1999: Preamble) of the people of Sierra Leone. Simultaneously, it decided that [a] Truth and Reconciliation Commission shall be established to address impunity, break the cycle of violence, provide a forum for both the victims and perpetrators of human rights violations to tell their story, get a clear picture of the past in order to facilitate genuine healing and reconciliation. (Sierra Leone, 1999: Article 26)

Similar to the Lomé agreement, the Global and Inclusive Agreement on Transition in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, signed in Pretoria on 16 December 2002 fixes ‘national reconciliation’ as one of its ‘principle transition objectives’ (Congo, 2002: Article 2) and determines that a truth and reconciliation commission should be set up in order to reach that goal. Furthermore, the so-called Accra Accords signed on 18 August 2003 by the warring fractions of Liberia were explicitly ‘[m]oved by the imperative need to respond to the ardent desire of the people of Liberia for genuine lasting peace, national unity and reconciliation’ (Liberia, 2003: Preamble) and decided that a TRC should be established to provide a forum for the healing of victims and perpetrators (Liberia, 2003: Article 13). The rising number of truth commissions and the growing importance of reconciliation as a central objective established in the peace accords of many countries suggest that reconciliation has become part of the everyday politics of post-conflict peacebuilding and is employed in ever new local settings. Not only is it widely accepted that national reconciliation is an important and desirable objective after violent conflict, as the peace agreements examined above suggest, but it is also largely recognised that truth commissions are a necessary and appropriate step towards that objective. Overall, as several authors note, reconciliation and truth-telling are meanwhile considered ‘a necessary, if not vital, component of the peacebuilding process, as important as demobilization, disarmament, or the holding of postwar elections’ (Mendeloff, 2004: 355–356; cf. Borer, 2006: 3; Brahm, 2007: 16). The technologisation of reconciliation as a standard instrument of post-war peacebuilding is also reflected by another development, namely

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the increasing implementation of reconciliation programmes irrespective of the parallel implementation or abandonment of punitive justice measures (cf. Stahn, 2002). While in South Africa reconciliation was established as a desirable but incommensurable alternative to punitive justice, more recent cases suggest that reconciliation programmes are launched without, as well as parallel to, other means of accountability. Reconciliation is considered a necessary instrument in the post-conflict environment in any case, regardless of whether punitive justice is possible or not. In East Timor for instance the Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation (CAVR)3 was established in 2001 together with parallel steps towards criminal justice. In 1999, the UN Transitional Authority in East Timor (UNTAET) created the Serious Crimes Unit (SCU) in order to investigate and prosecute war crimes, crimes against humanity and individual offences of murder torture and rape committed between 1 January and 25 October 1999. The charges raised by the SCU were to be tried before one of the Special Panels of Serious Crimes which were mixed national-international tribunals which each consist of international and East Timorese judges (Dolan, 2004; Linton, 2002). Even though these measures had already established criminal liability for serious violations of human rights, the CAVR was created as an additional mechanism which was explicitly mandated to bring reconciliation to the East Timorese (Gorjao, 2001; Rae, 2003; Stahn, 2001). Overall, it was not only some kind of accountability that was considered necessary and desirable, but reconciliation measures were established as a necessary mechanism in themselves. Another example that points in a similar direction is that of Serbia Montenegro. Here, too, criminal liability for the crimes committed during the war in the former Yugoslavia had already been established by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), which was established by the UN Security Council in 1993 (Kerr, 2004; Rudolph, 2001: 660–665). Despite this accountability mechanism, however, in 2001 and 2002 the Serbian President Kostunica established an additional reconciliation mechanism, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission for Serbia and Montenegro, also called the Yugoslav Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Komisija za istinu i pomirenje),4 as an additional mechanism that should bring national reconciliation to the country (Freeman, 2004). The implementation of perceived reconciliation programmes, irrespective of the parallel establishment of alternative means of accountability, indicates that reconciliation is not, as some authors argue (Benomar, 1995), a mere compromise solution anymore which is implemented if punitive justice cannot be achieved due to power-political deadlocks and the like, but that it has become a standard technology of post-conflict peacebuilding which is considered necessary and appropriate in any situation, independent from possible alternatives.

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Truth commissions as standardised technologies of reconciliation in post-conflict settings While the developments examined above provide some indications of the technologisation of reconciliation in post-conflict settings, the language and practices employed by these commissions show in more detail how reconciliation has not only become a standard technology in such situations, but also how the practices of reconciliation are increasingly standardised in accordance with the central linguistic constructions of reconciliation discussed in the last chapter. More specifically, the mandates and procedures of these commissions as well as the language and the practices they employ clearly rearticulate the globally hegemonic interpretation of reconciliation in terms of the healing of victims and perpetrators through public truthtelling. A standardised language of reconciliation In regard to language, many of the more recent commissions that were established after 1995 strongly relied on the therapeutic interpretation of reconciliation and considered it as their central goal to heal the victims and perpetrators of former violence through the practice of public truthtelling. The Sierra Leonean Truth and Reconciliation Commission (SLTRC) for instance, which was established in 2001, was introduced by President Kabbah as a ‘therapeutic contribution … to the search for lasting national reconciliation’ (Kabbah, 2003; cf. Moon, 2008: 141). In its final report, the SLTRC spoke about the need of forgiveness as ‘the first step we can take towards healing our traumatised nation’ (SLTRC, 2004d: Volume 1, 3) and announced that, now that its processes were completed, ‘[v]ictims and perpetrators are beginning to find a common ground on which to stand, live and develop the country together in peace and harmony’ (SLTRC, 2004d: Volume 1, 2).5 Apart from the founding and final documents of the SLTRC, the Liberian TRC Act also proclaimed that ‘national healing and reconciliation will be greatly enhanced by a process which seeks to establish the truth through a public dialogue’ (Liberia, 2005: Preamble). The functions of the Liberian TRC, according to the Act, should be to help restore the human dignity of victims and promote reconciliation by providing an opportunity for victims, witnesses, and others to give an account of the violations and abuses suffered and for perpetrators to relate their experiences, in an environment conducive to constructive dialogue between victims and perpetrators. (Liberia, 2005: Article 7)

In a similar manner, the founding document of the TRC of the Solomon

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Islands reproduced the language provided by the global reconciliation discourse and announced to provide

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a forum in which, both the victims and the perpetrators of human rights violations could share their experiences so as to get a clearer understanding of the past in order to facilitate healing and true reconciliation within the communities. (Solomon Islands, 2008: Preamble)

Moreover, according to the Solomon Islands TRC Act, public hearings should be the primary mechanism to restore the human dignity of victims and promote reconciliation by providing an opportunity for victims to give an account of the violations and abuses suffered and for perpetrators to relate their experiences, and by creating a climate which fosters constructive interchange between victims and perpetrators. (Solomon Islands, 2008: Article 5)6

The language displayed by these institutions which speaks of reconciliation and the healing of victims and perpetrators was also dominant in the context of other TRCs, such as the ones in Peru, Ghana, Liberia or the Solomon Islands (cf. Moon, 2008: 141–142). The TRCs thereby rearticulate the globally hegemonic constructions of reconciliation which suggests that these constructions have turned into a standardised vocabulary and interpretation of reconciliation in the context of truth commissions. Reconciliation as a therapeutic process that can be facilitated through public truth-telling has become a relatively stable discursive structure which is deployed to ever more new countries where the victims and perpetrators of past violence are allegedly waiting for catharsis. A standardised practice of reconciliation The standardised linguistic categories of healing, public truth-telling and victim and perpetrator are also mirrored and rearticulated through the converging practices and procedures of many recent truth commissions. Centrally, most of these institutions now rely on public hearings for victims and perpetrators as a standardised mechanism of reconciliation (cf. Moon, 2008: 141–142). Peru or Kenya, for instance, used public hearings as a central procedure of their reconciliation processes, and the Ghanaian commission conducted over 2,000 public hearings in which victims and perpetrators of human rights violations could tell their stories to the wider public.7 Similarly, Nigeria is particularly notorious for its public hearings as Hayner reports: ‘The Nigerian public was thoroughly absorbed for a full year in watching the commission’s televised sessions, which were aired during the day and then repeated again at night on several channels, as well as played live on numerous radio stations’ (Hayner, 2001: 257).

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The ritualisation and technologisation of public truth-telling as a standardised reconciliation practice is also well illustrated by the Sierra Leonean and the East Timorese TRCs, which conducted public hearings as part of their major proceedings (for the Sierra Leonean TRC, see in more detail the next chapter). Importantly, here, as in most of the other cases, truth-telling in public hearings was not a necessary part of the actual truthfinding function of the commissions, that is it did not really contribute to the collection of data on the country’s past. Most TRCs collect their data predominantly through focused research and statements from witnesses which are taken behind closed doors (Chapman and Ball, 2001). The public hearings of victims and perpetrators, in contrast, are usually held after the actual investigatory process (cf. CAVR, 2005: Volume 1, 28; Kelsall, 2005). They do not serve to collect data on the truth about the past, but rather represent a public reconciliation and healing ritual in which the process of truth-telling, rather than the information, is of central importance (Kelsall, 2005; Shaw, 2007). As the final report of the East Timorese CAVR tellingly stresses, ‘[a] victims’ hearing was held as the final activity in each sub-district programme, following the strategic plan’ (CAVR, 2005: Volume 1, 28). Public hearings ‘contributed to the fulfilment of various aspects of the mandate, including truth-seeking, promoting reconciliation and restoring the dignity of victims’ (CAVR, 2005: Volume 1, 28). While public hearings are central components of most truth commissions today, this practice has not always been employed by these institutions. Rather, its proliferation across reconciliation processes all over the world is a product and a rearticulation of the global discourse on reconciliation and began, roughly, with the South African reconciliation process in the mid 1990s. As Priscilla Hayner points out, even though there were several truth commissions before the South African one, ‘most did not hold hearings in public’ (Hayner, 2001: 5; cf. Moon, 2008: 141). The Latin American commissions for instance conducted their investigations behind closed doors, considering the investigation of the truth and the compilation of a final report as their major goal (cf. Hayner, 2001; Hirsch, 2007). Today, in contrast, the global reconciliation discourse has turned public truth-telling into a major technique of healing and catharsis. Public truthtelling has become a standardised technology of reconciliation, as it is presumedly in and through public testimony and revealing the truth that victims and perpetrators can heal so that they can live alongside each other in the future. At the same time, the whole society is assumed to be part of the reconciliation and healing process by hearing the stories of suffering directly from the victim. As Michael Humphrey puts it, ‘[i]ndividual suffering is the fulcrum used to convert the effect of repression into a vehicle for social reconstruction … the politics of trauma witnesses suffering as a strategy of social reconstruction’ (Humphrey, 2002: 106).

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Standardised profiles for TRC chairs and commissioners The strong notion of reconciliation as therapy and the standardised objective of most commissions to heal the victims and perpetrators through the practice of public truth-telling also manifests itself in the assimilation of the profiles of the chairs and commissioners of many TRCs. Increasingly, the reconciliation personnel of truth commissions is recruited not only among lawyers and politicians, but also from those segments of society that are supposed to possess therapeutic or pastoral expertise. While truth commissions that were erected before the South African TRC often chose former senators (El Salvador), ministers (Venezuela), presidents (El Salvador), judges (Uganda) or even police superintendents or army officers (Uganda) as chairs and commissioners (cf. Hayner, 2001: 33–69), more recent commissions tended to employ therapists, nurses, priests or bishops instead. The South African TRC set an example in this regard. Of its seventeen commissioners, four came from the religious community and five from medicine, psychology and nursing (Chapman and Ball, 2001: 18). The SATRC’s chair was Bishop Desmond Tutu, the Archbishop of Capetown, its vice chair was Alex Boraine, also a pastoral figure who functioned as the president of the Methodist church of Southern Africa (Graybill, 1998; Ruge, 2003). In the aftermath of South Africa, this practice was reproduced by several other TRCs. The Sierra Leonean TRC, for instance, also relied on a pastoral figure as its public face and highest commissioner and was chaired by Bishop Joseph Humper, a bishop of the United Methodist Church. The founding act of the SLTRC explicitly suggested that the commissioners might be drawn, inter alia, from ‘religious leaders or psychologists and [from] other professions or disciplines relevant to the functions of the Commission’ (Sierra Leone, 2000: Part 5.3.2b), which were defined in terms of reconciliation and healing.8 Similarly, the East Timorese CAVR chose as its deputy chair the catholic priest Father Jovito Rêgo de Jesus Araújo, and employed Reverend Agustinho de Vasconselos as another religious figure and Isabel Amaral Guterres, a nurse, as a professional from the health sector (CAVR, 2005: Volume 1, 15–17). Similar choices in regard to staffing can be observed on the Solomon Islands, with the TRC’s chair being Reverend (and former bishop) Sam Ata,9 or in Liberia where Oumu K. Syllah, a professional nurse, or Bishop Arthur F. Kulah served as commissioners.10 Overall, the more recent selection of TRCs’ reconciliation personnel suggests that not only the language and the practices of these institutions have been increasingly standardised according to the global linguistic constructions, but that these constructions of reconciliation and healing also play out in regard to the commissions’ recruiting and staffing practices. Given that the earlier truth commissions, as mentioned above, were predominantly

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chaired and organised by individuals from the political sector, for example. (former) ministers or other politicians, or other members of the state executive, such as police officers or members of the army or the judiciary, the new trend in the staffing policy of these commissions suggests that the mandate and the general understanding of TRCs has changed. As truth commissions are increasingly seen as instruments of healing and reconciliation, rather than political and quasi judicial institutions, it seems plausible to recruit those individuals that allegedly possess professional qualities in regard to the counselling and treatment of people’s psyches, rather than knowledge of politics. Human rights violations as a standardised template for interpreting the past A fourth aspect that mirrors the standardisation of modern TRCs in accordance with the global discourse is an assimilation of the way in which truth commissions interpret and construct the truth about the past of the post-conflict countries in which they are created. More specifically, TRCs tend to analyse and construct the truth about the past in terms of the human rights violations that were committed. This kind of standardised interpretation has not always underlain the work of truth commissions, as Priscilla Hayner points out. Former truth commissions did not necessarily specify their mandates, and in particular their truth-finding functions, as clearly in terms of general violations of human rights. Instead, several commissions, for instance in Latin America, had either a more narrow or a wider understanding of their truth-finding function. For example, the exact mandate of the Salvadoran commission which was created in 1992, was not specified at all and the commission was generally tasked to ‘investigate “serious acts of violence” that occurred since 1980s’ (Hayner, 2001: 38). The Argentine truth commission from 1983, in turn, focused its mandate rather tightly on finding out about the fate of the ‘disappeared’ (cf. Hayner, 2001: 33–34). Similarly, the Chilean truth commission had a rather narrowly defined task, as it was mandated not to find out about broad patterns of human rights violations in general, but rather to inquire into the individual fates specifically of those victims that died from torture. In contrast, those victims whose abuses did not result in death were not recognised as victims by the commission. Their fates fell ‘outside the scope of the commission’s mandate’,11 and they could not take part in its reparations scheme (cf. Hayner, 2001: 35–36). Against these varying definitions of the mandates of truth commissions previous to the South African TRC, a general focus on gross violations of human rights, the victims and the perpetrators thereof, is now typically shared by many TRCs. Again, this focus goes hand in hand with the linguistic constructions of reconciliation in the global discourse. As argued

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in the last chapter, human rights violations and impunity for such violations are often established as the immoral Other of reconciliation and justice in the transitional justice discourse. Past human rights violations are generally considered as the crucial trigger for reconciliation programmes in that they presumably make reconciliation necessary in the first place. Overall it is after gross violations of human rights that societies are considered to be traumatised and that reconciliation is deemed an appropriate response, and it is in regard to the interpretation of the past that this construction plays out in the TRC practice. The function of human rights violations as a standardised interpretative lens through which more recent TRCs analyse the pasts and the presents of post-conflict countries is often explicitly laid down in the mandates of these commissions which call upon them to investigate and find out about the truth about past human rights violations. For instance, the Liberian TRC was mandated to inquire into and investigate [g]ross violations of human rights, privileges, powers and authority in Liberia, including violations, which were part of a systematic pattern of abuse … The nature, causes and extent of gross violations and abuses of human rights, including the root causes, circumstances, factors, context, motives and perspectives which led to such violations. (Liberia, 2005: Article 7)

Human rights violations were thereby explicitly defined along international legal standards and with reference to ‘international human rights standards’ and standards of ‘international humanitarian law’ (Liberia, 2005: Article 2). In a similar manner, the TRC of the Solomon Islands was mandated to examine the nature, antecedents, root causes, accountability or responsibility for and the extent of the impact on human rights violations or abuses … including the destruction of property, deprivation of rights to own property and the right to settle and make a living. (Solomon Islands, 2008: Article 5)

Just as in the case of Liberia, human rights violations were thereby defined with reference to international standards of human rights law and humanitarian law (Solomon Islands, 2008: Preamble). Finally, the mandate of the East Timorese CAVR as laid down in UNTAET Regulation No. 2001/1012 specifies in particular clarity the centrality of human rights and their violations for the truth-finding functions of the commission: The objectives of the Commission shall include: (a) inquiring into human rights violations that have taken place in the context of the political conflicts in East Timor (b) establishing the truth regarding past human rights violations; (c) reporting the nature of the human rights violations that have occurred and identifying the factors that may have led to such violations. (UNTAET, 2001: Section 3; emphasis in original)

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The function of ‘gross violations of human rights’ as an overarching foil according to which the past is investigated and interpreted leads to the standardisation of the truth-finding practices of TRCs and, eventually, to a more or less standardised narrative of the past, which is produced by TRCs in different countries. Hence, it is not the particular political background of the conflict, the specific political groups that fought in it, or their political goals and motives in regard to modes of governance, economic deprivation, social repression and exclusion or separatist aspirations that is relevant for the final narrative of the past. Rather, the past conflict is narrated as one in which not specific political animosities and social exclusions play a central role, but as one in which human rights violations, that is violations of international legal standards, were the dominant and relevant kind of violence. The standardised human rights narratives of truth commissions are reached through the particular selection and interpretation of data during their truth-finding processes. Truth finding in truth commissions occurs predominantly through the practice of statement taking, that is conducting interviews with individual witnesses whose accounts eventually make up the commissions’ data bases (cf. Chapman and Ball, 2001: 5–8, 23–30). Once the statement-taking phase is over, the information gathered through the statements is usually encoded, systematised and processed and evaluated through statistical methods. Most truth commissions use sophisticated research units which encode and interpret their findings from individual statements through scientific means, predominantly computer-based data analysis (Chapman and Ball, 2001: 23–30; Wilson, 2001: 38–48). The analytic focus on human rights violations now streamlines the truthfinding practice as it defines in more detail who can give such a statement and what can be said in such a statement. The authoritative speakers of the truth-finding process are then either victims, or perpetrators, or witnesses of human rights violations (cf. Moon, 2008). Statements can only be legitimately given by individuals who either suffered, or committed, or bore witness of an act that is accepted as a human rights abuse according to international standards. Indeed, the founding documents as well as the final reports of TRCs tend to speak of victims and perpetrators of human rights violations who are to tell their stories in public, to experience catharsis, healing and reconciliation. For instance, the Liberian TRC Act announced that the commission would offer an ‘opportunity for both the victims and perpetrators of human rights violations to share their experiences in order to get a clear picture of the past to facilitate genuine healing and reconciliation’ (Liberia, 2005: Preamble). Similar categorisations of victims and perpetrators along international definitions of human rights violations are made by other commissions.13 Apart from the authoritative subjects of truth-telling, the human rights standard also defines the possible contents of the statements in that every

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single statement that is given is interpreted and presented as an account of an individual human rights violation. It is not the specific personal experience of suffering or the specific political background of the act that counts, but the classification of the event as a human rights violation. Only if the event can be presented in such terms is it included in the universe of cases that will eventually make up the truth about the past. The statement is then moreover encoded and systematised according to the type of human rights violation it represents, so that in the end the narrative of the past can be constructed in terms of the ‘broad patterns of human rights violations’ that occurred (Chapman and Ball, 2001). In sum, the standardisation of most TRCs’ truth-finding practices in terms of human rights violations leads to the standardisation of national narratives of the past, as it adjusts the particular national (hi)stories of different countries along the violations of international standards of human rights. It is not the particular conflict, the particular suffering of individuals and the particular political background of a civil conflict that are central to these narratives, but it is the standardised template of human rights violations, their broader patterns, causes and impacts that interests TRCs and that is finally published as the official narrative.

Summary: the technologisation of reconciliation in post-conflict situations The creation of truth commissions in the name of reconciliation has become a global technology which is applied to ever new post-conflict situations. On the level of language, the global reconciliation discourse as outlined in the last chapter establishes public truth-telling, the healing of victims and perpetrators and the creation of a truth commission as major practices that lead to reconciliation after severe human rights violations. The actual global practices that are carried out in the name of reconciliation in numerous post-conflict countries rearticulate and ritualise these linguistic constructions in that their standardised application to ever new local settings reproduces and strengthens the truth claims associated with the reconciliation discourse while simultaneously overlooking its constructed nature and its contingency. Overall, four standard features of modern TRCs have been discussed above. Firstly, most of the more recent TRCs use the reconciliation language that was presented in the last chapter. They speak of reconciliation and the healing of victims and perpetrators through public truth-telling as the central categories of their process. Secondly, most TRCs rely on the practice of public truth-telling in order to carry out their reconciliation mandate. Thirdly, in their recruiting practices these institutions increasingly fall back on therapeutic, medical or pastoral individuals as reconciliation staff, thus reinforcing the impression that the goal of TRCs is closely related to healing

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and forgiveness. Fourthly and finally, the truth-finding mandate of TRCs has increasingly been defined in terms of the human rights violations committed during the past conflict. Thus, TRCs produce a standardised narrative of the past which interprets the past conflict as a pattern of human rights violations rather than a particular political struggle. While preceding sections focused predominantly on the global aspects of the reconciliation technology, it is clear that the technology plays out in particular in the local settings to which it is deployed. The local performance of reconciliation will be the issue of the next chapter, which looks in more detail at the emergence and performance of the reconciliation discourse in Sierra Leone. The remainder of this chapter, however, will first examine another aspect of the global technology of reconciliation, namely the co-constitution of an expert force of reconciliation agents, which is crucial for maintaining and further proliferating the reconciliation technology in global politics.

The constitution of an expert force of reconciliation In chapter 1, I have argued that the constitution of discourses and social agents is closely interlinked. Discourses produce agents by giving social actors the possibility to identify with subject positions, to embrace or oppose certain objects produced by the discourse and to carry out certain practices. Simultaneously, however, the constitution of agents goes hand in hand with the (re)articulation of discourse, as it is through the speaking and practicing of a certain discourse that actors emerge as social agents in the first place. In other words, discourses and social agents are co-constitutive. The constitution of an agent is always linked with and happens through an act of articulation which, in turn, reproduces the discursive categories and the social relations that are defined by the discourse. In the case of reconciliation, the rise of the global discourse offered a range of social actors the possibility to emerge as practitioners of reconciliation in global politics by beginning to speak and act in the name of reconciliation. Thereby, these agents became important drivers of the reconciliation discourse. By acting as entrepreneurs of reconciliation on the global and on the local level, by speaking the reconciliation discourse and acting in its name, they continuously rearticulated the reconciliation discourse while simultaneously bringing it to new local settings. It is here that agency is crucial according to discourse theory, as the articulation of a particular discourse by a social actor can be traced back to an ethical (but not necessarily conscious) decision of that actor. In the case of the reconciliation discourse, as mentioned above, numerous actors identified with and began to speak and act the discourse, and it is impossible here to empirically capture all of them.14 It is possible, however, to

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identify at least three crucial groups of actors which are particularly visible and discernable speakers and practitioners of reconciliation and have been involved in diffusing and applying reconciliation in global politics: firstly, a group of South African actors and ex-TRC commissioners from other countries which are now acknowledged as authoritative reconciliation agents on the global level; secondly, a number of think-tanks and NGOs which were founded in the name of reconciliation and transitional justice and crucially propel the proliferation of reconciliation practices to transitional situations around the world; and, thirdly, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) which is a crucial agency of reconciliation within the UN and cooperates with other reconciliation agents in their mutual concern to achieve reconciliation in post-conflict situations. Of course, it can be argued, in particular in regard to the OHCHR, that this agency was not constituted by the reconciliation discourse but existed long before that discourse took shape on the global level. While this is certainly true in a physical sense, it is important to note from a discourse theoretical perspective that, prior to the emergence of the reconciliation discourse, no actor could possibly be recognised as an advocate or manager of reconciliation, and neither could an actor consider herself as such, simply because the particular meaning of reconciliation did not exist. In other words, while the reconciliation discourse of course did not physically produce the global agents of reconciliation, it nevertheless constituted them as entrepreneurs of reconciliation, as the emergence of reconciliation as a particular normative meaning made purposeful action in its name possible in the first place (cf. Epstein, 2008: 13, 94, 168–169). Thus, it can be argued that the reconciliation agents were co-constituted by the reconciliation discourse itself. The rise of this discourse produced new possibilities for identification for individuals and social groups, as well as spaces for agency and expertise. By establishing reconciliation as a powerful global ideal, the reconciliation discourse made it possible for actors to position themselves in relation to this ideal, to identify with it – or oppose it – and to establish themselves as advocates – or opponents – of reconciliation in global politics. Furthermore, by producing truth-telling and truth commissions as standard technologies of reconciliation, the discourse created a space for political intervention as it establishes the creation and implementation of these commissions as a possible and appropriate political practice that can be promoted or carried out by these agents.

The empowerment of South African actors as expert reconcilers A first set of actors which speak and act in the name of reconciliation is constituted by South African individuals who were involved in the TRC process and now appear as ‘expert reconcilers’ (Moon, 2008: 2) in academic

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and political debates on the global level and in the reconciliation processes in several countries. These actors not only reproduce the reconciliation discourse and proliferate it to new settings, they were also empowered by this discourse. As the last chapter showed, the constructions of reconciliation in the global discourse elevated the South African experience and established it as an authoritative example and archetype of reconciliation. Not only the South African experience was authorised, however, but the individuals involved in this process were also empowered as authoritative experts and practitioners of reconciliation beyond the South African confines. In other words, the global agency of these individuals can be understood as a direct product of the reconciliation discourse. The global activity of South African practitioners manifests itself in several ways. Firstly, they became central participants of the academic debate on transitional justice and reconciliation. In the years after the South African TRC, several of its members began to write books and articles about their experiences, thus distributing their ideas and constructions to a more global audience. The most prominent examples for this are the TRC’s chairperson, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and his vice chair, Alex Boraine, who published numerous books or articles based on the South African experience (Boraine, 2006; Tutu, 1999; 2007). Apart from Tutu and Boraine, Charles Villa-Vicencio, the TRC’s national research director, or Paul van Zyl, the TRC’s former Secretary General, are now active members of the scientific transitional justice community and write about reconciliation and truthtelling in South Africa and beyond (van Zyl, 1999; Villa-Vicencio, 2001; Villa-Vicencio and Doxtader, 2004).15 The growing authority of South African actors in the field of reconciliation and transitional justice is also reflected in their participation in international conferences or workshops which bring together scholars and international political practitioners in order to discuss best practices and policy tools in times of political transition. Paul van Zyl or Jennifer Llewellyn, for instance, spoke about reconciliation at a meeting organised by the United Nations Peacebuilding Commission’s (PBC) Working Group on Lessons Learned.16 The conference, which was held in February 2008, eventually concluded that reconciliation was a central element of transitional justice, which required truth-telling processes to be initiated.17 Similarly, Alex Boraine was a central participant at the panel discussion United Nations approach to transitional justice held at the UN Secretariat on 2 December 2009, where reconciliation was discussed as a central element of post-conflict situations.18 The recent careers of Boraine, Tutu and van Zyl in transnational organisations moreover demonstrate how these local practitioners turned into global agents in the years after the TRC. Boraine is meanwhile the president of one of the most influential think-tanks on transitional justice, the International Center for Transitional Justice (see in more detail below), of which

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van Zyl is the executive Vice President. Similarly, Tutu was proclaimed the main patron of the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation (see in more detail below) which seeks to proliferate reconciliation in Africa. In their position as reconciliation experts, South African actors were also involved in the planning, preparation and implementation of TRCs in several countries. For instance, van Zyl was involved in the East Timorese TRC as a consultant in the drafting process of the commission (CAVR, 2005: Volume 1, 12–13; Huang and Gunn, 2004: 30; Schlicher, 2005: 14). Similarly, Yasmin Sooka, a former South African TRC member was recruited to work as an experienced commissioner for the Sierra Leonean TRC (see in more detail in the next chapter). Overall, South African reconciliation experts are involved in maintaining and promoting the global reconciliation discourse in several contexts. They participate in the linguistic articulation of this discourse through their publications, their speeches and their policy advice in several contexts. In addition, they contribute to the rearticulation of the reconciliation discourse on the level of practice, as the next chapter will show, as they often function as coaches and trainers of reconciliation for commissioners in new TRCs (see below) or, as the case of Sooka shows, continue to practice reconciliation as commissioners in other TRCs.

The rise of a transnational reconciliation industry Closely intertwined with the South African reconciliation experts is a second constituent group of reconciliation agents, which comprises several transnational organisations that are now important drivers and agents of reconciliation, globally as well as in local settings. This ‘reconciliation industry’ (Moon, 2008: 2) consists predominantly of think-tanks, research institutes and NGOs which operate at the interface between the international civil society and academia and were founded specifically in the name of reconciliation and transitional justice. Here the constitutive effect of the reconciliation discourse becomes particularly obvious. These organisations simply did not exist prior to the rise of the reconciliation discourse, but were founded as new agents in the name of reconciliation and transitional justice as a co-product and a driver of this discourse. Moreover, the think-tanks and NGOs emerging in the name of reconciliation also show how individuals are empowered as global political actors, as it is scholars, advocates and South African practitioners as well as members from other truth commissions in particular who took over the space of political action and intervention, who organised in the name of reconciliation and transitional justice and who thus turned into authoritative speakers and actors in global politics. For instance, in May 2000, only one year after the end of the South African TRC process, the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation (IJR) was founded in Cape Town, with the goal ‘[t]o cultivate the potential for reconciliation and

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justice after conflict through a range of carefully selected interventions’,19 and to ‘ensure that lessons learnt from South Africa’s transition from apartheid to democracy were taken into account as the nation moved ahead’.20 The IJR appointed the TRC’s former chair Archbishop Desmond Tutu as its main patron and employs a number of other former commissioners of the TRC (Moon, 2008: 2). Focusing on the African continent, the institute provides seminars and lessons to support reconciliation and transitional justice initiatives in its partner countries. Whereas the IJR is primarily focused on proliferating reconciliation within Africa, another institution, the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) has a more global reach. The ICTJ was founded in New York in 2001 with the goal to ’“promote justice, peace, and reconciliation”’ (quoted in Moon, 2008: 3) and to disseminate the South African experience to other transitional situations (Bell, 2009: 9). It employs numerous scholars and practitioners of reconciliation, among them Alex Boraine and Paul van Zyl from South Africa, or Priscilla Hayner, a leading scholar on truth commissions, and is often considered the most influential think-tank in the field of transitional justice (Hirsch, 2007; Moon, 2008). The centre promotes reconciliation in several ways. The centre’s political activities comprise, on the one hand, a policymakers programme which seeks to address ‘high-level decision makers’ and to ‘help influential international actors understand transitional justice and make decisions based on a cross-regional, holistic, and critical analysis of “best practices”’.21 In the context of the policymakers programme, the ICTJ holds close connections with the OHCHR whom it has provided with consultancy and expertise in regard to the establishment of TRCs in several country missions, for example in East Timor or Sierra Leone (ICTJ, 2002/2003; see also in more detail below). Moreover, the centre initiates and organises events which bring together reconciliation experts and international policy makers in order to exchange knowledge and discuss best practices in regard to reconciliation and transitional justice. Apart from its policymakers programme, the ICTJ also conducts direct field work and provides expertise and assistance in the development of transitional justice and reconciliation programmes in numerous countries. For instance, the centre has been involved in the creation and support of Truth and Reconciliation Commissions in Sierra Leone, East Timor, Liberia, or Kenya, and it has assisted and consulted UN agencies and local actors in developing ideas for transitional justice and reconciliation in Afghanistan.22 In Sierra Leone, for instance, the ICTJ organised several workshops and seminars where it brought together former commissioners from South Africa and other experienced countries, to educate and advise the local commissioners from Sierra Leone.23 In East Timor, the ICTJ’s vice president Ian Martin, together with UNTAET’s Transitional Administrator

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Sergio Vieira de Mello, functioned as a member of the truth commission’s advisory council which was mandated with ‘providing authoritative advice and feedback to National Commissioners’ (CAVR, 2003: 7). ICTJ staff were moreover central for the training of the East Timorese commissioners and, again, in particular taught them the ‘techniques of reconciliation’ by giving workshops and seminars on how to take statements from witnesses and how to conduct victims hearings (CAVR, 2003; ICTJ, 2003/2004: 32; Schlicher, 2005: 34). Overall, the ICTJ has emerged as a particularly powerful agent and expert of reconciliation and transitional justice in global politics. It is acknowledged as an expert organisation in the field and is frequently consulted and listened to by (transitional) governments, local actors and international agencies, in particular the OHCHR. By organising expert conferences and supplying expertise and training to local actors, the centre conveys the global language of reconciliation to new transitional settings and also spreads the more practical components of the reconciliation discourse by teaching local actors how to do reconciliation (see below). The positioning of the UN as an agent of reconciliation A third kind of actor which is active and visible in the global practice of reconciliation is the UN and, within this organisation, in particular the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).24 Clearly, neither the UN nor the OHCHR were founded specifically as agents for reconciliation. However, as the UN began to speak the reconciliation discourse, to define its own role in relation to it (for instance in the Security Council debates on post-conflict reconciliation; see in more detail the last chapter) and to act in the name of reconciliation in the context of its peacebuilding missions, it marked itself as an agent of reconciliation and has meanwhile emerged – often in cooperation with the agents described above – as a crucial promoter and manager of reconciliation processes in numerous transitional countries. The UN carried out its practical engagement in the field of reconciliation in particular in the context of its country-specific peace missions which have gradually evolved since the end of the Cold War from predominantly military monitoring missions to more complex operations involving increasingly political and social components (Durch and Berkman, 2006; Ramsbotham, 2000; Ryan, 2000). In particular, the so-called ‘third surge of peace operations’ (Durch and Berkman, 2006: 28), which began roughly in 1999 and comprised missions such as Sierra Leone, East Timor or Congo, was marked by growing UN aspirations in the field of state-building or transition management, which, in turn, increased the focus of such missions on the protection and promotion of human rights and social reconstruction

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(Bellamy, 2010: 152; Durch and Berkman, 2006: 5–6; Hannum, 2006: 13). In the context of this expansion of the scope of international peace missions, reconciliation efforts became part of several UN missions and are predominantly managed and overseen by the OHCHR, which, as the UN’s major human rights agency, is often involved in UN peace missions through its field presence in order to support the peace mission units on the ground (Hannum, 2006: 13–28; Lyck, 2009: 86–92). The UN’s engagement in the field of reconciliation began, roughly, with its intervention and participation in the Sierra Leonean TRC, which was the UN’s ‘first substantial undertaking in support of a transitional justice mechanism anywhere in the world’ (Dougherty, 2004: 41–42).25 The United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) was initiated under the banner of reconciliation (Security Council, 1997: 5) and comprised, as one of its peacebuilding components, the strong involvement of the OHCHR in the planning and organisation of the national TRC.26 In subsequent years, the world community’s engagement in the name of reconciliation grew steadily (Stahn, 2002) and from 2002 to 2009, the UN was involved in the initiation, planning, support or organisation and implementation of numerous TRCs such as in East Timor, Congo, Morocco, Liberia, Togo and Kenya.27 For instance, in the context of UNTAET the world organisation was centrally involved in initiating and planning the national truth commission CAVR. Despite a rather low public demand for such a commission, the OHCHR further pursued the idea and initiated the planning of this institution with the consultation of global reconciliation experts Priscilla Hayner and Paul van Zyl (CAVR, 2005: Volume 1, 12–13; Huang and Gunn, 2004: 30; OHCHR, 2000: 4; Rae, 2003: 30; Schlicher, 2005: 14). With the advice of these consultants, the OHCHR contributed to shaping the future commission and its processes by ‘provid[ing] assistance on various aspects of the draft regulation and in drafting an overall methodology for the Commission’ (OHCHR, 2001a: 88), and facilitating a training programme for the staff of the CAVR (OHCHR, 2002a: 94). In Togo, the OHCHR was involved in the creation of a Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission (TJRC), by organising national consultations on the establishment of such a commission. The consultations eventually resulted in the adoption of a Presidential Decree, which created the Togolese Commission (OHCHR, 2008: 75–76). Once the TJRC was created by the Council of Ministers, the OHCHR continued its engagement by providing substantial, financial and administrational support for the establishment and running of the commission (OHCHR, 2009: 77). In addition to its support of existing TRCs or TRCs under creation, the UN initiated or contributed to discussions on the establishment of a possible TRC in Afghanistan, Sudan, Nepal and Burundi.28 In Afghanistan, for instance, OHCHR ‘ran a series of training workshops on truth-seeking

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and reconciliation’ (OHCHR, 2006a: 65) in order to raise awareness and sensibility in regard transitional justice. In Sudan, the so-called Darfur Commission, an international commission of inquiry established by the Security Council, recommended to ‘create through a broad consultation process a truth and reconciliation commission once peace is established in Darfur’ (OHCHR, 2004: 94). Following the UN’s and in particular the OHCHR’s continuous engagement in truth and reconciliation processes in different countries, the OHCHR eventually formalised its principles and experiences in this field of activity in 2006 by publishing a report on best practices in regard to the creation of truth commissions in post-conflict countries (OHCHR, 2006b). The report, besides outlining basic principles and suggestions on the function, design and staffing of truth commissions, concludes that the UN and in particular the OHCHR should continue to engage in truth and reconciliation processes and to observe the adherence of international legal standards in the workings of truth commissions: The United Nations, particularly OHCHR, or others should get involved at that point where there is interest in such a possibility and a need for international assistance or useful comparative information. On some issues, such as the selection of commissioners and any possible consideration of immunities being incorporated into the commission’s mandate, there should be international oversight and insistence on key principles or legal standards. (OHCHR, 2006b: 34)

The global reconciliation coalition as an expert force of reconciliation in global politics The three groups of actors’ shared commitment to reconciliation, as expressed through their political activities, makes it possible to identify them as agents of reconciliation in global politics. South African reconciliation experts, the reconciliation industry and the OHCHR marked themselves as reconciliation agents through their mutual articulation of the reconciliation discourse, that is through the language they speak and the practices they carry out. Importantly, however, these groups’ shared commitment to reconciliation not only makes it possible for the researcher to identify them as agents of reconciliation, it also makes it possible for the actors themselves to identify each other as agents of a shared political project, to cooperate in its name and constitute a kind of advocacy network or discourse coalition in the name of reconciliation. Indeed, these trans- and international actors not only act but also cooperate in the name of reconciliation and transitional justice. They work together to develop draft legislations and mandates of TRCs in different countries, they recruit each other as experts or managers of reconciliation

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in several projects and they frequently get together to further discuss and develop reconciliation and transitional justice knowledge to apply it to new local settings. Overall, the reconciliation agents discussed above thus appear as a loose coalition for reconciliation in global politics. Again, this global reconciliation coalition is not to be understood as a mere effect of the reconciliation discourse. Rather, the coalition and the discourse are mutually constitutive. While the formation of the coalition was made possible by the proliferation of the reconciliation discourse, by the meanings and the practices it provides, the acts of articulation carried out by the members of the coalition simultaneously carry the hegemonic project of reconciliation forward and maintain the coalition itself. In fact, as Martin Nonhoff points out, the process of articulation through language and practice is at the center of any discourse coalition, as it is through their articulations that the different actors of the coalition create and constantly reproduce or modify their network as well as the meaning on which it is built (cf. Nonhoff, 2005: 188–202). ‘In coalitions subjects continuously have to be recruited anew for the subject positions of the hegemonic discourse they sustain’ (Nonhoff, 2005: 189).29 In other words, the discourse, in its constant rearticulation through language and practice, is itself the ‘concrete that keeps the coalition together’ (Nonhoff, 2005: 189).30 The members of the global reconciliation coalition constantly constitute and reproduce their coalition through several kinds of cooperation carried out by them in the name of reconciliation. Firstly, the members of the reconciliation coalition frequently get together in organised reconciliation workshops, where they reproduce and further articulate the reconciliation discourse. One example for an exchange on reconciliation between the epistemic community and international actors was the international conference Building a Future on Peace and Justice, which was held in Nuremberg, Germany, from 25 to 27 June 2007.31 The conference was co-hosted by the Governments of Germany, Jordan and Finland in cooperation with the ICTJ and the Crisis Management Initiative (CMI)32 and was meant to provide an opportunity for scholars and practitioners to meet and discuss possible ways and mechanisms of justice, peace and reconciliation (Ambos et al., 2009: vi). Focusing in particular on a perceived tension between peace and justice in transitional situations, ‘the conference aimed to produce concrete recommendations for action on the question as to whether it is possible to cope with possible tensions between peace and justice’.33 While reconciliation was not the overarching topic of all papers presented in the workshops and panels, it nevertheless played a prominent role in the debates of the conference. Reconciliation was the heading of one conference panel and can be found as a recurring theme in many texts which reproduced and proliferated several of the familiar constructions of reconciliation, such as truth-telling, amnesty or restorative justice.34

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Apart from such organised punctual events, the interconnectedness of the coalition members is also indicated by numerous personal overlaps between and across the different groups and organisations of the coalition, as the above paragraphs already suggest. Individual reconciliation experts from South Africa interfere with the academic community and several organisations as they participate in the academic debates and sit on the boards of directors of several think-tanks of reconciliation. Similarly, academic reconciliation experts as well as actors from South Africa frequently function as consultants of the OHCHR in questions of reconciliation, so that their knowledge on the issue is directly translated into political expertise. While the above mentioned cooperations and exchanges of the reconciliation coalition could be observed predominantly on the global level, the most important interventions of the coalition take place at the local level, that is in the post-conflict countries in which the members of the coalition intervene in order to support and organise the implementation of reconciliation policies. It is here, on the local level, that TRCs are established and supported by the coalition as technologies of reconciliation in order to heal society and make lasting peace possible. It is also here that the victims and the perpetrators of past human rights violations are produced by the reconciliation discourse as the protagonists of the reconciliation process. Overall, it is in particular through the proliferation of reconciliation to new local contexts, and thus through the interventions of the global reconciliation coalition, that the political project of reconciliation is sustained and rearticulated through new reconciliation policies, carried forward through the support and promotion of the coalition and spatially expanded by bringing reconciliation to more and more local settings. In the context of these activities, the members of the global reconciliation coalition emerge as an expert force of reconciliation that brings the global knowledge of reconciliation to a post-conflict country. Here, the global agents are the crucial subjects that are authorised to plan and implement the local reconciliation process. How this process takes place in local post-conflict politics will be illuminated in more detail in the next chapter.

Conclusion: practices and practitioners of reconciliation This chapter argued that the global proliferation of the reconciliation discourse manifests itself not only in the spread of the reconciliation language, but also in the diffusion of reconciliation practices and practitioners in global politics. Since the South African reconciliation process and the subsequent rise of a global reconciliation discourse, truth-telling in a truth commission as a central practice of reconciliation has become a widespread technology of post-conflict peacebuilding. This technologisation manifests itself, on the one hand, in the emergence of truth commissions

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as standard instruments in post-conflict settings. Truth commissions are set up in more and more transitional countries around the globe, and they are increasingly created irrespective of other transitional accountability mechanisms, such as national or international tribunals. This signals that truth commissions and reconciliation are considered important components of any post-conflict policy. On the other hand, the technologisation of reconciliation manifests in the emergence of truth commissions as standardised instruments of reconciliation. The language, practices and staffing politics of modern TRCs, as well as the way in which they establish the truth about the past grow increasingly similar across different commissions. The reconciliation discourse provides detailed and accepted truth claims about how to do reconciliation, and these prescriptions obviously play out in the mandates and practices of numerous commissions. The technologisation of reconciliation in global politics is accompanied and propelled by the emergence of a global reconciliation coalition, an expert group of trans- and international actors which intervene and cooperate in the name of reconciliation in global politics. The coalition comprises in particular reconciliation experts from South Africa, the transnational reconciliation industry of think-tanks and policy advice institutes and the OHCHR. While not all of these agents are new agents in global politics, their appearance as advocates of reconciliation can be understood as a co-product of the reconciliation discourse. Only because a discursively produced understanding of reconciliation as authoritative value existed and was intersubjectively shared was it possible for these actors to position themselves as advocates of reconciliation, to recognise each other as partners in a common project and to intervene in the name of reconciliation in several local situations. This chapter has focused particularly on the global aspects of the reconciliation discourse and examined what the global performance and the global patterns of this discourse look like. However, as already mentioned in the introduction to this chapter, the reconciliation discourse contains a global as well as a local dimension, both of which are crucial for its articulation and performance. While it is global insofar as reconciliation is globally spoken and practiced by global agents and across numerous countries, it is local insofar as the actual reconciliation practices of truth-telling and the creation of truth commissions take place in local post-conflict settings. In other words, while the reconciliation discourse is a global phenomenon its impact can be expected to be particularly strong in those societies which are to reconcile. This local performance of the reconciliation discourse and the global reconciliation coalition’s participation in it will be the focus of the next chapter, which examines in more detail how the reconciliation discourse performed in Sierra Leone.

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Notes 1 These and the following numbers were either taken from or calculated based on the database of the United States Institute for Peace, available at: www.usip.org/ publications/truth-commission-digital-collection [9 February 2012]. 2 Ibid. 3 The Abbreviation CAVR is derived from the Portuguese Name of the Commission, Comissão de Acolhimento, Verdade e Reconciliação de Timor-Leste. 4 See the website of the USIP: www.usip.org/publications/truth-commissionserbia-and-montenegro [10 February 2012]; see also Freeman (2004). 5 The Sierra Leonean reconciliation process will be examined in more detail below. 6 Similar constructions can also be found in the Final Report of Ghana’s TRC (Ghana, 2005: para. 1.6.2). 7 See the website of the USIP, available at: www.usip.org/resources/truthcommission-ghana [10 February 2012]. 8 See also the TRC Act of the Solomon Islands for similar formulations (Solomon Islands, 2008: Part II, 3 (1)). 9 See the website of the TRC of the Solomon Islands: http://solomonislands-trc. com/about-us/commissioners.html [10 February 2012]. 10 See the website of the Liberian TRC: www.trcofliberia.org/about/commissioners [10 February 2012]. 11 USIP, available at: www.usip.org/publications/truth-commission-chile-90 [10 February 2012]. 12 When the CAVR was created, East Timor was standing under the authority of United Nations Transitional Administration for East Timor (UNTAET), so the decision to create such a commission had to be authorised by this UN administrator (Gorjao, 2002; 2002). 13 See e.g. the TRC of the Solomon Islands (Solomon Islands, 2008: Preamble), the Sierra Leonean TRC (SLTRC, 2004d: Volume 1, 87–88) or the TJRC in Kenya (Kenya, 2008: 11). 14 Apart from the actors discussed here, the EU, for instance, has more recently also begun to engage more actively in questions of transitional justice and reconciliation (cf. Avello, 2008; Crossley-Frolick, 2009). In 2006, the Council of the European Union published a draft document which calls for more attention to transitional justice and reconciliation in the context of the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP). Two years later, in 2008, the European Commission publicly announced to support ‘additional assistance for reconciliation of societies affected by human rights abuses’. The Commission therefore established a funding facility of €12 million ‘to encourage reconciliation and help build sustainable peace in post crisis situations’, by providing policy advice as well as technical, logistical and financial assistance of individual transitional justice projects. The Draft Document on ‘Transitional Justice and ESDP’, published by the Council of the European Union on 19 June 2006, is available at: www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2004_2009/documents/fd/ droi20060828_conseil_/droi20060828_conseil_en.pdf [9 February 2012]; The

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Press Release, published by the European Commission on 1 July 2008, is available at: http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/08/1 057&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en [9 February 2012]). Other examples include the TRC’s architect Kader Asmal, Jennifer J. Llewellyn, member of the TRC’s Research Department, and Robert Howse who worked as an advisor to the South African Government on the legal framework for the TRC (Asmal, 2000; Llewellyn and Howse, 1999). The PBC’s Working Group on Lessons Learned is responsible to collect and discuss relevant issues and information about former experiences with peacebuilding and transition. See www.un.org/en/peacebuilding/doc_lessonslearned.shtml [9 February 2012]. For an overview of the conference, see the chair’s summary, available at: www.un.org/en/peacebuilding/pdf/doc_wgll/justice_times_transition/26_02_ 2008_chair_summary.pdf [9 February 2012]; For a summary of the statements, see also the report by the Institute for Global Policy, available at: http:// betterpeace.org/node/368 [9 February 2012]. See www.unrol.org/article.aspx?article_id=70 [10 February 2012]. www.ijr.org.za/about-us.php [9 February 2012]. See www.ijr.org.za/ [9 February 2012]. See the website of the ICTJ, previously available at: http://ictj.org/en/partners/ [7 June 2010]. The ICTJ’s revised website on its policy relations is available at: http://ictj.org/our-work/policy-relations [10 February 2012]. For an overview on the geographic engagement of the ICTJ, see the website of the ICTJ, available at: http://ictj.org/our-work [9 February 2012]. See the website of the ICTJ involvement in Sierra Leone, available at: http://ictj. org/our-work/regions-and-countries/sierra-leone [9 February 2012]. Of course, the OHCHR is not the only agency or actor within the UN which is active in the area of transitional justice and reconciliation. Apart from the OHCHR, the UNDP is also often involved in reconciliation activities in the field, while the members of peace missions, such as UNAMSIL in Sierra Leone or UNMIL in Liberia also usually contribute to reconciliation politics in their particular countries. Moreover, the UN Security Council emerged as an agent of reconciliation when discussing the role of the UN in the context of post-conflict reconciliation in 2004 (see the last chapter). However, the OHCHR is particularly visible in reconciliation politics in individual countries and is named in several TRC reports (CAVR, 2005: 31, 47; SLTRC, 2004d: 3, 9, 49) as well as, for instance, the ICTJ (see e.g. ICTJ, 2001/2002: 24) as a central partner in reconciliation processes. Before Sierra Leone, the UN was also involved in the El Salvadoran Truth Commission, which was established by the UN brokered Mexico Agreement in 1993 (Hayner, 2001: 38–40; Studemeister, 2001). While this, admittedly, also represents an act of participation of the world organisation in a truth commission, which is insofar similar to its engagement in later cases, it is nevertheless argued here that, at the time, El Salvador represented a singular act rather than a common practice of the UN. It was with and through

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The quest for reconciliation in global politics the globalisation of the reconciliation discourse that reconciliation practices became a steady component of UN interventions. The UN’s involvement in the Sierra Leonean reconciliation process will be examined in more detail in the next chapter. For an overview of the OHCHR’s engagement in these countries, see the OHCHR Annual Reports from 2002 to 2009; available at: www.ohchr.org/EN/ PublicationsResources/Pages/AnnualReportAppeal.aspx [9 February 2012]. An overview of the UN’s mission in Burundi can also be found in (Hannum, 2006: 73–74). See the OHCHR reports from 2002 to 2009, available at: www.ohchr.org/EN/ PublicationsResources/Pages/AnnualReportAppeal.aspx [9 February 2012]. ‘In Koalitionen müssen Subjekte kontinuierlich aufs Neue für die Subjektpositionen einer von ihnen gestützten diskursiven/hegemonialen FormationFormierung rekrutiert werden.’ ‘eine Art Zement, der die Koalition zusammen hält’. Another example would be the collaboration between the International Centre for Transitional Justice and the United Nations Peace Building Commission’s Working Group on Lessons Learned, as for example in the meeting on Justice in Times of Transition which was held in February 2008. As only few texts and summary reports on this conference are available however (see www.un.org/ en/peacebuilding/doc_lessonslearned.shtml [9 February 2012]), the documentation of this meeting did not seem particularly fertile for detailed exploration. The CMI is a Finnish-based non-profit organisation working in the field of conflict resolution and sustainable peace. For more information, see the website of the CMI, available at: www.cmi.fi/mission.html [9 February 2012]. See the website of the conference, available at: www.peace-justice-conference. info/peace_and_justice.asp [9 February 2012]. The participants of the conference included high-ranking politicians, such as the then German foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the Jordanian Minister of Justice, Sharif Al-Zu’bi or Luis Moreno-Ocampo, prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), as well as numerous transitional justice scholars. The texts that were presented at the conference as well as the speeches delivered are published in Ambos et al. (2009). The papers as well as information on the proceedings of the conference, for example the panel titles, are moreover available at: www.peace-justice-conference.info/documents.asp [9 February 2012].

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Bringing reconciliation to Sierra Leone: the global reconciliation discourse and its local performance The quest for reconciliation in global politics

Bringing reconciliation to Sierra Leone

The global reconciliation discourse performs in particular on the local level as it is here, in post-conflict societies, that the reconciliation discourse is deployed as a tool of post-conflict peacebuilding. This chapter focuses on the example of Sierra Leone in order to explore how the global reconciliation discourse is brought to new local contexts and how it performs there. In particular, it aims to illuminate how it is that the global constructions of reconciliation proliferate to a local situation, how they shape the dominant understanding of reconciliation there and how this understanding produces a certain kind of reality in the local post-conflict situation. The chapter argues that in the case of Sierra Leone the global reconciliation coalition was centrally involved in shaping the local reconciliation process according to global standards. It was the OHCHR together with the ICTJ and some South African actors who substantially contributed to the initiation, design and implementation of the Sierra Leonean TRC (SLTRC) so that the Sierra Leonean reconciliation process largely complied with the standards set by global technology. For instance, after supporting the launch of a reconciliation programme in Sierra Leone, the members of the coalition drafted the legal foundation of the SLTRC, they organised workshops in order to train local elites in how to do reconciliation and they launched information campaigns which aimed to spread the knowledge about the global constructions of reconciliation to the Sierra Leonean communities. As a result, the globally hegemonic interpretation of reconciliation in terms of public truth-telling and the healing of victims and perpetrators became the dominant understanding of reconciliation in Sierra Leone, despite some local resistance. Although some Sierra Leoneans advanced a radically different understanding of reconciliation in terms of forgetting and forgiving the past or understood the truth-telling practice as part of an exchange process rather than reconciliation, it was the globally

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hegemonic interpretation of reconciliation that became the official version of reconciliation in the country which was institutionalised in the SLTRC. Once the global reconciliation discourse marked the local understanding of reconciliation, this discourse began to operate in Sierra Leone by reshaping the country’s post-conflict reality. More specifically, this chapter argues that the reconciliation discourse performed by instituting a particular reconciliation reality in the country while simultaneously seeking to overwrite the social categories that were produced by the discourse on the civil war. Rather than, for instance, rebels, soldiers or civilian collaborators, the reconciliation discourse constructed the Sierra Leonean society in terms of the victims and perpetrators of past human rights violations. The following pages will outline these arguments in more detail. The next section focuses on the ways in which the global technology of reconciliation was brought to Sierra Leone and illuminates in particular the contributions of the global reconciliation coalition in shaping the reconciliation process in the country. The second section explores the workings of the reconciliation discourse after it had been officialised and institutionalised through the SLTRC. It focuses on the reinterpretation of the subject positions of Sierra Leone’s post-war society and shows how the subject positions provided by the discourse on the civil war, were step by step replaced by victims and perpetrators as the subjects of reconciliation through the language and the practices of the TRC.

The interventions of the global reconciliation coalition and the proliferation of the global discourse in Sierra Leone When the global reconciliation discourse was introduced to Sierra Leone in the late 1990s, the country was looking back on almost a decade of civil war. According to the literature, the war began in 1991 when a small armed force of about a hundred men, the so-called Revolutionary United Front (RUF), invaded the country from neighbouring Liberia, supported by the Liberian coup leader Charles Taylor (Berman and Labonte, 2006: 144–148). Citing corruption and bad governance as their reasons for taking up arms (ContehMorgan and Dixon-Fyle, 1999: 127; Hayner, 2007: 8; Pettersson, 2004: 8), the RUF could quickly gain ground and even garnered some popular support and additional recruits among the Sierra Leonean population while simultaneously gaining strength by capturing important diamond-mining towns in the country’s southeast (Berman and Labonte, 2006: 144). The following eight years were marked by the continuous fighting between changing Sierra Leonean governments, on the one hand, and the RUF and other sub-state armed groups, notably the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC),1 on the other hand, with no party being able to gain a clear victory (Berman and Labonte, 2006; Conteh-Morgan and Dixon-Fyle, 1999;

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Gberie, 2005; McDonald, 2000). After a coup against the Sierra Leonean government in the late 1990s, international actors intervened in the conflict. In 1997 the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) sent an armed unit ECOMOG2 in order to help bring the conflict to an end (Hirsch, 2001). One year later, in 1998, the UN sent a monitoring mission UNOMSIL to Sierra Leone (which was replaced by another mission UNAMSIL one year later) in order to support and monitor ECOMOG and bring the conflict parties closer to a political settlement (Dobbins et al., 2005). Under considerable international pressure, a negotiation process was launched in 1998 between the Sierra Leonean government and the RUF (Conteh-Morgan, 2010; Rashid, 2000). The negotiations lead to the so-called Lomé Peace Agreement, which was signed by both parties in Lomé, Togo, on 7 July 1999 (Hayner, 2007: 10–11; O’Flaherty, 2004: 52–55; Rashid, 2000).3 However, as several other peace initiatives before, the Lomé Agreement could only bring a temporary halt to the fighting and the conflict resumed only a few months later. A final end of the conflict was eventually achieved in May 2001 after considerable international military intervention with the Abuja II Peace Agreement (Dobbins et al., 2005: 142). Over its eleven years, the Sierra Leonean civil war claimed a large number of civilian deaths and lead to abuses of the civilian population. While the numbers of killed civilians vary considerably across different reports, it is estimated that altogether between 50,000 and 75,000 people were killed, around two million were displaced, tens of thousands of women and girls were raped and some 4,000 people became victims of forced amputation (Dougherty, 2004: 39; Lord, 2000; McDonald, 2000: 11–12).

Introducing the idea of a truth and reconciliation commission for Sierra Leone While the Lomé Agreement only brought a temporary end to the fighting, it is nevertheless important in the context of this book as it laid the foundations for reconciliation as a central transitional device of Sierra Leone. It was in the context of the Lomé negotiations that the global reconciliation discourse gained influence in the country. When the Sierra Leonean government and the RUF started cautious talks about a peaceful settlement of the conflict, UN human rights representatives and actors from international NGOs attended the negotiations while simultaneously getting together with actors from the Sierra Leonean civil society to discuss claims and suggestions for the peace process. It was here that the idea of a reconciliation programme for Sierra Leone gained ground and was fed into the Lomé negotiations, crucially propelled and supported by the members of the global reconciliation coalition. A first initiative for a truth and reconciliation commission for Sierra

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Leone was launched by international NGOs, such as the United Kingdom based organisation Article 19.4 In a press release from 1998, the NGO called on the Sierra Leonean government to establish a truth commission which could ‘assist efforts to find the right balance between the twin requirements of justice and reconciliation’ (Article 19, 2000: 11). Soon, other trans- and international actors joined the calls for reconciliation. The UN became a major driving force of the process by coordinating disparate reconciliation initiatives through a number of meetings and workshops in which different ideas on and demands for reconciliation were collected and translated into a set of concrete recommendations and demands for political action. In early 1999, for instance, UNOMSIL convened a meeting of the so-called Human Rights Committee, a coordinating body of international and non-governmental organisations, which sought to elaborate recommendations regarding the peace process (Article 19, 2000: 13). The Committee criticised the idea of a blanket amnesty and suggested the establishment of a Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission (TJRC), for which the UN should provide expertise based on commissions that had been established in other countries (Article 19, 2000: 13–14; O’Flaherty, 2004: 49). The results of the conference were eventually communicated to President Kabbah in a statement, which already displays some of the features of the global reconciliation discourse. It reads: [T]he Human Rights Community proposes the creation of a Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission in Sierra Leone which will, inter-alia, enable the country to cope with the aftermath of the crisis by hearing the truth directly from perpetrators of gross human rights violations, help survivors of violations cope with their trauma, and recommend judicial prosecutions for some of the worst perpetrators of the violations. (quoted in O’Flaherty, 2004: 50)

The wording of the statement shows how the initiative of the Committee fell back on and reproduced central elements of the global reconciliation discourse. The idea of reconciliation was causally related to truth-telling and the healing of trauma, and survivors (not yet victims) and perpetrators were constructed as the central subjects of the process. Interestingly, the statement suggested a combined truth and justice commission which rearticulates the disputed construction of justice and reconciliation as combinable transitional objectives, while nevertheless demanding punishment only ‘of the worst perpetrators’, so a limited amnesty law for minor crimes was implicitly accepted. After these first steps towards a truth commission in the name of reconciliation and justice, the UN further pursued its proliferation of reconciliation, when the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (HCHR) Mary Robinson visited Freetown to meet with national officials and human rights activists. Here, Robinson together with delegates of the human rights community

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and the government signed the so-called Human Rights Manifesto which declared that ‘the establishment of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission will be a key step’ in the country’s quest for ‘peace with justice and respect for human rights’.5 In the manifesto, the HCHR reaffirmed her commitment to the reconciliation initiative and pledged to grant full technical assistance for the establishment for a truth commission (O’Flaherty, 2004: 34–35). The demand for a truth commission in the name of reconciliation was then fed into the official peace negotiations, where it was further debated and eventually agreed on in the Lomé Agreement, which thus represents a first institutionalisation of the reconciliation discourse in Sierra Leone. The Lomé Agreement established reconciliation as a pressing goal or an ‘imperative need’ (Sierra Leone, 1999: Preamble) of the Sierra Leonean society and articulated the amnesty provision and the creation of a TRC as central steps towards reconciliation. According to the Lomé Agreement, no judicial action should be taken against any member of the combatant groups in order to ‘consolidate the peace and promote the cause of national reconciliation’ (Sierra Leone, 1999: Article 9). Moreover, fully in tune with the global reconciliation discourse, the accord called for the establishment of a TRC to address impunity, break the cycle of violence, provide a forum for both the victims and perpetrators of human rights violations to tell their story, [and] get a clear picture of the past in order to facilitate genuine healing and reconciliation. (Sierra Leone, 1999: Article 26)

The interventions of the global reconciliation coalition in the planning and implementation stages of the SLTRC As the globally hegemonic construction of reconciliation marked the Sierra Leonean discourse, the members of the global reconciliation coalition simultaneously emerged as authoritative experts and managers of reconciliation. The Lomé Agreement as well as the parliamentary act that inaugurated the SLTRC explicitly fixed the involvement of international actors, in particular the OHCHR, in the planning of the TRC (Sierra Leone, 1999: Article 26; Sierra Leone, 2000). Throughout the planning and implementation stage of the SLTRC, trans- and international actors involving scholars of transitional justice, the ICTJ (from its inception in 2001 onwards) and UN delegates, specifically from the OHCHR, were fundamentally involved in the SLTRC process and further shaped it according to the standards of the global reconciliation technology (cf. Pettersson, 2004: 11). In late 1999 and early 2000, the OHCHR began with the drafting of the legal statute of the SLTRC for which the Lomé Agreement provided no guidelines. The drafting process was advised by Priscilla Hayner, an influential transitional justice scholar and expert on truth commissions

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who was then working as a political consultant to the OHCHR (Article 19, 2000: 15–16; Hayner, 2007: 27, fn 57; Hayner, 2004: 1, fn 4). While workshops, seminars and public consultations were organised in order to involve the local civil society and provide local ownership, the statute was mainly drafted by the delegates of the OHCHR and their text, with hardly any changes, eventually became the official legislation of the TRC which was institutionalised in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Act 2000 (hereafter: TRC Act) (cf. O’Flaherty, 2004: 56; McDonald, 2000: 13). Again, the text of the TRC Act clearly displays the globally hegemonic constructions of reconciliation in terms of public truth-telling and the healing of victims and perpetrators. Moreover, corresponding to the global constructions, it established reconciliation in contrast to and as a means against impunity. According to this document, the TRC was mandated ‘to address impunity, to respond to the needs of the victims, to promote healing and reconciliation and to prevent a repetition of the violations and abuses suffered’ (Sierra Leone, 2000: Article 6). A central function of the commission, according to the Act, should be: to help restore the human dignity of victims and promote reconciliation by providing an opportunity for victims to give an account of the violations and abuses suffered and for perpetrators to relate their experiences, and by creating a climate which fosters constructive interchange between victims and perpetrators. (Sierra Leone, 2000: Article 6)

Once the legal foundation was set, the OHCHR together with UNAMSIL took the necessary action for the establishment of the truth and reconciliation commission. As the SLTRC was overseen by the OHCHR as one of its projects, the UN agency functioned as an umbrella organisation which controlled 95 per cent of the commission’s funding and was involved in its administration and activities on all levels (Dougherty, 2004: 42; Hayner, 2007: 3; Schabas, 2006: 23). One crucial competence of the OHCHR, as decided by the TRC Act, was the appointment of the international commissioners. The Lomé Agreement had determined that the SLTRC should consist of national and international commissioners and it was up to the UN agencies to appoint the international staff (Sierra Leone, 1999: Article 26; 2000). The selection made by the OHCHR reflects the general acknowledgement of scholarly reconciliation experts and South African expert reconcilers that is produced by the reconciliation discourse. While one of the three international commissioners appointed by the OHCHR was the former Gambian Minister of Education, Satang Jow, the others were members of the global reconciliation coalition: William Schabas, a Canadian Human Rights Professor and influential member of the epistemic community and Yasmin Sooka, a former South African TRC member who had been the vice chair of

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the human rights violations committee in South Africa (Dougherty, 2004: 42; Hayner, 2004: 2; SLTRC, 2004d: Volume 5, 1). The OHCHR was not only involved in the central decisions on the staffing of the SLTRC, it also tried to spread the official reconciliation discourse to the local communities. In 2001, the OHCHR together with some local NGOs and with the support of UNAMSIL sponsored a public awareness campaign which organised weekly press briefings and held seminars and information workshops in the town halls of the provinces (Berman and Labonte, 2006: 19; Dougherty, 2004: 46; OHCHR, 2002b: 18). These workshops and information sessions were meant to spread the official reconciliation discourse and to ‘educate the people on the benefits of the truth seeking process and the role the TRC could play in helping people recover from their suffering’ (SLTRC, 2004d: Volume 1, 160). In order to reach people of all levels of society, numerous kinds of media were used and radio jingles were created for instance, which translated the truth-telling goals of the TRC into Krio, Sierra Leone’s lingua franca, ‘urging survivors and perpetrators to “Come blow your main [mind]”, to vent their thoughts and feelings’ (Shaw, 2007: 184). While the OHCHR was insofar active in proliferating the global constructions of reconciliation to the local communities, other agents of the global reconciliation coalition contributed to this diffusion by educating the local elites in how to do reconciliation. The ICTJ for example was involved in the country since the TRC’s very establishment. It provided expertise on how to conduct victim and perpetrator hearings, thereby reproducing the central importance of these practices for achieving reconciliation and further proliferating the standardised practices of the global reconciliation technology. The ICTJ organised several workshops and seminars where it brought together former commissioners from South Africa and other experienced countries, so that those expert reconcilers might share their knowledge with Sierra Leoneans.6 Reporting on its activities in Sierra Leone, the ICTJ states to have ‘provided the TRC with specialised trainings on public hearings, assistance in developing approaches to the community-based reconciliation and the reparations program’.7

Reconciliation through truth-telling? The technologisation of reconciliation in Sierra Leone The interventions of the global reconciliation coalition in Sierra Leone shaped the official Sierra Leonean reconciliation discourse according to the standards provided by the global reconciliation technology and brought the globally hegemonic constructions of reconciliation into the country. The language and the practices of the SLTRC reflect the general parameters set by the global reconciliation discourse.

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First indications for the reproduction of this language were already given by the formulations of the Lomé Agreement and the TRC Act, which, as quoted above, closely relate reconciliation with truth-telling and the healing of victims and perpetrators (see above). The familiar constructions of reconciliation as truth-telling or restorative justice also reappear in the final report of the SLTRC and throughout its working. For instance, several passages of the final report reproduce the association between reconciliation, acknowledgement, forgiveness and healing: Reconciliation is strengthened through acknowledgement and forgiveness … Those who have confronted the past will be able to forgive others for the wrongs committed against them. Where the act of forgiveness is genuine it does not matter whether the perpetrator declines to express remorse. Learning to forgive those who have wronged us is the first step we can take towards healing out traumatised nation. (SLTRC, 2004d: Volume 1, 3)

Other passages similarly make explicit the SLTRC’s assumption that knowing the past, reconciliation and the healing of traumas are closely related. For instance, in the introduction to the first Volume, the report states that Sierra Leoneans as a nation had a need to express and acknowledge the suffering which took place, a need to relate their stories and experiences, a need to know who was behind the atrocities, a need to explain and contextualize decisions and conduct, a need to reconcile with former enemies, a need to begin personal and national healing and a need to build accountability in order to deal with impunity. (SLTRC, 2004d: Volume 1, 7)

The language of reconciliation through public truth-telling, healing, forgiveness and catharsis was also present during the public hearings that were conducted throughout the country as the major practices of reconciliation. Observers report that the hearing locations were prepared to communicate the SLTRC’s central message of reconciliation through truthtelling. As Rosemary Shaw reports, the venues were decorated with banners and posters which underscored the positive outcomes of truth-telling for peace and reconciliation (Shaw, 2007: 199; 2005: 8). The speeches delivered by the commissioners during the opening ceremonies of the hearings were another mouthpiece of the reconciliation discourse and included the key refrain ‘that in the interest of peace and reconciliation, people should come forward and testify to the Commission without fear of reprisals or prosecution’ (Kelsall, 2005: 366). The SLTRC’s chairman, Bishop Joseph Humper, often paraphrased Archbishop Tutu’s metaphor of truth-telling as the cleansing of infected wounds (Shaw, 2007: 200), thereby articulating truth-telling as a means of psychological healing and reconciliation. As Kelsall reports, during the hearings the testifiers and the audience were frequently exposed to the hegemonic reconciliation discourse, and often victims were urged to reconcile with their perpetrators. In one hearing for

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instance, according to Kelsall, Bishop Humper called on Sierra Leoneans to speak out in public in order to heal and reconcile:

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Come and say, ‘I’m ready to talk’ … so that you have the psychological peace of mind … Why do you hide from yourself? … You have the greatest opportunity this week: The opportunity to be haled; the opportunity to reconcile with yourself; with your neighbour and with the community … Reveal truth today for peace. (Humper quoted in Kelsall, 2005: 367)

Not only the construction of reconciliation in terms of truth-telling and healing, but also the linguistic reliance on victims and perpetrators of human rights violations as the central subjects of reconciliation points at the alignment of the Sierra Leonean reconciliation language with the standards set by the global reconciliation technology. Throughout the SLTRC’s working process, victims and perpetrators were rearticulated as the central subjects of reconciliation. For instance, the final report presents these subjects as the primary participants and targets of the commission’s work: The work of the Commission has laid the foundation for reconciliation and healing for all those affected by the civil war. Victims and perpetrators are beginning to find a common ground on which to stand, live and develop the country together in peace and harmony. (SLTRC, 2004d: Volume 1, 2)

In line with the standards of the global reconciliation technology, the SLTRC defined those subject positions according to the categories provided by international human rights law and international humanitarian law. As the SLTRC report notes in its chapter on ‘concepts’: The Commission adopts the definition of a victim that is now generally accepted in international law, ‘A person is a “victim” where as a result of acts or omissions that constitute a violation of international human rights and humanitarian law norms, that person, individually or collectively, suffered harm, including physical or mental injury, emotional suffering, economic loss, or impairment of that person’s fundamental legal rights’. (SLTRC, 2004d: Volume 1, 87)

Similarly, perpetrators are defined according to international human rights standards as ‘individuals who are responsible for violations of human rights and international humanitarian law’ (SLTRC, 2004d: Volume 1, 88). Overall, the Sierra Leonean TRC adopted the central subject categories provided by the global reconciliation technology and it also used the global standard, namely the perpetration or suffering of human rights violations, as its overarching measure to determine which individuals would be counted as the one or the other. Not only the SLTRC’s language, but also its practices resemble the standards of the global reconciliation technology, in particular the centrality of the public hearings which functioned as rituals of reconciliation and healing. The ritual character of these hearings becomes apparent once one

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looks at the role the hearings play in the overall SLTRC process. The SLTRC’s investigation, that is its efforts to investigate past abuses in order to write an official history, were primarily conducted through statement taking in the towns and provinces and through focused research. The gathering of statements about the crimes and violations began in December 2002. It was largely carried out by statement takers that travelled through the country and talked to people, but Sierra Leonans also had the possibility to download statement forms online and send them to the responsible departments (Schabas, 2006: 25–26; SLTRC, 2004d: Volume 1, 92–94). The statement takers were supported by a research team which tried to systematise the information from the statements, to create a database and to locate victims and perpetrators in order to organise and prepare the public hearings (SLTRC, 2004d: Volume 1, 95–97). The hearings, which started in April 2003 (Schabas, 2006: 26), were therefore not crucial for the collection of relevant data and the writing of a common history in the final report. Most of the information had already been obtained. So, the hearings did not serve the collection of data and information, but rather the ritual treatment of individual victims or perpetrators. As Pettersson points out, ‘[t]he main objective of the hearings therefore seemed to be the process in itself, the public disclosure of what happened to the victims as well as the perpetrators’ acknowledgement of their acts’ (Pettersson, 2004: 12). Accordingly, the hearings can be interpreted as reconciliation rituals, where the commissioners and the public could observe processes of forgiveness and catharsis. As Jörg Petterson points out, ‘the combination of an official body (the TRC) actually listening to the victims and the perpetrators publicly apologizing to the victims aimed to create a cathartic experience leading to reconciliation’ (Pettersson, 2004: 12). This experience was further underlined through the language spoken during the hearings, which explicitly emphasised the chance and necessity of forgiveness and reconciliation, often reinforced through religious undertones by the Chairman of the Commission, Bishop Humper (see above; cf. Pettersson, 2004). Overall, the public hearings and the language of the Sierra Leonean TRC process illustrate how the global reconciliation discourse is reproduced in local post-conflict situations. The public hearings together with the dominant language of reconciliation and healing and the creation of TRCs in accordance with the ‘best international practice on the subject’ (OHCHR, 2001b: 12) have turned into a standardised global technology of reconciliation which is applied to ever new cases and local settings and is hardly ever questioned as its plausibility in the context of a reconciliation process is taken for granted.

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The global technology of reconciliation and local resistance Yet, while the language and the practices established by the global discourse crucially shaped the official reconciliation policy in Sierra Leone, these interpretations were not easily accepted by all Sierra Leoneans. Instead, several acts of resistance were undertaken by some local communities. Firstly, many people from the local communities in Sierra Leone did not share the construction of reconciliation through truth-telling and rather related reconciliation to the practice of ‘forgive and forget’ (ICG, 2002: 3; Shaw, 2005; 2007). As Rosalind Shaw reports after her ethnographic study in several communities, when asked about reconciliation and the SLTRC people kept on repeating the English expression ‘forgive and forget’ and argued that ‘healing and reconciliation depend on forgetting rather than truth-telling’ (Pettersson, 2004: 10; Shaw, 2007: 184). The competing interpretations of reconciliation in terms of forgetting and forgiving suggest that people in Sierra Leone did not reject the desirability of reconciliation itself, but that they doubted the close relationship between reconciliation and truth-telling that is established by the global discourse and was propagated by the SLTRC. Similarly, the reconciliation rituals and gestures that were customised in the TRC hearings, such as shaking hands or hugs, were often criticised as typically western models which had only little relevance to Sierra Leoneans and did not respond to the cultural needs and traditions of the country. For instance, the Working Group on Truth and Reconciliation, a Sierra Leonean civil society network that aims to spread the key findings of the TRC to the wider public,8 criticises that ‘“western” models of reconciliation were reportedly employed, such as handshakes or hugs, which had little relevance to the Sierra Leonean context’.9 The criticism and resistance voiced by these people puts in doubt the general validity of the globally hegemonic constructions of reconciliation and the effect of such reconciliation processes in regard to the pacification of post-conflict countries. While the proliferation of the reconciliation discourse apparently opens spaces for action and interventions for global and some local actors in the context of local reconciliation processes, it can be questioned whether these technologies eventually lead to the desired and expected outcome of reconciliation. Secondly, competing constructions to the global reconciliation discourse not only existed in regard to the meaning of ‘reconciliation’, but the very practice of public truth-telling was also reinterpreted by the local population. Many of those who agreed to testify before the commission did not consider their participation in the hearings as a step towards catharsis, healing and reconciliation, but rather as a component of an exchange process which would bring them material benefits. Numerous people who testified in the hearings expected payments or other kinds of material assistance

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for their participation and explicitly voiced this demand when asking the commissioners whether they would get compensation for their cooperation (Pettersson, 2004: 12; Shaw, 2007: 197).10 The expectations of the local population to be paid for their testimony were also noticed by several statement takers who report, according to Shaw, that ‘most of those who gave statements viewed this practice of textualizing their memories of violence as part of an exchange that would bring them material benefits’ (Shaw, 2007: 197). The requests for monetary compensation came so frequently that in one of the hearings, one of the commissioners felt under pressure to explicitly decline any request for compensation when describing the hearings procedures in the opening session: The main purpose of the TRC is to bring about peace and reconciliation … We are asked also to respond to needs of victims, to find out what can be done about them and I must make it very clear at the very beginning here that we are not going to give money to those victims. (SLTRC, 2004c: 347)

Finally, the strongest act of local resistance against the reconciliation technology symbolised by the SLTRC can be seen to be expressed by the boycott of the TRC process itself which was manifested in the refusal of whole communities to participate in the hearings. In some communities, as Shaw reports, survivors and witnesses of human rights violations mutually agreed not to testify before the commission, often with the purpose to protect former child soldiers from their villages. Instead of participating in the official reconciliation process, they rather initiated their own reintegration rituals, e.g. through church ceremonies, which were, however, often interrupted through the SLTRC’s official reconciliation hearings (Shaw, 2005: 8–9). Overall, the reactions of the local communities to the practices of the SLTRC suggest that there was considerable friction between the global reconciliation discourse that was officially spoken and practiced by the SLTRC and the understandings of reconciliation that were held by the local communities (cf. Shaw, 2007). The dominant construction of reconciliation through truth-telling was not accepted by all local communities, nor was the practice of truth-telling in the SLTRC hearings interpreted as a genuine reconciliation practice. In other words, what was propagated and implemented by the global reconciliation coalition as a genuine reconciliation policy was not generally accepted as such by the local population, even though the sensitisation campaign organised by the OHCHR and some local NGOs did increase the support of several people towards the SLTRC, as the International Crisis Group (ICG) reports (ICG, 2002: 4).

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The making of Sierra Leoneans as victims and perpetrators of past human rights violations While the globally hegemonic constructions of reconciliation were thus not uncontested, they were nevertheless powerful as the global reconciliation discourse became a central component of the country’s transitional policy. The global constructions of reconciliation were institutionalised through the Sierra Leonean TRC and thus became the official interpretation of reconciliation in post-war Sierra Leone. As chapter 1 argued, discourses are powerful constructions of social reality in that they constitute social reality by producing the subjects, objects and practices which we take as given in social life. It is only through discourse that individuals can make sense of their identity, their surroundings and the things they can or cannot do. However, discourses are not only constitutive for social reality in general, but they are constitutive of a particular, yet contingent, interpretation of social reality which simultaneously excludes and represses other interpretations that would have been equally possible. Analysing discourse therefore implies exploring the particular version of social reality which is instituted as well as alternative constructions which are repressed by it. In her critical account of the South African TRC, Claire Moon convincingly argues that, in South Africa the reconciliation discourse performed in that it abolished the old apartheid subject positions – ‘whites’, ‘coloreds’, ‘Indians’ and ‘blacks’ – and the TRC replaced these with what it claimed to be racially crosscutting categories of victim and perpetrator, thus instituting a new mode of national identification. (Moon, 2008: 102)

A similar argument can now be made in regard to Sierra Leone. Here, the reconciliation discourse performed by instituting a particular reconciliation reality in the country while simultaneously seeking to overwrite the social categories that were produced by the discourse on the war. Rather than, for instance, the rebels, soldiers or civilian collaborators of the war, the reconciliation discourse sought to construct the Sierra Leonean society as the victims and perpetrators of past human rights violations.

Rebels, soldiers and civilian collaborators: the subject positions of the discourse on the war When the global reconciliation discourse was brought to Sierra Leone in 1998 and politically implemented in the shape of the TRC from 2002 to 2004, the civil war had left its traces in the Sierra Leonean society, not only in the shape of high numbers of deaths and destruction, but also in the shape of the specific social reality it produced. In particular, it constructed a post-war

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Sierra Leonean society which was still understood in terms of the subject positions that were produced and marked by the discourse on the civil war. In the literature, the Sierra Leonean war is commonly interpreted as a war that was fought between anti-government ‘rebel’ groups, notably the RUF on the one hand, and pro-government forces, in particular the ‘soldiers’ of the Sierra Leonean army (SLA) on the other (cf. Conteh-Morgan and Dixon-Fyle, 1999; Gberie, 2005; Hirsch, 2001; Mustapha and Bangura, 2010; Pham, 2006). Accordingly, one comes across the identity labels of ‘rebel’ and ‘soldier’ as the major subject positions to make sense of the active participants of the war. Furthermore, several locally organised self-defence forces such as the so-called Kamajors or the nationwide organisation of the Civil Defence Force (CDF), a national organisation of local vigilante groups, which fought mainly on the side of the government, are often mentioned as major participants of the conflict. The non-combatants are commonly divided along different lines; on the one hand, one encounters the almost neutral subject of the ‘civilian’ while at the same time one also comes across the category of the ‘collaborator’ which was used to label individuals who had allegedly sided with the one or the other party of the conflict. Importantly, this narrative on the civil war and the subject positions produced by it were shared not only in the scientific literature on Sierra Leone, but also among Sierra Leoneans themselves. As the testimonies given by individual Sierra Leoneans in the public hearings of the SLTRC suggest, Sierra Leoneans made sense of the past conflict and their experiences in it predominantly in terms of the subject positions provided by this discourse on the war. When asked about the people that were responsible for their suffering, numerous witnesses referred to ‘the rebels’ as their violators and referred to ‘the soldiers’ or ‘the Kamajors’ as other participant groups of the war (see e.g. SLTRC, 2004a: 12; 2004c: 651, 659, 661). For instance, when asked about the ‘group of people’ who killed the brother of one witness, the witness responded by saying that ‘[t]hey were rebels’ (SLTRC, 2004a: 12). Another witness reported about falling into ‘a rebel ambush’ in which his hands were cut off (SLTRC, 2004a: 2), while yet another one told his story according to which ‘[t]he rebels attacked our village at about 1.30 a.m.’ (SLTRC, 2004c: 651). He went on to describe other subjects of the incident, such as his own group, the Kamajors, and the soldiers: ‘I was initiated as a Kamajor. At that time, we had a cordial working relationship with the soldiers. We went to the war fronts together. When chasing rebels, if they dropped their guns, we’ll pass them on to the soldiers’ (SLTRC, 2004c: 651). Another witness used the familiar subject categories of the rebel and the soldier produced by the narrative on the war when reporting about his village being destroyed by ‘the government soldiers and the rebels who were engaged in combat’ (SLTRC, 2004a: 52). Finally, one more testimony that is

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well illustrative of the subject positions of the rebel and the soldier is that of a witness who told the story of his brother and the brother’s children being arrested by soldiers, because they were taken to be rebels

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they were arrested by soldiers and ECOMOG and locked up to be killed the next day. My brother told them that he was not a rebel and that he had a store at Guard Street and that the kids were his children, but the ECOMOG were still reluctant to release my brother and his children. (SLTRC, 2004a: 34)

While the soldier and the rebel were thus central categories of the discourse on the war, they were not the only identities produced by it and at least two more categories, the civilian and the collaborator, can be distilled, which helped Sierra Leoneans to make sense of their past and their post-war identity. For instance, one member of the CDF spoke about the CDF’s attempts to evacuate and protect civilians from a rebel ambush: ‘in 1997, when the rebels entered, we were not expecting them … We told civilians to leave the area … Wherever we were deployed we told the civilians to leave the area and find a safer place for them’ (SLTRC, 2004a: 125). Similar statements were made by members of the Kamajors, who reported for example that soldiers were often threatening civilians just like rebels did: They [the Sierra Leonean army] were causing many problems for the civilians. That forced us to take up the challenge and God sent the initiation to help the people of this country … In my own thinking the soldiers were giving the civilians a lot of problems … They were behaving like rebels to the civilians. They were looting, killing innocent people. That’s why God send the initiator and that was why many people joined the Kamajor. (SLTRC, 2004c: 653)

In contrast to these seemingly innocent civilians who were to be protected, those civilians that were deemed to be collaborators were not protected but punished by rebels, soldiers and Kamajors alike. As one witness reports for instance, his business partners were captured by the CDF as they were held to be rebel collaborators: ‘When I arrived at the checkpoint, a group of Kamajors had arrested Mohamed Conteh and Hassan. They were accused of being rebel collaborators, who bought food for the rebels’ (SLTRC, 2004c: 808). Similarly, in one of the institutional hearings, one witness described the second phase of the war in the following terms: In this phase, the civilians were targets of both the rebels and soldiers. Rebels claimed that the civilians were disclosing their whereabouts to soldiers and soldiers accused the civilians of being rebel collaborators. (SLTRC, 2004b: 175–176)

The passages from the testimonies given above suggest that the subject positions produced by the discourse on the civil war still coined the way in which Sierra Leoneans made sense of their society, even after the war had ended. The stories about the past were populated by rebels, soldiers,

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Kamajors, civilians and collaborators which suggests that, at the time the SLTRC began its work, no new categories were available for framing and understanding the (post-)war society. In sum then, the subject positions produced by the discourse on the war served as a dominant template with which Sierra Leoneans continued to make sense of their past, their society and their own identities even after the civil war had come to an end. The discourse on the war thus produced a post-war society that was still understood in terms of the polarised subject positions and the antagonistic relationships that were dominant during the war.

Producing and naturalising victims and perpetrators of past human rights violations It was in this post-conflict reality that the reconciliation discourse came to operate and reshape the subjects of Sierra Leone’s post-conflict reality. More specifically, rather than rebels, soldiers, civilians or collaborators, the reconciliation discourse produced victims and perpetrators of past human rights violations as the subjects of the post-conflict social order. Thereby, it sought to abolish and overwrite the polarised subject positions produced by the past conflict and to replace them with the subject positions of the reconciliation discourse. Analytically, as outlined in chapter 1, the discursive production or marking of a subject can be divided into two steps. Firstly, the discourse has to provide subject positions with which social actors can identify; in other words, it has to name certain signifiers which serve as placeholders for the subjects. Secondly, it is necessary that social actors actually identify with these subject positions, that is that they step into the positions provided by the discourse. In the case of the reconciliation discourse, two mechanisms can be observed that support this process of subject production. On the one hand, it carved out the discursive positions of victim and perpetrator though the language spoken by the SLTRC, thus offering points of identification for social actors. On the other hand, through the procedures and practices of the TRC, it provided the processes and mechanisms by which social actors could step into these subject positions so that they were ‘interpellated’ (Epstein, 2008: 94) by these new identities. While the mechanisms and practices which supported the identification of individuals with these subject positions will be dealt with in the next sub-section, this sub-section first discusses the production of the subject positions, that is of the signifiers of the victim and perpetrator through the reconciliation discourse. Victims and perpetrators of human rights violations were the central subject positions in terms of which reconciliation was construed in Sierra Leone. Throughout the SLTRC process, documents and commissioners frequently referred to the ‘victims and perpetrators of human rights

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violations’ thus presupposing these categories as the central subjects of the reconciliation process. The Lomé agreement already stated, for example, that the reconciliation process should serve ‘both the victims and perpetrators of human rights violations [as a forum] to tell their story, get a clear picture of the past in order to facilitate genuine healing and reconciliation’ (Sierra Leone, 1999: Article 26). It thereby took it as given that the victims and perpetrators of human rights violations existed in Sierra Leone, that they were central subjects of the post-conflict society and that it was these actors who could and should be the protagonists of the reconciliation process. Similar articulations were made in the TRC Act, throughout the SLTRC process and in particular in the final report. For instance, the final report speaks about ‘victims and perpetrators’ as the subjects who were now able ‘to find a common ground on which to stand, live and develop the country together in peace and harmony’ (SLTRC, 2004d: Volume 1, 2; cf. SLTRC, 2004d: Volume 1, 85). Moreover, it establishes the whole reconciliation process as one between victims and perpetrators in that it is seen to function ‘as a catharsis for constructive interchange between the victims and perpetrators of human rights violations and abuses’ (SLTRC, 2004d: Volume 1, 77). Overall, the subject positions of victims and perpetrators of past human rights violations were not only provided as central categories and presumed identities of reconciliation in Sierra Leone. As William Schabas points out, the references to these subject positions were so frequent, that it seemed ‘that these two groups made up the Commission’s principal constituency’ (Schabas, 2006: 24). While the mere naming of victims and perpetrators in the spoken and written language of the SLTRC produced these signifiers as linguistic placeholders of the subjects of reconciliation, the credibility and plausibility of these subject positions for Sierra Leone was further strengthened through the way in which the SLTRC interpreted and narrated the truth about Sierra Leone’s past. By constructing the civil war in terms of the ‘violations and abuses of human rights and international humanitarian law related to the armed conflict’ (SLTRC, 2004d: Volume 1, 10; cf. Sierra Leone, 2000: para. 6), the SLTRC seemingly automatically co-produced and naturalised the actors of the conflict as either the perpetrators or the victims of these violations, as they seemed to naturally emerge from the country’s past. Whereas the SLTRC did not fully neglect the political dynamics and aspects of the past conflict (see e.g. SLTRC, 2004d: Volume 2, 29–33, Volume 3A, 463–464), human rights violations served as an overarching interpretative frame which helped to make sense of Sierra Leone’s past conflict and the actors involved in it. As the commission makes explicit in its final report: [I]t seems important to state that the Commission is not called upon to assess the justness of the conflict itself … The Commission need not examine the justness of

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the rebellion to overthrow the government in 1991, in order to fulfil its mandate, which is to address violations and abuses of human rights and international humanitarian law. (SLTRC, 2004d: Volume 1, 86–87)

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Accordingly, throughout the final report, human rights violations were considered as central for understanding the causes and the progression of the past conflict. In regard to the causes of the war, the final report concludes that [w]hile there were many factors, both internal and external, that explain the cause of the civil war, the Commission came to the conclusion that it was years of bad governance, endemic corruption and the denial of basic human rights that created the deplorable conditions that made conflict inevitable. (SLTRC, 2004d: Volume 1, 10)

Human rights violations also helped to make sense of the overall progression of conflict, as they were considered as a central pattern of violence that ran through the whole conflict. While the commission recounted the history of the conflict by dividing it in three distinct phases, with each phase being marked by a particular political dynamic (conventional warfare, guerrilla warfare and political struggles), it insisted that all three phases could nevertheless be meaningfully narrated in terms of the human rights violations that had occurred (SLTRC, 2004d: Volume 1, 11). As the final report stated, ‘[a]lthough each “phase” assumed a slightly different character, they all shared one devastating characteristic: gross violations of human rights and international humanitarian law by all warring factions’ (SLTRC, 2004d: Volume 2, 9). Overall, human rights violations were central to the commission’s way of narrating the past conflict and making recommendations for the future, as they were constructed as the conflict’s most central and constant feature: The story of the war reveals how Sierra Leoneans were denied their humanity and underscores the need for the creation of a human rights culture in Sierra Leone. A rights culture is one in which there is knowledge and recognition of the basic rights to which all human beings are entitled as well as a sense of responsibility to build it. A rights culture demands that we respect each other’s human rights, without exception. (SLTRC, 2004d: Volume 1, 11)

The central importance of human rights violations as an interpretative lens through which the history of Sierra Leone’s past conflict was understood supported and strengthened the plausibility and credibility of the victim and the perpetrator as central subject positions of post-conflict Sierra Leone. Because the conflict was narrated as one marked by broad patterns of human rights violations, the actors involved in it almost naturally emerged as the ones who either committed or endured such violations in the past. In other words, the SLTRC’s particular historical narrative produced the actors of the

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past conflict as either the perpetrators or the victims of such violations. As the commission notes in the section on the ‘Nature of Conflict’,

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[u]nderstanding the violations committed during the war requires an understanding of those who perpetrated them … Those affiliated to the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) carried out the majority of violations and abuses over the conflict as a whole … While most of the violations and abuses were attributed to the RUF, other significant perpetrators included the AFRC and the CDF. (SLTRC, 2004d: Volume 2, 11)

After a brief discussion and naming of the major perpetrators and their principal human rights violations, the commission goes on to classify the major demographic groups and to define their status in the war. On the one hand, women and girls, for instance, are categorised as victims of the past conflict as they ‘suffered abduction and brutality at the hands of their perpetrators’ (SLTRC, 2004d: Volume 2, 14). On the other hand, however, the commission concludes that ‘women [also] often took on the role of perpetrator and/or collaborator usually out of conviction and/or the need to survive’ (SLTRC, 2004d: Volume 2, 15). Similar conclusions and mixed categorisations are reached in regard to children, as they were also seen as the victims of human rights violations, while simultaneously being classified as perpetrators due to their being recruited as child soldiers by several factions of the conflict (SLTRC, 2004d: Volume 2, 15–16). The SLTRC’s seemingly natural and inevitable construction of the past in terms of human rights violations, their victims and their perpetrators was reached through the particular analytical procedures of the commission, which selected and interpreted the data and information of the past in terms of these categories. Summarising its methods of research and historical analysis, the commission announced that its ‘[a]reas of analysis included the types and frequencies of the violations committed, the profiles of the perpetrators, the identities and demographics of their victims and any evidence of targeting’ (SLTRC, 2004d: Volume 2, 10). These analytical categories, which pre-selected the information deemed important in the discourse on reconciliation, were then fed into the reconstruction of the ‘nature of the conflict’, which was, accordingly, narrated in terms of three interrelated issues, namely ‘the nature of the violations’, ‘the victims of the conflict, noting certain characteristics of the violations and abuses perpetrated, and focusing on the patterns of abuse’, and ‘those who committed the violations, that is, the perpetrators and perpetrator groups’ (SLTRC, 2004d: Volume 3A, 466). In order to reconstruct the past conflict in terms of the human rights violations that were committed, their perpetrators and their victims, the commission developed a particular technique of selecting and interpreting the data and information it got. More precisely, in order to make sense of

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its data and interpret them in terms of trends and patterns of human rights violations, the commission used classification and encoding schemes which made it possible to understand the data and information in terms of human rights violations, victims and perpetrators, and thus to produce statistical knowledge on what kinds of human rights violations were carried out by and against whom (SLTRC, 2004d: Volume 1, 171–175). For this purpose, the commission developed definitions of victims and perpetrators (SLTRC, 2004d: Volume 1, 87–88; see also above) as well as sixteen different categories of human rights violations, including for example forced displacement, abduction, killing, physical torture, rape or amputations (SLTRC, 2004d: Volume 2, 10, 11, 35). These categories were then used to encode the information collected through statements, hearings and focused research, and fed it into a data processing tool. For example, a statement taken during the statement-taking phase from a Sierra Leonean about his or her experiences during the conflict could be encoded, firstly, as the experience of either a victim or a perpetrator of human rights violations. The reported violation could, secondly, be classified either as a killing, or torture or rape or as corresponding to all three categories. The encoded form of the statement was then fed into the electronic data base which gathered information on victims, perpetrators and different types of violations (cf. SLTRC, 2004d: Volume 1, 171–175). Through computer-based statistical analysis, the commission finally evaluated the overall data derived through this process, in order to obtain an overview of the broad patterns of human rights violations, which were then used in the final report to describe the past conflict. In sum, the reconciliation discourse and the SLTRC as its institutional manifestation produced and verified the subject positions of the victim and perpetrator of human rights violations as the central subject categories of post-conflict Sierra Leone. They provided the signifiers of victim and perpetrator as grammatical placeholders for these subjects through the language spoken by the SLTRC, and they naturalised these subject positions by narrating the past conflict as one of human rights violations from which these categories plausibly emerged.

Becoming a subject: the interpellation of individuals and groups as victims and perpetrators of human rights violations The interpellation of Sierra Leoneans as either victims or perpetrators of human rights violations, that is their stepping into these positions, was catalysed predominantly during and through the working procedures of the SLTRC. In other words, the SLTRC’s engagement with Sierra Leoneans as victims or perpetrators of human rights violations was a principal mechanism through which social actors could identify with and be interpellated by their

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reconciliation identities. Two major mechanisms of interpellation will be discussed here, which were inherent in the way in which the SLTRC directly engaged with the Sierra Leonean population: firstly, the taking of statements from individuals who were involved in or witnessed past violations and abuses; secondly, the holding of public hearings, in which Sierra Leoneans spoke about and recounted their experiences from the past. Much of the SLTRC’s direct engagement with the Sierra Leonean population occurred during the statement-taking phase, in which commission staff travelled through the country and took statements and testimonies about past experiences from individual Sierra Leoneans. From December 2002 until March 2003, between 7,000 and 9,000 testimonies were gathered by approximately seventy statement takers (Kelsall, 2005: 363; Schabas, 2006: 25). The taking and giving of statements was a major mechanism by which Sierra Leoneans were urged to identify with the subject positions of the victim or the perpetrator as, in order to give a statement, it was necessary to classify oneself in terms of these categories. The statements were planned as statements by victims or perpetrators of human rights violations (or also by witnesses thereof), and once a Sierra Leonean wanted to give a statement, he or she had to speak from the position of one of these subject positions. The categorisation and interpellation of individuals as victims, perpetrators or witnesses of human rights violations was already laid down in the structure of the statements. All statements were taken on the basis of a standardised statement form, which was handed to the statement givers by the commission staff.11 On its third page, the statement form clearly names the categories of subjects that were expected to give testimony, namely ‘[t]hose who have suffered violations’, ‘[t]hose who have committed violations and abuses’ and ‘[t]hose who have knowledge of the commission of violations and abuses’ (SLTRC, 2004d: Volume 1, 194).12 For each of these categories, the statement offered specific subsections to be filled out, e.g. a ‘Section for Victims’ (SLTRC, 2004d: Volume 1, 200–209), a section for ‘Statement[s] about a family member, a relative, a friend or a person known to you’ (SLTRC, 2004d: Volume 1, 210–216), a ‘Witness Section’ (SLTRC, 2004d: Volume 1, 217–221) and a ‘Section for Perpetrators’ (SLTRC, 2004d: Volume 1, 222–230). The subsections then set out to ask specific questions which were designed to meet the expected experiences of each subject position. The victims, for instance, were asked to provide details of human rights violations and abuses they had suffered, information on the perpetrator and his/ her institutional or organisational affiliation and on the victim’s ability to support herself (SLTRC, 2004d: Volume 1, 202–209). The perpetrators, in turn, were required to provide the details of the human rights abuses they had committed (SLTRC, 2004d: Volume 1, 222), as well as information on

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the victims and on the perpetrator’s motives for committing the act (SLTRC, 2004d: Volume 1, 227–228). The statement practice of the SLTRC now contributed to the interpellation of Sierra Leoneans with the subject positions of the victim and perpetrator, as it forced the statement givers to identify with these positions. In other words, when filling out the statement all statement givers had to take a decision and identify with a subject position provided in the statement form. They had to give testimony as either a victim, or a perpetrator, or a witness of human rights violations, or as several of these subject positions.13 It was impossible, however, to give a statement without the simultaneous identification with at least one of these subject positions. While the practice of statement-taking and statement-giving constituted one of the major interpellation mechanisms in Sierra Leone whereby individual Sierra Leoneans were urged to identify with the central subject positions of the reconciliation discourse, the other mechanism was constituted by the public hearings which were held by the commission from April 2003 until early August (Schabas, 2006: 26; SLTRC, 2004d: Volume 1, 180–183). Overall, more than 450 people testified in public in several thousands of hours of testimony (Kelsall, 2005: 364). The hearings represented the most visible component of the SLTRC and were meant to help individual Sierra Leoneans, in particular the victims, to tell their experiences from the past conflict to the SLTRC’s commissioners and to the wider public (SLTRC, 2004d: Volume 1, 180, 231–233). The hearings further catalysed the interpellation of Sierra Leoneans in two ways. Firstly, just as in the case of the statements, the participation in public hearings encouraged the individuals who appeared and spoke in public to identify with the subject positions provided by the reconciliation discourse. In other words, the individual testifiers had to appear as and to publicly present themselves as either victims, or perpetrators or witnesses of past human rights violations. Secondly and simultaneously, the hearings constituted a site of public recognition, that is, individuals not only presented themselves as victims or perpetrators they were also publicly classified and acknowledged as such by the commissioners and the wider public. The urge for the testifiers to identify with the subject positions offered by the reconciliation discourse began with their selection for the hearings as victims, perpetrators or witnesses of human rights violations. As the commission announced during the statement taking phase, it would hold hearings ‘for victims, perpetrators and witnesses’ of human rights violations (SLTRC, 2004d: Volume 1, 195), and statement givers should decide whether they wanted to participate in these hearings or not (ibid.). The individual testifiers were then selected by the SLTRC whereby their testimonies were hoped to depict and be representative of the broad patterns of human rights violations that had been committed. As the commission stated in its final

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report, witnesses testifying in the hearings (comprising victims, perpetrators and actual witnesses of human rights violations) were therefore selected according to certain criteria that were meant to create ‘a representative balance … with regard to the range of violations that occurred in the conflict and the range of perpetrator factions’ (SLTRC, 2004d: Volume 1, 181, 233–235). As a consequence, statement givers were invited as witnesses of human rights violations, if their testimonies seemed to mirror exemplary cases or ‘window cases’ (Kelsall, 2005: 368; Schabas, 2006: 26) of the overall pattern of violations and abuses. Once an individual Sierra Leonean was invited to participate in a public hearing, the hearing became the major site where the testifier was encouraged to identify with the position of the victim and/or perpetrator. As Commissioner Justice Laura Marcus-Jones made clear in her statement in one of the hearings in the district headquarter towns, it was only these two subject positions that could be adopted by the witnesses: ‘The witnesses who’ll be coming to give their testimonies will be treated with respect; its [sic] a victim or a perpetrator’ (SLTRC, 2004c: 348). While several witnesses used the categories of the victim and the perpetrator in their testimonies on their own accord, others were publicly categorised and addressed as such by the commissioners. After listening to the stories of the testifiers, the commissioners often explicitly classified the testifier according to the reported experience thereby declaring her as either victim, or perpetrator, or both. For instance, in a public hearing held in the Tonkolili district in July 2003, the commissioners questioned a commander of the CDF. After the witness had finished reporting on the past events, the SLTRC’s chairperson Bishop Humper drew his conclusions from the statement, classified the witness as a victim and a perpetrator and urged him to avow himself to these subject positions: You and your people became victims. And you endured and endured and it became non-endurable any longer! So you committed yourself to what ultimately came to be called CDF. So you became a member of CDF. Is that right? And CDF are perpetrators, so you are a perpetrator as well. You are a victim-perpetrator! (Humper quoted in Kelsall, 2005: 375)

Here, the public denomination of the individual testifier as a ‘victimperpetrator’ functioned as a mechanism of interpellation or an interpellation ritual where the testifier narrates his experience so that the commissioners can classify the witness as a victim or perpetrator and encourage him or her to adopt that identity. Similar episodes are reported from other hearings and can be found throughout the transcripts of the hearings published in the SLTRC’s final report (see e.g. SLTRC, 2004d: Appendix 3, 130–131, 154–155, 178, 291, 302, 327, 334, 336, 348, 380–381). For instance, when Humper questioned a

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former RUF commander called Base Marine, Hunter urged the witness to accept a perpetrator identity even though, as Kelsall points out, Marine had been reluctant to admit any individual culpability:

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You are one of the few people who has sat down and said … ‘This is me, this is who I am … I am a perpetrator … I killed, I looted, I did bad things, I had people abducted, some of whom were raped’. Is my observation correct? (Humper quoted in Kelsall, 2005: 376)

At other instances, the interpellation ritual was more complex, such as a hearing held by Humper with a member of the RUF, that was also classified as a victim and a perpetrator of past human rights violations. Here, Humper repeated single episodes from the witness’s testimony, and classified the witness according to each episode: Bishop Humper: We thank you for coming here today. We say thanks that you have admitted that you are an RUF and that you want reconciliation. Is that right? Ibrahim Debe: Yes. … Bishop Humper: We feel pity for you just like for the other perpetrators. We want to get some clarification. I want you to listen. You said you witnessed the atrocities of those who captured you. … Bishop Humper: Then you became grand perpetrators. Ibrahim Debe: Yes. Bishop Humper: You were jailed. Ibrahim Debe: Yes. Bishop Humper: They mishandled you? Ibrahim Debe: Yes. Bishop Humper: That is a victim. Ibrahim Debe: Yes. … Bishop Humper: From there you became full RUF? Ibrahim Debe: Yes. Bishop Humper: You were there at the time of the alliance of the RUF and AFRC and participated in it? Ibrahim Debe: Yes.

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Bishop Humper: That makes you grand perpetrator. Ibrahim Debe: Yes.

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(SLTRC, 2004c: 530)

The example illustrates in particular clarity how the past experiences and the identity of the testifier were step by step reinterpreted by Humper and classified in terms of the social categories provided by the reconciliation discourse. What was told by the witness as a story of RUF membership and rebel imprisonment was retold by Humper as the making of a victimperpetrator and ‘grand perpetrator’ who is in need of and willing for reconciliation. A last example now shows that such processes of interpellation were organised not only for assumed perpetrators or victim-perpetrators, but also for the alleged victims. For instance, in a hearing held on 2 May 2003 in Bo, Sierra Leone’s second largest city, Bishop Humper responded to the testimony of one witness who lost two of his children, by saying: we are sorry for what happened to you during the war. At your age, you should now be sitting down and expecting your children to help you. You are considered as one of the victims of the war. (Humper quoted in SLTRC, 2004c: 134)

The above examples show how individuals were actively approached as victims, perpetrators, or both, thereby being urged to recognise themselves as such. They illustrate well how the public hearings of the SLTRC served as a site and a ritual of interpellation by which individual Sierra Leoneans were encouraged to identify with and adopt the subject positions provided by the reconciliation discourse. In all examples, the interpellation of the testifier as a victim, a perpetrator or both was propelled and actively encouraged by the commissioners who provided the testifier with the knowledge of what his or her identity ought to be.

Needs instead of claims: reconciliation and the neutralisation of political demands and identities A major performance of the reconciliation discourse in Sierra Leone was the replacement of the politically charged and polarised identities of the past conflict with the identities provided by the reconciliation discourse. As argued above, the construction and attempted interpellation of the Sierra Leonean society as victims and perpetrators of past human rights violations replaced the particular interpretation of reality that had been dominant during the war: rather than rebels, soldiers, collaborators or other identities that were constructed by the discourse on the war, the reconciliation discourse sought to mark individuals as the subjects of reconciliation. With this reinterpretation, however, the reconciliation discourse not only replaced

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the politically charged and polarised identities of the past, it also neutralised the political claims related to these identities and replaced them with the allegedly shared need for reconciliation. For instance, when the RUF invaded Sierra Leone in 1991 it advanced the political claim to liberate the country from years of bad governance and political corruption under the government of the All People’s Congress (APC) (Conteh-Morgan and Dixon-Fyle, 1999: 127; Gberie, 2005: 59–61; Hayner, 2007: 8). Quoting from a video clip on an early RUF invasion captured by government forces, Lansana Gberie reports for example, that RUF leader Foday Sankoh announced that his invasion served ‘to liberate “you people”’, that ‘the APC is rotten and oppressive, and it is time to oust them and institute “people’s power”’ (Gberie, 2005: 61). In its group anthem, which is cited in full length by Peter Pham, the RUF similarly seeks to construct the RUF as a force with the aims ‘to save Sierra Leone’ and ‘to save our people’ (quoted in Pham, 2006: 84–85). While the authenticity and sincerity of the RUF’s political goals and ambitions is severely doubted by numerous authors who emphasise instead the RUF’s massive abuses and acts of violence committed against the civilian population (Conteh-Morgan and Dixon-Fyle, 1999: 135; Pham, 2006: 86), their resistance against the state and their goal to topple the government were nevertheless closely attached to and contributed to shaping their identity as rebels that fought against the state. Apart from the rebels, Sierra Leone’s civilian population had also raised numerous criticisms and demands towards their central government which it accused of political corruption and neglect (Pham, 2006: 78; ContehMorgan and Dixon-Fyle, 1999: 127–128). As Earl Conteh-Morgan and Mac Dixon-Fyle argue for example, dissatisfaction of the Sierra Leonean society with their government had grown long before the war began, and protest against the government, years of bad governance and political corruption was increasingly voiced (Berman and Labonte, 2006: 143–146; ContehMorgan and Dixon-Fyle, 1999: 91–138; Ojielo, 2009: 43). In general, popular dissatisfaction with the political rule is generally cited as one reason for the growing political instability of the country and as a reason why parts of the Sierra Leonean society initially supported the struggle of the RUF (ContehMorgan and Dixon-Fyle, 1999: 127–128; Pham, 2006: 86). Overall then, the identities that were produced and reproduced by the discourse on the civil war were closely related with a number of political claims that were often directed towards the state and demanded fundamental changes in regard to governance in Sierra Leone. The re-labelling of Sierra Leoneans as victims and perpetrators that took place during and through the reconciliation process overwrote these political claims and positions adopted by individual Sierra Leoneans, and replaced them with the need of victims and perpetrators for healing and reconciliation. As the SLTRC

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report makes clear from the outset, it understands the Sierra Leonean society predominantly as one that has

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a need to express and acknowledge the suffering which took place, a need to relate their stories and experiences, a need to know who was behind the atrocities … a need to reconcile with former enemies, a need to begin personal and national healing. (SLTRC, 2004d: Volume 1, 7)

This focus on the alleged need for reconciliation and healing as the most urgent requirement and desire of Sierra Leone’s post-conflict subjects subordinates or postpones those political claims, however, that address for example the particular shape of the political system, the practices of its ruling elite or economic needs and structural adjustments required by the population. The neglect of political reform and structural change in the context of the reconciliation discourse in favour of reconciliation and healing is mirrored in several aspects of how the political system dealt with claims raised by Sierra Leoneans in the post-conflict phase. One example is the failure of the SLTRC and the Sierra Leonean government to respond to the demands for material help and support raised by individual Sierra Leoneans during the SLTRC’s public hearings. As outlined above, numerous people who appeared in the public hearings explicitly asked for financial support in order to restore the infrastructure of their villages, to get additional education or to otherwise manage to make a living on their own. However, neither the SLTRC nor the government responded to these demands (cf. Ojielo, 2009: 51; Shaw, 2007: 196–197) and instead emphasised symbolic restitutions in the shape of empathy and healing. Apart from this neglect of economic claims and calls for material help, claims for political reform have also been largely neglected or only feebly addressed by the government, as Ozonnia Ojielo observes in his analysis of post-TRC governance in the country (Ojielo, 2009). So, for instance, the government declined demands to work towards a human rights culture by abolishing the death penalty and acknowledging the existence of political prisoners in the country (Ojielo, 2009: 45). Instead, as Ojielo reports, numerous human rights problems simply continued, such as ‘abuses by security forces, including rape, and use of excessive force with detainees … poor conditions in prisons and detention centers; official impunity, including for alleged manslaughter; arbitrary arrest and detention’ (Ojielo, 2009: 47). Again, the reconciliation discourse seems to push such political demands for good governance to the background, as it privileges the alleged therapeutic and metaphysical needs of victims and perpetrators over popular demands for political reform. Overall, the reconciliation discourse, by producing subjects that share, predominantly, a need for reconciliation and healing neutralises or at least

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pushes to the background political claims that were advanced before and during the war and thus makes it harder for the post-conflict society to take part in the political negotiations on the shape of their future state. By focusing on ‘the effects of violence rather than causes of violence’, as Michael Humphrey and Estela Valverde put it (Humphrey and Valverde, 2008: 92), it overlooks the political causes and motivations of that violence and reinterprets the members of society as being in need of therapeutic help, instead of active political subjects and bearer of claims and rights.

Conclusion: the performance of reconciliation in Sierra Leone This chapter aimed to shed light on the emergence and performance of the global reconciliation discourse in a local post-conflict setting to which this discourse is deployed. Examining the example of Sierra Leone, it argued that global actors, in particular the members of the global reconciliation coalition, were crucially involved in bringing the globally hegemonic constructions of reconciliation to Sierra Leone. Simultaneously, these global agents emerged as experts of reconciliation on the local level and substantially contributed to shaping and implementing the local reconciliation process according to the global standards. As the global constructions of reconciliation shaped the official understanding of reconciliation in Sierra Leone, the reconciliation discourse performed by producing a reconciliation reality in the country. More specifically, the discourse worked to overwrite the social identities that were established by the discourse on the war, such as rebel, soldier or collaborator, and replaced them with the subject positions of the victim and perpetrator of past human rights violations. This, it was argued, happened predominantly through the processes and practices of the SLTRC. On the one hand, the language spoken by the SLTRC and its commissioners constantly referred to the subject positions of the victim and the perpetrator, thereby allocating these positions as points of identification for individual Sierra Leoneans. On the other hand, the practices of the SLTRC, especially the taking of statements and the holding of public hearings, served as important catalysts of interpellation. It was here that Sierra Leoneans were urged by either the design of the statement form or directly by the commissioners to adopt the identities provided by the reconciliation discourse and to identify with the positions of victim and the perpetrator. This chapter adopted a critical perspective on this process of identification and reinterpretation, and argued that the interpretation of Sierra Leoneans as victims and perpetrators of past human rights violations tends to silence the political claims that had been raised by them before and during the war. As victims and perpetrators are established as subjects that are in need of reconciliation and healing, rather than having a political voice, the

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reconciliation discourse subordinates or postpones these political claims, e.g. for good governance or economic help and adjustment programmes, and neglects them in favour of symbolic measures of reconciliation and healing.

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Notes 1 The AFRC constituted itself before carrying out a political coup in 1997 and became a major warring party thereafter (Conteh-Morgan and Dixon-Fyle, 1999; Pham, 2006). 2 ECOMOG stands for ECOWAS Monitoring Group. 3 The Lomé Agreement contained an amnesty provision for the RUF, as well as provisions for their demobilisation and reintegration, and offered RUF members high-ranking positions in the national government (Berman and Labonte, 2006: 159-160; Rashid, 2000). The amnesty provision was annulled two years later, however, after the RUF had broken with the truce agreed on in Lomé. In 2002, the Sierra Leonean President Kabbah asked the UN to install a Special Court for Sierra Leone, in order to try the persons ‘bearing the greatest responsibility for international crimes and certain domestic crimes committed within the country since November 30, 1996’ (Horovitz, 2006: 43). 4 Article 19’s initiative for a Sierra Leonean truth commission was not the first of its kind, though. The Sierra Leonean President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah had already suggested a TRC for Sierra Leone before. In a speech delivered on 20 October 1997 at the Royal Over-Seas League in London, Kabbah announced that he had given ‘some thought to the establishment of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission following the example of South Africa’ (Kabbah quoted in Penfold, 2009: 53). 5 Human Rights Manifesto, Freetown, June 1999. A copy of the Manifesto is on file with the author (see also Article 19, 2000: 14; O’Flaherty, 2004: 55). 6 See the ICTJ’s website on its activities in Sierra Leone, available at: http://ictj. org/our-work/regions-and-countries/sierra-leone [9 February 2012]. 7 Ibid. 8 For more information on the Working Group, see their website, available at: http://64.141.2.205/en/node/133695/304 [9 February 2012]. 9 Report of the Sierra Leone Working Group on Truth and Reconciliation (02 March 2006); Pambazuka News Online, (Issue 244), available at: www. pambazuka.org/en/category/rights/32427/print [9 February 2012]. 10 For instance, in one of the hearings in the District Headquarter Towns, a witness who had lost his child asked for monetary assistance to rebuild the village: ‘I know that my child is already dead. No amount of money can be equivalent to the life of my child. My only recommendation is for the government to assist in the development of my village and the community as a whole especially, as the rains is fast approaching’ (SLTRC, 2004c: 13). The commissioners declined this request by responding: ‘We thank you, but the TRC Act does not give us the mandate to compensate victims, the Commission does not have the money to give for reparation. We can recommend to the government to assist victims of the war. Your testimony will be studied closely

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and necessary recommendations will be made’ (SLTRC, 2004c: 13). Other passages where victims explicitly demanded monetary compensations can be found in the final report of the SLTRC (see e.g. SLTRC, 2004a: 51, 53). 11 The statement form is published in the Final Report of the SLTRC (SLTRC, 2004d: Volume 1, 192–230) 12 As a third category ‘[p]olitical parties, civil society institutions and interested parties’ were mentioned; there was no specific statement section for members of this category, however, so that they obviously had to classify as a victim, a perpetrator or a witness later (SLTRC, 2004d: Volume 1, 194). 13 The Sierra Leonean TRC explicitly acknowledged that individuals could identify with more than one of the subject positions offered in the statement form. As the commission notes in its final report, ‘many people in Sierra Leone were victims, perpetrators and witnesses at the same time’ (SLTRC, 2004d: Volume 1, 165). As an example for a ‘multiple identity’, the commission points at the child soldiers, who suffered from forced recruitment but, once recruited, committed human rights violations against others (ibid.).

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The quest for reconciliation in global politics

Conclusion

In the literature on transitional justice and peacebuilding, post-conflict populations are often considered as deeply divided and traumatised societies which are in need of reconciliation (Daly and Sarkin, 2007; Lederach, 1997). Reconciliation, in turn, is commonly understood as a specific and promising tool which, in the shape of a TRC, can be applied to transitional or post-conflict situations in order to foster social peace and harmony (Little, 1999; Philpott, 2006b; Rotberg and Thompson, 2000). This book suggested a radically different understanding of reconciliation. Adopting a critical perspective on the global quest for reconciliation, it argued that reconciliation should be seen not as a given and valid reality, but as a contingent yet powerful global discourse which is now accepted as a valid knowledge in global politics. Rather than being brought to a society that is already in need of reconciliation after conflict or repression, it argued that it is the reconciliation discourse itself that creates the conditions of its own necessity by producing a particular reconciliation reality in the societies to which it is deployed. The preceding chapters developed this argument in more detail: chapter 2 focused on the origins of the construction process of reconciliation and argued that the birth of today’s global reconciliation discourse can be traced back to the South African transition to democracy, where reconciliation emerged as an empty universal during the transitional negotiations. Here, several political actors referred to reconciliation as a vague social vision, so that the term turned into an increasingly shared reference point that served to justify their diverse political demands. These political demands, in turn, step by step forged the construction of reconciliation the way it is understood today. While reconciliation was initially vague and flexible and related to a number of different political demands, such as the release of political prisoners or a power-sharing agreement, it was later increasingly related to claims for truth-telling, healing and forgiveness. In particular

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before and during the working phase of the South African TRC, reconciliation came to be interpreted and constructed in the way it is commonly understood today, as a specific process of social transformation through public truth-telling. While the South African interpretation of reconciliation can thus be understood as a historically contingent and socially constructed discourse, it nevertheless spread around the globe in the years following South Africa, and turned into a relatively stable knowledge about reconciliation. Here, as chapter 3 demonstrated, the scientific discourse on transitional justice was fundamentally involved in the further articulation and stabilisation of reconciliation and, importantly, established it as a general truth by reproducing and strengthening the South African constructions in scholarly texts. Eventually, a globally shared knowledge of reconciliation developed which established ‘reconciliation through truth’ as an authoritative understanding of reconciliation and authorised the truth commission as a legitimate institution in transitional situations. Chapter 4 then demonstrated how the reconciliation discourse was co-constitutive of a global technology of reconciliation, that is of a growing field of standardised reconciliation practices and several groups of reconciliation practitioners. The standardisation of truth commissions as primary reconciliation practices along the linguistic constructions of reconciliation manifests in the assimilation of most modern TRCs in regard to their language, practices, staffing techniques and the standardised way in which they interpret the pasts and the presents of post-conflict societies. Truth telling is now commonly conducted in public, whereby clerics or therapists assist the alleged victims and perpetrators of human rights violations with their testimonies, which eventually feed into a standardised national narrative of the past conflict. The proliferation of these truth and reconciliation commissions as a major reconciliation practice was propelled by the activities of an expert force of reconciliation which contributed to the articulation of the reconciliation discourse through their global interventions and further proliferated it to new local settings, convinced that it would help local victims and perpetrators of past violence to get over their traumas and be able to live together in one common society. However, as the last chapter showed, the need for reconciliation and healing is not naturally given in post-conflict societies. Instead, it is the reconciliation discourse itself which produces local populations as victims and perpetrators of human rights violations, thus creating an alleged need of reconciliation and healing in the first place. The example of Sierra Leone suggested that the categories of victims and perpetrators as well as the understanding of reconciliation as truth-telling did not naturally persist among the Sierra Leonean society. Rather, it was the processes and practices of the TRC, and therefore the reconciliation

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discourse itself, which were central for spreading these understandings among the population. Overall, the argument made in this book can be summarised by saying that the global technology of reconciliation should not be understood as a necessary or appropriate practice in post-conflict societies, but rather as a device for social re-interpretation. The reconciliation practice is thereby not neutral or innocent, however. Instead, it tends to silence political claims raised by local communities by producing an alleged need for reconciliation and healing. While the preceding chapters reconstructed the development of the global reconciliation discourse and critically inquired into its social performance, this last chapter wants to conclude the argument made in this book by reflecting on the merits and implications of this study, and by suggesting two possible ways of future research in regard to the global reconciliation discourse. The next section will reflect on the discourse theoretical character of this study and flesh out the insights gained through it, whereas the subsequent section will briefly discuss possible pathways for future research.

Merits and implications of the discourse theoretical perspective The preceding chapters argued from the perspective of discourse theory which underpinned this book’s critical point of view on the global quest for reconciliation. Discourse theory, as pointed out in chapter 1, proceeds from the presumption that humans cannot access their world directly but they can only make sense of their identity and their surroundings through continuing processes of interpretation and reinterpretation. In order to make the world meaningful, we have to fall back on existing interpretations and (re)apply them to seemingly new phenomena. This presumption is also consequential for social scientific research, as it implies that, if the social world is socially constructed, then all our scientific observations are part and parcel of this construction process. In other words, it means that we cannot claim to develop true and valid explanations of the social world, but only produce particular readings or interpretations of social phenomena, which are based on prior constructions, such as the theoretical concepts that we use (Diez, 1999: 51; Fluck, 2010). The discourse theoretical perspective is nevertheless valuable, as it provides new and different insights into social phenomena and thus opens new avenues of thinking and acting in the world. As Marianne Jørgensen and Louise Phillips point out, ‘[w]ithin a particular worldview, some forms of action become natural, others unthinkable. Different social understandings of the world lead to different social actions, and therefore the social construction of knowledge and truth has social consequences’ (Jørgensen and Phillips, 2002: 6). Reconciliation is usually accepted as a good and valuable thing to do after

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conflict and repression, and it is meanwhile common sense that reconciliation can be reached by means of a truth and reconciliation commission. As the preceding chapters pointed out, the reconciliation technology is brought by global actors to ever new local settings as a standard procedure of post-conflict peacebuilding. In other words, supporting reconciliation through truth after conflict and repression has become a natural thing to do. What this study aimed to do then is to broaden our horizon of how reconciliation can be understood and provide a more encompassing background against which options for adequate action can be weighed. With the critical perspective on reconciliation that was offered in the preceding chapters, this book hoped to put into question the authority and validity of the reconciliation ideal that is so often taken for granted in the global political theory and practice, and shapes as well as justifies numerous political interventions that are carried out in post-conflict societies. While reconciliation is generally considered a good and even necessary thing after conflict and repression, this book aimed to show in this study that reconciliation might not necessarily be needed in post-conflict situations and, even more, that it might actually entail unwanted consequences such as the silencing of political claims raised by post-conflict populations. Looking at the global reconciliation practices from this perspective suggests to critically reflect on the justification and desirability of these practices and to think about possible modifications or alternatives. The justification of reconciliation initiatives and the consideration of other post-conflict practices seems the more necessary if one considers the resistance and protest against reconciliation that could be observed in Sierra Leone, as outlined in chapter 5, but also in other countries. Even in South Africa, allegedly the prime case of reconciliation, the TRC process and the hegemonic interpretation of reconciliation did not go unchallenged but, in contrast, raised protest amongst much of the population. On the one hand, protest targeted the amnesty law of the process and the perceived pressure to forgive in the name of reconciliation. Lynn Graybill reports, for example, how numerous South Africans criticised the Christian overtones of the reconciliation discourse and complained about ‘the imposition of a Christian morality of forgiveness’ (quoted in Graybill, 1998: 46). On the other hand, apart from the amnesty provision the perceived lack of adequate compensation of victims raised protest among South Africans. Claire Moon writes about a larger protest that was expressed more than seven years after the TRC took up its work by a lawsuit raised by the so-called Khulumani support group (Moon, 2008: 144–151). As Moon reports, Khulumani criticises ‘that the TRC had underestimated the importance of financial compensation to reconciliation’ and ‘that the majority of victims of apartheid were excluded by the TRC’s mandate as they were not victims of party political violence but of the systemic effects

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of apartheid’ (Moon, 2008: 145). As a result, the support group initiated a lawsuit that seeks to enforce individual compensations, determined in relation to the individual fates of the victims (Moon, 2008: 146). While these reactions further put in doubt the seemingly natural adequacy of standardised reconciliation practices and call at least for reflections on and justifications for such initiatives, another possibility is to look for modifications or alternatives to the hegemonic concept and discourse of reconciliation. Such a search for alternatives to hegemonic meanings and orders, according to Robert Cox, is an important thing critical studies can and should do. In his discussion of the goals and merits of critical theory, Cox points out that critical theory is critical in the sense that it stands apart from the prevailing order of the world and asks how that order came about. Critical theory … does not take institutions and social and power relations for granted but calls them into question by concerning itself with their origins and how and whether they might be in the process of changing. (Cox, 1981: 129)

Moreover, according to Cox, critical theory also has practical relevance in that it seeks to disclose possible alternatives to the reality we seem to have. As Cox points out, critical theory approaches practice from a perspective which transcends that of the existing order … Critical theory allows for a normative choice in favour of a social and political order different from the prevailing order, but it limits the range of choice to alternative orders which are feasible transformations of the existing world. A principal objective of critical theory, therefore, is to clarify this range of possible alternatives. (Cox, 1981: 130)

In other words, as Cox suggests here, the goal of critical theory should not only be to question the validity of seemingly given meanings, social orders and realities by investigating their origins and processes of emergence (and, as one might add from a discourse theoretical perspective, their social performance); instead, critical authors should also sketch alternative realities to the one they study, in order to make normative choice possible. The next section will engage this challenge by briefly discussing two alternative roads global and local actors can take when dealing with post-conflict societies.

Alternatives to reconciliation Reconciliation, as the last chapter argued, potentially has a depoliticising effect on those societies to which it is deployed as it comes at the cost of the political claims of the local population. The case of Sierra Leone suggested that reconciliation tends to subordinate or neutralise the political demands advanced by a post-conflict society while simultaneously foregrounding

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that society’s alleged need for reconciliation and healing. Accordingly, when reconciliation is implemented in a post-conflict society, the risk may be taken that the political claims raised by the local population are silenced through symbolic gestures of healing for the sake of social peace. While one might argue, on the one hand, that this trade-off is worth it as the political claims have obviously led to war and violence before, and silencing them simply represents one way of building peace, one might, on the other hand, consider that neglecting these political and economic claims once again might just pave the way for renewed violence and conflict in the future. Furthermore, neglecting the political claims for which a local population was willing to go to war seems to be utterly ignorant towards the people on the ground. Accordingly, the question may be raised how reconciliation might be understood differently, in other words, how we can re-politicise it and whether this would be desirable. The depoliticising effect of reconciliation, as Andrew Schaap argues, is derived from the globally hegemonic interpretation of reconciliation as the healing and restoration of a presumed community (Schaap, 2005; 2006). According to Schaap, ‘[t]he therapeutic or religious terms in which reconciliation is often construed presume the existence of unity and community, and have the effect “to depoliticize the terms in which the unity of the polity is represented”’ (Schaap, 2006: 259). In other words, if ‘reconciliation’ in its present interpretation is brought to a post-conflict society as a ready-made social vision, it deprives the local population of the possibility to decide how and under what conditions a new society and a new social order are to be established. Instead, it brings a pre-determined vision of community to that population and anticipates that some kind of community will and should be established (instead of, for example, secession or other kinds of lasting division). The problem with this, according to Schaap, is that unity and community cannot be presumed in post-conflict societies. ‘For the identity of the demos is precisely what cannot be taken for granted in divided societies but is what democratization aims to bring about’ (Schaap, 2006: 256). Instead of presuming community in transitional situations, transitional situations might better be understood as founding moments of a political community, in which a new demos, a new we, is created through the construction of a new social vision and a new order. While the reconciliation discourse a priori anticipates the establishment of such a community, a more democratic way to build a demos would seem to include the local population and have it debate the terms of the new community itself. This, however, would require either a radically different understanding of reconciliation, or, alternatively, the abandonment of reconciliation as a social vision. On the one hand, one might try to imagine another understanding of reconciliation which seeks to avoid the presumption of community and

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remains open for social negotiation and struggle. Such a conception has been suggested, for instance, by Schaap. Reconciliation as it is globally understood tends to depoliticise this construction process and to implicitly emphasise the creation of a community as the highest goal. Even more, the community to be created is already anticipated by the reconciliation discourse. The reconciliation discourse produces a first shared interest of that anticipated community by construing the community as being in mutual need of healing and reconciliation. However, it tends to silence the particular political demands through which individuals and groups try to participate in the articulation of their new order, possibly to challenge it or even to deny the desirability of community. An alternative understanding of reconciliation, as suggested by Schaap, could be an ‘agonistic’ interpretation, which does not take community and consensus as given but considers commonality, the experience and creation of a we and a shared identity as a demos, as ‘a difficult, fragile and contingent achievement of political actions’ (Schaap, 2006: 158). Here, the process of community creation is always contingent and open and the terms of community as well as its desirability are to be negotiated by the people themselves. Reinterpreting reconciliation in such agonistic terms would thus mean to bracket the way in which reconciliation and community are understood and to consider them as the contingent outcomes of political negotiation, while consensus and the possibility to take political decisions in post-conflict periods would simultaneously be rendered more difficult. Building on such an agonistic interpretation of reconciliation in the global political practice would imply to neither necessarily expect any kind of community to emerge after conflict or repression, nor to impose and shape a community according to some pre-existing standards or conceptions. Rather, it would mean to support public discussion and negotiation about the shape of the future social order and to hope that these negotiations are carried out non-violently. Alternatively, one might simply altogether abandon reconciliation as a social vision and rather argue that a post-conflict population must itself negotiate and find its new social vision, its new empty universal. From the perspective of the discourse theory of Laclau and Mouffe, it can be argued that no concept of reconciliation and no prepared signifier should be suggested to or infused into post-conflict societies, as it is the very process of finding a shared social vision, that is a new empty universal, which builds a communal identity, social order and thus possibly a new demos. This seems plausible, when looking at a transitional situation from the perspective of discourse theory. From a discourse theoretical perspective, transitions, whether from war to peace of from one regime type to another, can be, and actually have been (Adamson, 2000; Salecl, 1994), understood and analysed as moments of ‘the political’, as Edkins puts it (Edkins, 1999:

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3), that is as situations of structural dislocation in which one socio-political order is fundamentally destabilised through social resistance, state as well as sub-state violence and the articulation of new social ideals. In these situations, a new social order has to be founded on the basis of new social ideals. The articulation of such an empty universal, its being embraced by different social and political groups of the population and their identification with the empty universal can theoretically be understood as an integral part of the process of community-building. Empty universals can be understood as the specific values that are considered as universal by a given community, thus unifying this community around this common reference point. As Rudolphe Gasché points out, the very possibility of the social hinges on a sense of universality which concerns the social unity, or community, of individuals, or particular groups. As understood by Laclau, universality could be called a social or political a priori. (Gasché, 2004: 21)

If universality or, more specifically, empty universals are fundamental to the possibility of society and social identity, then it is important to give post-conflict populations the possibility to negotiate and find their own universal values. In other words, alternative to promoting reconciliation as a unifying empty universal in post-conflict situations and even promoting a particular global interpretation thereof, global actors can also support negotiation processes among local groups so that these groups can articulate and find their particular empty universal and thus their own social vision and construct a new social order around it. Promoting reconciliation to post-conflict societies is not the only way of community-building, but it may be a way with particular and possibly undesirable side effects. Emphasising local negotiations among societal groups and having the local population find their new social visions and social orders themselves might be an alternative path in post-conflict situations.

Reconciliation and post-conflict peacebuilding The community-building effect of reconciliation leads to another aspect that should briefly be discussed in this conclusion as a possible extension of the empirical-analytical research on reconciliation, namely the possibility of looking at reconciliation as a community-building component of post-conflict peacebuilding. Reconciliation activities, and in particular the political interventions that are undertaken in the name of reconciliation by global actors, are often carried out in the context of larger peacebuilding missions. As pointed out above, in Sierra Leone the reconciliation activities carried out by the UN and other global actors were embedded in UNOMSIL and later

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UNAMSIL and thus were part of a larger international engagement in the country. Similarly, in East Timor the UN’s involvement in the reconciliation process and the truth commission CAVR took place in the context of the transitional administration UNTAET. In Liberia, international actors were also present in the shape of the international peace mission UNMIL, and it was in this context that the Liberian reconciliation process was promoted and supported. The close connection between international peacebuilding missions and reconciliation activities raises the question what role the reconciliation technology plays in the context of international peacebuilding and suggests further exploring reconciliation as a component of such practices. Here, the critical literature on international peacebuilding (see e.g. Chandler, 2006; Duffield, 2001; Duffield, 2007; Richmond, 2007) offers an interesting starting point from which this question might be approached. A first review of this literature suggests, for example, that the global reconciliation practices might be explored as a process of nation- or community-building, which complements and feeds into the larger project of liberal statebuilding that underlies international peace missions according to these authors. Authors writing critically on post-conflict peacebuilding often argue that international peacebuilding practices can be understood as a new kind of ‘liberal internationalism’ (Paris, 1997) or ‘mission civilisatrice’ (Paris, 2002; emphasis in original) through which Western norms of good governance and liberal democracy are transported to non-Western countries. Building on the liberal peace paradigm, it is supposed that fostering liberal democracy in post-conflict countries furthers international peace, as liberal democratic states are assumed to not fight each other (Bellamy et al., 2004: 2; Lyck, 2009: 11–15). International peacebuilding can thus largely be understood in terms of liberal statebuilding whereby Western standards of good and stable states are transferred on non-Western countries, in order to allegedly foster stability and good governance there (Chandler, 2006; Paris, 1997). As Roland Paris puts it, peacebuilders attempt to bring war-shattered states into conformity with the international system’s prevailing standards of domestic governance, or standards that define how states should organize themselves internally … Although modern peacebuilders have largely abandoned the archaic language of civilized versus uncivilized, they nevertheless appear to act upon the belief that one model of domestic governance – liberal market democracy – is superior to all others. (Paris, 2002: 638)

If international peace missions are understood as projects statebuilding which aim to construct and stabilise systems democracy in post-conflict countries, reconciliation projects explored as complementary activities which support this liberal

of liberal of liberal might be project by

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building not the governing structures of the state, but the adequate and healthy society which will keep this future state going. As the previous chapters argued, reconciliation is generally interpreted in terms of healing and social restoration and thus seemingly implies the rebuilding of social bonds and relationships as one of its transformative aims. Moreover, bearing the findings in particular of the last chapter in mind, the local performance of the reconciliation discourse might be read as an attempt of community-building in two ways. Firstly, the new identities produced by the reconciliation discourse may contribute to the project of building a post-conflict nation. As argued in chapter 5, the reconciliation discourse establishes a post-conflict population as victims and perpetrators of past human rights violations; it thus does not overcome or dissolve existing social divisions, but rather replaces them with a new division, namely that between victims and perpetrators. However, this new division is not insurmountable but can be overcome through public truth-telling and all those practices and rituals that are provided by reconciliation. Overall then, the reconciliation discourse might contribute to the project of nation-building by establishing a post-conflict society as one divided by a gap that can be overcome with the means and instruments provided by the reconciliation discourse. Secondly, the reconciliation discourse may work towards nation-building by producing a social ‘need’ or desire, that is allegedly shared by all members of the post-conflict population, namely the need for healing and reconciliation. Instead of maintaining the polarised and possibly controversial claims and demands of different societal groups and risking political struggle and further social division, the reconciliation discourse overwrites these demands and instead creates a seemingly shared interest in reconciliation and thus a common project of all members of society. Further research on reconciliation might thus inquire into how the global reconciliation practices play in the hands of today’s mission civilisatrice and support the project of liberal statebuilding through building an adequate community for the liberal state to be.

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Index

Accra Accords 101 African National Congress (ANC) 7, 43, 44, 45, 47–54, 56–59, 61, 68 amnesty 2, 40, 43, 52–54, 56–59, 63, 64, 66, 68, 83–85, 96, 119, 128, 129, 153, 158 apartheid 2, 43–48, 50–51, 54–55, 60, 62, 65, 68, 86, 137, 158, 159 legislation 2, 47, 50, 51, 55, 62 Bantu Education Act 45 Group Areas Act 45 articulation 22, 24, 25, 27, 29, 30, 33, 35, 36, 38, 39, 40, 58, 62, 71, 72, 75–79, 81, 82, 89–92, 97, 99, 111, 119, 156, 161, 162 Boraine, Alex 60, 70, 106, 113, 115 CODESA (Convention for a Democratic South Africa) 51–52, 56 Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act 47 Congo 100, 101, 116, 117 de Klerk, Frederik Willem 48–53, 55, 56 See also National Party (of South Africa) discourse analysis 34–37, 41 discourse coalition 118, 119

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discourse theory 4–5, 19, 20–21, 24–27, 32, 34, 41, 111, 157, 161 post-structuralist 19 dislocation 7, 10, 27–29, 30, 42–44, 71–72, 74–75, 162 East Timor 2, 98, 101, 102, 115 See also UNTAET Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation (of East Timor, CAVR) 102, 105, 106, 108, 114, 117, 122, 163 Edkins, Jenny 17, 27, 99, 161 empty signifier(s) 21–22, 29–33, 38, 69, 76, 79, 83–84 empty universal(s) 7, 10, 21–22, 26, 29–33, 36–37, 41, 43–45, 48–49, 55–56, 68, 71, 75, 78, 82, 155, 161–162 Epstein, Charlotte 5, 15, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25, 112, 140 Fairclough, Norman 37, 57 Foucault, Michel 89 Ghana 98, 101, 104 Global and Inclusive Agreement on Transition in the Democratic Republic of the Congo 101 See also Congo

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Hayner, Priscilla 93, 104, 105, 106, 107, 115, 117, 129 HCHR (UN High Commissioner for Human Rights) 128–129 See also OHCHR hegemonic struggles 7, 10, 29–30, 32, 42, 68, 71, 78–79, 84 hegemony 9, 20, 31, 32, 34, 41, 44 Howarth, David 21, 22, 25, 26, 46, 47 human rights abuses (of) 54, 60, 87, 103, 108, 109, 141–143, 145 violations (of) 2, 7–8, 14, 52, 54, 63–66, 72–75, 78, 81–85, 87, 94, 101, 102, 103, 104, 107–110, 111, 120, 133, 141–149

Laclau, Ernesto 6, 9, 21–26, 28–32, 35–36, 41, 75, 82, 99, 161–162 language 19, 20, 21, 35, 58, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 71–73, 95, 97, 99, 103–104, 110, 118, 119, 120, 131, 132, 133, 134 Liberia 98, 100, 101, 103, 104, 106, 108, 109, 115, 117, 126, 163

impunity 4, 72, 78, 79, 81–85, 92, 101, 108, 129, 130, 132, 151 Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) 52 Institute for Justice and Reconciliation (IJR) 114–115 International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) 40, 115–116, 119, 125, 129, 131 international humanitarian law 74, 83, 94, 108, 133, 141, 142 international human rights law 74, 108, 133

National Party (of South Africa) 7, 43–45, 48–50, 52–54, 56, 57, 68 See also de Klerk, Frederik Willem, South Africa norm(s) 10–20, 24, 26, 32–33 emergence 5, 10, 12–16, 18 diffusion 5, 10, 13–14 life cycle 12, 14 research 17 normative change 5, 7, 9–10, 12, 14–15, 18–20, 26–27, 32 Norval, Aletta 32, 46, 70

justice punitive 59–62, 79–80, 82–84, 95, 102 reparative 79–80 restorative 79–80, 82–83, 85, 88, 96, 119, 132 retributive 38, 79, 80, 81, 95, 96 transitional 6, 7, 38–40, 42–43, 70–72, 74–80, 84–86, 90–91, 95, 108, 112–124, 129, 155–156 Kenya 98, 100, 101, 104, 115, 117

Mandela, Nelson 47–53, 55–56, 60 See also African National Congress (ANC), South Africa method(s) 33, 34–35, 90, 109, 143, Moon, Claire 2, 3, 6, 48, 65, 66, 68, 85, 91–92, 93–94, 104, 109, 112, 114, 115, 137, 158–159 Mouffe, Chantal 6–7, 9, 10, 20, 24, 26, 28–29, 35–36, 41, 99, 161

OHCHR (UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights) 94, 112, 115–118, 120–121, 123–125, 129–131, 136 See also HCHR Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) 45, 51, 53 peacebuilding 2, 8, 39, 77, 95, 97, 99–102, 116–117, 120, 162–163

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Index perpetrator(s) 3, 24, 60, 61, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 69, 72, 78, 79, 80, 81, 83, 88–89, 101, 103, 104, 109, 125, 126, 128, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 137, 140, 144–149, 164 See also victim(s) Peru 2, 100, 104 post-structuralism See discourse theory power of discourse 9, 20, 24–27, 33 practice(s) 5, 6, 10, 17, 19, 20–27, 31, 33, 35–37, 39–40, 64–69, 88, 89, 92–95, 97–100, 103, 104–105, 109, 110, 118, 119, 120–121, 131, 136, 156 public hearings 2, 65, 104, 105, 131, 132, 133, 134, 138, 145, 146, 149, 151, 152 RUF (Revolutionary United Front) 126, 127, 138, 143, 148, 149, 150, 153 See also Sierra Leone semantic relations 22, 36–38, 55–57, 62, 63, 79, 85, 87, 92, Serbia and Montenegro 100, 102 Sierra Leone 8, 40, 98, 100, 101, 115, 116, 125–154 See also UNAMSIL, UNOMSIL, RUF civil war 126, 127, 133, 137–142, 150 Human Rights Manifesto 129 Lomé Peace Agreement (Lomé Agreement) 101, 127, 129–130, 132, 141, 153 Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Sierra Leonean TRC, SLTRC) 103, 106, 125, 126, 129–136, 138, 139, 140, 141–147, 149–152 Truth and Reconciliation Commission Act 2000 (TRC Act) 130, 132, 141, 153

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Solomon Islands 98, 100, 103, 104, 106, 108 South Africa 7, 39, 40, 42, 43–70 See also African National Congress (ANC), Boraine, Alex, de Klerk, Frederik Willem Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), Mandela, Nelson, National Party (NP), Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), Tutu, Desmond Interim Constitution 7, 40, 43, 54, 56–59, 64, 68 Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act (The Act) 62–63 Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Bill (The Bill) 62–64 Truth and Reconciliation Commission (South African TRC, SATRC, TRC) 2, 3, 6, 7, 64–68, 86, 93, 100, 106, 107, 113, 114, 130, 137, 156 subject position(s) 24–26, 65, 69, 72, 88, 89, 111, 119, 126, 133, 137–142, 144–147, 149, 152 Teitel, Ruti 76 Torfing, Jacob 7, 21, 23, 28, 29 transition 4, 7, 39, 40, 42, 43, 44, 48, 54, 68, 72–78, 80 transitional situation 84, 85, 95, 161 truth commission(s) 1, 2, 3, 7, 8, 33, 36, 58, 59, 60, 63, 72, 78, 85–90, 92–95, 97–101, 103–107, 109, 110, 112, 114, 115, 116, 118, 120–121, 123, 128, 129, 156, 163 See also Congo, East Timor, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Peru, Serbia and Montenegro, Sierra Leone, Solomon Islands, South Africa Tutu, Desmond 86, 106, 113, 114, 115 See also South Africa

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UNAMSIL 117, 127, 130, 131, 163 United Nations (UN) 39, 47, 115, 116–118, 127–130 See also HCHR, OHCHR, UNAMSIL, UNOMSIL, UNMIL, UNTAET peacekeeping 7 peace mission(s) 116–117, 123, 163 and reconciliation 71, 77–78, 80, 82–83, 87, 96, 116–118, 123–124, 163 Security Council 77, 78, 80, 102, 116, 118, 123 and transitional justice 77–78, 80, 82–83, 123

UNMIL 24, 163 UNOMSIL 127, 128, 162 UNTAET 102, 108, 115, 117, 122, 163 victim(s) 2, 3, 8, 24, 38, 60, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 72, 78, 79, 80, 81, 83, 87–89, 92, 101, 103–107, 109, 110, 130, 132–133, 134, 137, 140–150, 151, 152, 156 See also perpetrator(s) victim hearings 67, 68, 69, 116 Žižek, Slavoj 22