Virtues from Hell: Survivors of Conflicts and the Reconstruction-Reconciliation Processes 3030891720, 9783030891725

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Philosophy and Politics - Critical Explorations

Fidèle Ingiyimbere

Virtues from Hell: Survivors of Conflicts and the ReconstructionReconciliation Processes

Philosophy and Politics - Critical Explorations Volume 20

Series Editors David M. Rasmussen, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA, USA Alessandro Ferrara, Dipartimento di Storia, University of Rome ‘Tor Vergata’, Rome, Italy Editorial Board Members Abdullah An-Na’im, Charles Howard Candler Professor of Law, Emory University, Atlanta, USA Bruce Ackerman, Sterling Professor of Law, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA Robert Audi, O’Brien Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, USA Seyla Benhabib, Eugene Meyer Professor for Political Science and Philosophy, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA Samuel Freeman, Avalon Professor in the Humanities, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA Jürgen Habermas, Professor Emeritus, Goethe-University, Frankfurt am Main, Frankfurt, Bayern, Germany Axel Honneth, Goethe-University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany and Columbia University, New York, USA Erin Kelly, Professor of Philosophy, Tufts University, Medford, MA, USA Charles Larmore, W. Duncan MacMillan Family Professor in the Humanities, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA Frank Michelman, Professor Emeritus, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA Tong Shijun, Professor of Philosophy, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China Charles Taylor, Professor Emeritus, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada Michael Walzer, Professor Emeritus, Institute of Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ, USA

The purpose of Philosophy and Politics - Critical Explorations is to publish high quality volumes that reflect original research pursued at the juncture of philosophy and politics. Over the past 20 years new important areas of inquiry at the crossroads of philosophy and politics have undergone impressive developments or have emerged anew. Among these, new approaches to human rights, transitional justice, religion and politics and especially the challenges of a post-secular society, global justice, public reason, global constitutionalism, multiple democracies, political liberalism and deliberative democracy can be included. Philosophy and Politics Critical Explorations addresses each and any of these interrelated yet distinct fields as valuable manuscripts and proposal become available, with the aim of both being the forum where single breakthrough studies in one specific subject can be published and at the same time the areas of overlap and the intersecting themes across the various areas can be composed in the coherent image of a highly dynamic disciplinary continent. Some of the studies published are bold theoretical explorations of one specific theme, and thus primarily addressed to specialists, whereas others are suitable for a broader readership and possibly for wide adoption in graduate courses. The series includes monographs focusing on a specific topic, as well as collections of articles covering a theme or collections of articles by one author. Contributions to this series come from scholars on every continent and from a variety of scholarly orientations.

More information about this series at https://link.springer.com/bookseries/13508

Fidèle Ingiyimbere

Virtues from Hell: Survivors of Conflicts and the ReconstructionReconciliation Processes

Fidèle Ingiyimbere CERAP/Université Jésuite Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire

ISSN 2352-8370 ISSN 2352-8389 (electronic) Philosophy and Politics - Critical Explorations ISBN 978-3-030-89172-5 ISBN 978-3-030-89173-2 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89173-2 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Preface

This book is a fruit of an old idea that took long to materialize. It was born 20 years ago, during a spiritual retreat. I was meditating on Jesus’s passion according to Luke, where he says that “all those who knew him, including the women who had followed him from Galilee, stood at a distance, watching these things” (Lk 23:49). This was around 2000, many wars were ravaging the world, and armed conflicts were erupting across the African continent. From the West to the East, there were wars in Liberia, Sierra Leone, South Soudan and Darfur, Somalia, Eritrea, and Ethiopia, just to name a few. But as I am from the Great Lakes Region of Africa, what was occupying my mind the most were the wars in Congo-DRC and Burundi, and the genocide against Tutsi in Rwanda—which was only few years old. I had lived in Rwanda for 2 years, just 3 years after the genocide, and the Burundian civil war was moving into a higher gear, while the Eastern Congo-DRC was experiencing unimaginable atrocities. The women and all those who knew Jesus could not do much to protect him. The only thing they were allowed to do was to stand at distance. Not because they did not love him, but because that is all they could do. Between “those who knew him” and Jesus, there was that distance occupied by those with power to kill and to crucify, those who could torture and humiliate. This example represents many situations for victims. The same distance is between the victims and those who know them. Unless you are one of the power holders or their friend, you cannot walk that distance, and such distance is never only a physical space to walk. It is also a normative border. In the case of Jesus, to reach him required to apply for a permission. His friends had to ask Pontius Pilato, the power holder, for the removal of Jesus’s body from the cross—which means that they were connected to the higher spheres of decisionmaking. For those who were not well connected to the spheres of power, “the women and those who knew him from Galilee,” they could only stand at a distance. Hadn’t the friends been there, Jesus’s body could have stayed there on the cross, left to the wild beasts, without sepulcher. But thanks to these well-connected men, his body was granted and buried, abolishing the distance. And now that distance was abolished, the women could get closer and see where Jesus was buried. They were lucky. It does not happen all the time! v

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Pondering on this text led me to think of parents in those places and countries torn by wars and armed conflicts, who watch their sons taken away without being able to protect them; their daughters raped under their watch; and their properties confiscated, expropriated, or destroyed without compensation or recourse. I started imagining women who are gang-raped as weapon of war in front of their husbands, sons, or brothers, the latter completely unable to protect them; I thought of all those limitsituations—to use Karl Jaspers’ terminology—in which one is unable to help or protect their beloved ones, in which the only option remaining is to stand at distance and watch. From then on, I have been interested in the stories of the survivors, be they through memoirs, personal testimonies, or informal conversations. And I found out that, unfortunately, what I thought through meditations was not just my imagination. It was and—alas!—it still is a reality. That is how I started asking what could be the right ethical attitude in such situations. Is fleeing or hiding the right thing to do, leaving behind the persons one loves? From a detached observer’s point of view, it is rational and even reasonable that one stands “at a distance” where s/he is not in danger. But from the person involved in those kind of situations, as several narratives of survivors attest, it is not obvious. That is why the goal of this book is to argue that, for a survivor of such horrific events, accepting to live is an act of courage, but of another kind than what the Western philosophical tradition has habituated us with. It is an ontological-existential one, which ought to become the backdrop for evaluating the reconstruction and reconciliation processes of societies emerging from ashes. In the beginning of the project, I wanted to approach it from a phenomenological perspective, since I was subjugated by that “standing at a distance.” I wanted to describe that distance beyond which one endangers oneself, but bellow which one might not see what and where it is happening. From the description of that distance, I was hoping to branch off to the phenomenology of the sight. But from my preliminary research, I felt that I was not getting to that primal insight of the survivor standing at distance from where their beloved ones are in need of help and/or protection, and yet being unable to help them. Finally, the project took the present shape, which redefines the survivors’ courage despite the hell they endured and uses it to critically reexamine the virtues hailed in the processes of reconstruction and reconciliation of post-conflict societies. Thus, I am heavily indebted to many survivors—so many to be named—who shared their stories with me, which kept the idea bugging my mind until it came out under this title. I cannot claim to have given you a voice, but your voices were in my mind throughout the writing of this book, with “fear and tremor” of occupying your space or claiming authorship of what is yours. My apologies to any survivor who might be hurt by anything I say in this book. The preliminary researches were conducted at Boston College (BC) during the summers of 2017 and 2018, thanks to the generosity of the president of the BC University, Fr. William P. Leahy, S.J. Thank you so much Bill for your kindness, generosity, and encouragement. During the same summers, I benefited a lot from the hospitality of the families of Meg Noyes, Skip, and Judy Nielsen. They introduced

Preface

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me to one of the survivors of the Holocaust still alive. Thank you very much for your friendship and hospitality, and I thank so much the survivor who was very kind to open his home to me and share his story. I want to thank also Fr. Kizito Kiyimba, S. J., then vice chancellor of Arrupe Jesuit University, for his encouragement and support. Kacipapa Mayamiko, S.J., read part of the book, and his insights and challenging questions helped improved the readability of the text. Thank you Maya. I want to thank Eddy Murphy, S.J., James Bernauer, and S.J. who read the whole draft. Their corrections and comments were very helpful. My gratitude also goes to the reviewers whose comments and recommendations were instrumental in improving some parts of the work. David Rasmussen was very encouraging and supportive as usual. I thank him very much. My companions Jesuits of the different communities I lived in during the last 4 years—Arrupe Jesuit University, St Mary’s, BC, Cape Town, Lycée du Saint Esprit—contributed in a way or another to the completion of this book. I thank them. Finally, in a special way, I thank Jim Keenan, S.J., not only for awarding me a fellowship to the BC Jesuit Institute during the of summer 2021, but also for fighting against all odds so that I can travel safely during the Covid-19 pandemic. He went an extra mile to provide a conducing working environment as I finished up this project. Thank you so much Jim for your generosity, tenacity, hospitality, and kindness. With you I thank the personnel of the Jesuit Institute, Toni Ross, and of the Office of International Scholars and Students (OISS), Kayla and Adrienne, for their help and support during my stay at BC Jesuit Institute. The editing team at Springer was very supportive and helpful. I thank you all. While all these generous people were helpful to bring this project to fruition, its shortcomings are my own responsibility, and I beg the reader’s indulgence. Owing them so much, I dedicate this book to all survivors of conflicts, known and unknown. Chestnut Hill, MA, USA

Fidèle Ingiyimbere

Contents

1

General Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1 6

2

The Courage to Live . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1 Belying Philosophers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 Courage in Hiding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3 Fighting for Survival . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4 Daring to Stand Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.5 The Courage to Live . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

9 9 11 16 19 23 28

3

The Necessity to Forget and the Duty to Remember . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1 Intricacies of Memory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 Condemned to Forget . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3 The Dilemma of Public Forgetting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4 A Duty to Remember? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.5 Public Remembering and Its Consequences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.6 Forgetting and Remembering: Conflict of Duties? . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . .

29 29 32 37 42 48 53 55

4

Silence and the Imperative to Tell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1 “Leave None to Tell. . .” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2 The Incapacity of Words . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3 Silence and the Imperative to Tell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4 The Opened Space by Storytelling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.5 The Burden of Listening . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.6 Speaking for the Absent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . .

57 58 60 65 70 75 80 84

5

The Urge to Revenge and the Call to Forgive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.1 The Story of a Naked Chicken . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2 Forgiveness Beyond the Given . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

87 88 92 ix

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Contents

5.3 Forgiving the Unforgivable? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.4 Survivor and Forgiveness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.5 Forgiveness and Forgetting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.6 Being Thankful for the Forgiveness Asked and Offered . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . .

99 105 110 114 115

6

The Promises and the Impossibility of Justice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1 The Quest for Justice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2 Crimes Beyond Punishment? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3 Restorative Justice and Gross Human Rights Violations . . . . . . . 6.4 Repairing the Irreparable? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.5 Justice and Amnesty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.6 Forgiveness and Justice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . .

117 118 119 124 130 135 140 145

7

General Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149

Name Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 Subject Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159

Chapter 1

General Introduction

Abstract This chapter is an overview of the whole project, sketching the rationale of the project and giving a quick synopsis of each chapter. As situations of crimes against humanity are described by many scholars as hell, the question undergirding this book is whether survivors still have resources to contribute to the processes of reconstruction and reconciliation of their societies emerging from those horrendous destruction. Hence, part of the title is virtues from hell. The question is motivated by the conviction that survivors have to play a key role in the processes of reconciliation and reconciliation if the latter are to gain legitimacy and build a stable post-conflict society. That is why the project is to re-examine some important practices usually taken for granted in transitional justice literature, such as memory, story-telling, forgiveness, from the survivors’ perspective. The rest of this chapter summarizes the main chapters, from the courage to live (Chap. 2) to the examination of justice (Chap. 6) through the remembering and forgetting (Chap. 3), silence and telling (Chap. 4), revenge and forgiveness (Chap.5). Keywords Survivors · Courage · Forgetting · Remembering · Telling · Forgiveness · Justice · Reconciliation-reconstruction

Many books and literature on massacres and other gross violations of human rights call these tragic events hell, and rightly so. Romeo Dallaire (2004), the former UN Lieutenant-General who was in charge of the UN forces when the genocide against Tutsi in Rwanda unleashed, entitled his Memoirs Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda. A few years before the publication of his memoirs, Dallaire (2002) had been invited by the United Stated Holocaust Memorial Museum for a talk entitled, A Good Man in Hell: Roméo Dallaire and the Rwanda Genocide. Samantha Power (2002) who wrote a foreword to Dallaire’s Memoirs, called her own book A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide. And Grigoris Balakian (2009) who wrote about the Armenian Genocide called his book Armenian Golgotha. One can enumerate more titles with the same flavor.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 F. Ingiyimbere, Virtues from Hell: Survivors of Conflicts and the Reconstruction-Reconciliation Processes, Philosophy and Politics - Critical Explorations 20, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89173-2_1

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The question now is: As such horrendous acts are indeed instances of “failure of humanity,” is there anything human remaining in such situations that can inspire hope and foundation for future reconstruction and reconciliation? The answer is certainly yes, and an abundant literature exists to prove acts of heroism and generosity from the perpetrating groups and bystanders. For instance, the state of Israel has instituted an honorific title called “Righteous Among the Nations,” which recognizes non-Jews who saved Jews during the Holocaust. However, the approach of this book is different. I propose to look at what can be the remaining virtues of the survivors as the foundation for a viable and enduring reconstruction and reconciliation of societies emerging from wars and civil unrest. The proposal is based on a fact and an assumption. The fact is that in every situation of genocide and massive human rights violations, there are four kinds of actors: (1) the perpetrators, (2) the victims, (3) the bystanders, and (4) the survivors, and by victims I mean those who succumbed. Certainly, these categories are not clearly cut. There can be victims among the perpetrators, and perpetrators among the victims, which would lead to the existence of survivors in both camps. Furthermore, there can be collaborators in both categories, betraying their own groups to save their own skin. As Maurice Merleau-Ponty once said, there is always [an] enemy in one’s house. Even bystanders can join one group or another, instead of being merely neutral.1 Despite this complexity, I take these categories to be clearly identifiable in cases of genocides and crimes against humanity, at least conceptually. The assumption is that the survivors can and will play a key role when it comes to the reconstruction and reconciliation of the societies affected by such tragic events of egregious human rights violations. There cannot be any serious reconstruction and reconciliation in a post-conflict society without taking into account the survivors. Whether they have become a dominant political power or are still marginalized, their position in the process of reconstruction and reconciliation will constitute the cornerstone of the whole enterprise. The way survivors are treated will be the yardstick to measure the success of the rebuilding process. Thus, this book purports to look at what remains of survivors in order to contribute to and constitute the foundation of reconstruction and reconciliation.2

1

For the ambiguity that permeates the identification of those categories, see Kerry Clamp and Jonathan Doak who note that “in civil conflict situations the difficulties caused by such overlap [between restorative justice and transitional justice] can give rise to significant definitional problems. Both sides of the divide will often have committed offences against each another. However, the perpetrator of a particular offence may well be viewed as a ‘victim’ if s/he comes from a minority community that has suffered atrocities at the hands of the majority. Likewise, victims may also be viewed as perpetrators if they, or representatives from their communities, have been involved in violations against the opposing party” (2012: 346–7). 2 One of the reviewers noted that the approach of this book is one-sided, and rightly so, because it is a methodological choice of analyzing these themes through the survivor’s lenses. Thus, it cannot be corrected without altering the project as a whole. The other stakeholders in the transitional processes, such as perpetrators, are summoned through the survivors’ perspective. The fact and the assumption explained above are meant to justify this methodological take, although it can also be viewed as a soft spot of the whole enterprise.

1 General Introduction

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As such, this project is inscribed into the Transitional Justice field, and that is why it will lead to re-examination of elements usually considered essential to transitional societies, such as memory, truth telling, forgiveness, to name a few. Such a re-examination will surely have to underscore the challenges that might affect or impede the survivors’ contribution to that process of reconstruction and reconciliation.3 For indeed if, as some theorists underline, reconstruction is about solving “development issues in innovative manner” (Sakalasuriya et al. 2018: 895), it can only innovate by avoiding that which leads it to more inequality or to the same issues that had caused the conflict (O’Driscoll 2018: 4; 10). That is why, in addition to its economic dimension, reconstruction has to include political and social aspects (Sørensen 1998; Jabareen 2013), so that the post-conflict political and social structures may be hospitable to peace. In the Transitional Justice literature, putting up such structures is part of the reconciliation process of a society trying to emerge from the ashes. Theorists agree that reconciliation is a complex enterprise, both as a process and as goal, because it cannot be designed once for all. Each society has to work out its own, taking into account the contextual particularities (Kumar 1999; Kelman 2010; Bloomfield et al. 2003; Brounéus 2003; Radzik and Murphy 2019). At the same time, however, they also point out that there are some elements constitutive of reconciliation, such as truth telling, memory, forgiveness, healing, justice, etc. (Bloomfield 2003; Brounéus 2003). Thus, in addition to examining what remains in the survivors for contributing to the reconstruction and reconciliation process, this book re-examines some of those constitutive elements through the lenses of the survivors. The main question, therefore, is: To what extend can these constitutive elements be required of the survivors without overburdening them? Analyzed abstractly, the elements sound right and good. But do they resonate the same way in the ears of the survivors? As Luc Huyse rightly notes, “lasting reconciliation must be home-grown because in the end it is the survivors who assign meaning to the term and the process” (Huyse 2003: 23). From that perspective, it is my conviction that examining the reconstruction and reconciliation process through survivors’ lenses gives it more legitimacy and delineates its moral justification and its political implementation. Hence, the whole project is structured around five main chapters, apart from this general introduction and the general conclusion. The first chapter, entitled “The Courage to Live,” is foundational to the rest of the book. It examines the virtue of courage from the perspective of a survivor of massacres, genocides, and other crimes against humanity. Indeed, if the survivors are the cornerstone of every enterprise of reconciliation and reconstruction after such horrendous events, then there is no virtue as necessary as courage. The question then becomes: which courage? The first point of the chapter examines briefly the meaning of the virtue of courage in the Western

3

Because this book is focused on social and political reconstruction and reconciliation of a postconflict society, survivor here stands for survivors of social evils such as genocide and massacres. It is not impossible that the same virtues that will be mentioned could also be applied to personal level.

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1 General Introduction

philosophical tradition. Considered mostly in connection with the art of war, courage implies deliberation. It is seen as part of virtue for Plato, the mean between temerity and cowardice for Aristotle, and the regulator of the relation between reason and the will for Aquinas. Against this background, the chapter contends that such understanding of courage cannot apply to survivors and yet it cannot be completely dismissed. Thus, the chapter suggests another understanding of courage from the survivors’ situation, from their hiding place in order to escape the threat of death, to the courage to live despite the traumatic experience they underwent, through the effort to survive and the daring to stand up against the perpetrator. Once this new understanding of courage is settled, the rest of the book is to be read from that backdrop, since any effort the survivors make to participate in the transitional processes is an instance of this existential-ontological courage. The second chapter, called “The Necessity to Forget and the Duty to Remember,” builds upon the preceding chapter. For after a person survives the massacres and other crimes against humanity, the first challenge to the virtue of courage to live is to carry the burden of the experience she went through. Thus, there is a tension between the necessity to forget it so that the person can live normally, and the duty to remember for preventive reasons. In that regard, as both forgetting and remembering are related to memory, the chapter delves into the intricacies of memory, in order to delineate the field of our investigation. Then, it turns to the two main articulations of the chapter, namely, the necessity to forget and the duty to remember. It examines the tensions between the two, both at the personal and public levels. Since, according to some scholars, forgetting is the normal condition of every person, the chapter evaluates the extent to which forgetting can be expected from the survivors whose surroundings are constant reminders of their ordeal. The same question is applied to the dilemmas of public forgetting, when public authorities forbid to remember gross violations of human rights such as the Edict of Nantes. After dealing with forgetting, the chapter moves to discussing whether there can be a duty to remember, and if so, how it would be required from a survivor. The chapter progresses to the issue of public remembrance and its consequences. It closes by asking whether there is no conflict between forgetting and remembering when looked at from survivors’ perspective. The third chapter, “Silence and the Imperative to Tell,” follows the same methodology and explores the layers of story-telling and their moral/ethical implications as used in the processes of reconstruction-reconciliation of post-conflict societies. Indeed, it is the goal of the perpetrators of crimes against humanity such as genocides and mass massacres of not leaving a witness who would tell the story of what happened. Hence the fitting title of Alison Des Forges’ book Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda (1999). Many perpetrators acknowledge that they aim at suppressing any possible survivor who would tell the story. On the other side, however, many survivors understand their miraculous survival as a mission to tell what happened to them. Hence, another fitting title such as Immaculée Ilibagiza’s Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust (2006) and many testimonies and statements from survivors attest to that fact. From these radically opposite stands, the chapter discusses the possibility of carrying out such survivors’

1 General Introduction

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mission of telling what happened to them. Yet many of the survivors attest that ordinary words are incapable of translating such horrific experiences of gross human rights violations. That is why some of them end up opting for silence, which is not less problematic, for it can be imposed by sociocultural contexts or enforced by political authorities. Therefore, the chapter distinguishes the positive form of silence from the negative ones and confronts them with the apparent imperative to tell. At this level also, it examines whether such imperative can be required from the survivors by all means. Now, when the survivors choose to tell their stories, that telling opens a space that is no longer particular to them only, but rather to everybody, including the perpetrators. The chapter looks at the modality of the use and the advantages of such space in order to contribute to the reconstruction of the social fabric without hurting the survivor. The last section of the chapter deals with the possibility of talking for the absent, present in three modalities: for the past in the figure of the disappeared victims, for the present in the figure of the just and the innocent person, and for the future in the figure of future generations. One of the practices often called upon in the process of reconciliation and reconstruction of societies emerging from civil unrest is forgiveness. Thus, the fourth chapter, “The Urge to Revenge and the Call to Forgive,” tackles the question of forgiveness. The normal instinctual reaction against harm is anger and resentment, which can lead to self-defense and even to revenge. That is why the chapter explores the possible tension between this urge for revenge that can follow an injury, especially an injury of the magnitude of crimes against humanity, and the hard call to forgive. In that line, the chapter begins with the apparent impossibility of forgiveness and the untenable position of revenge, since such a social practice undermines the foundation for a society engaged in the process of reconciliation and reconstruction. Once the revenge course is disqualified from the available options, the chapter investigates the meaning of forgiveness. It is a concept with religious connotations and origin, and yet whose meanings meet other understandings in other cultures. That is why, after using mostly Avishai Margalit’s analysis of the meaning of forgiveness, I search in Kirundi language the meaning of forgiveness, in order to show commonalities and avoid dismissing it on the ground that it is only a Western concept from the Abrahamic tradition. This definitional work allows then to re-examine what can be or cannot be forgiven, following authors who have confronted similar questions, such as Jacques Derrida, Hannah Arendt and Vladimir Jankélévitch. The chapter proceeds by using the result of this inquiry to ask whether there can be a duty for the survivor to forgive, a question dealt with at three levels: moral, ethical, and decent, all of which would have been clarified in previous paragraphs. Before concluding on being thankful for the forgiveness asked and offered, the chapter considers the tension between forgiveness and forgetting, and the relationship between the descendants of the perpetrators and those of the victims and survivors. It also raises the question whether there can be the possibility of forgiving in the name of the Absent. The last chapter is about justice. After the previous chapters have looked at a certain number of virtues important for the survivors’ contribution to the reconstruction and reconciliation of a post-conflict society, the sixth chapter focuses on the

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virtue of justice as a political one that any society emerging from social and political upheaval needs. As the general context of this book is the transitional justice, the chapter examines the three branches of criminal, restorative and reparative justice, starting by showing that survivors yearn for justice. Concerning criminal justice, this chapter follows Arendt and others who have argued that there is no possibility of justice for acts such as the crimes against humanity and genocides, because the crimes concerned are beyond human practical reasoning, if justice is understood as re-establishing the equilibrium disturbed by the crime. That being the case, the chapter attempts to suggest another moral reason for trails where there is the impossibility of justice, a reason found in the defense of an innocent person. The chapter then looks at the restorative component, asking whether it can provide the survivors with the feeling that justice is done. Here also, while restorative justice may contribute significantly to the process of reconciliation and reconstruction, it has to be modest in promising the restoration of the survivors to their previous state. The same observation and advice are highlighted with reparative justice, because in whatever way one conceives it, there cannot be a claim of repairing what has been destroyed by crimes against humanity and crimes of war. In conclusion of this analysis, the chapter shows that none of these pillars can render justice for what victims and survivors of gross human rights violations suffer. At best, it is a human gesture toward them to show that, as a human community, we still care for them even if the human family has failed them. Such initiatives are what we can do at a human level, since what happened is beyond the human practical reasoning and possibilities. As some authors have noted, all these efforts are meant to make the lives of survivors “just bearable” (Gualde and Luterstein 2009: 434). The chapter proceeds by examining whether such efforts of justice are not in contradiction with amnesty and forgiveness, since the latter are other mechanisms used in transitional period of a post-conflict society. A nuanced analysis of both subjects is developed, always looking at them through the survivors’ lenses. It transpires that partial and conditional amnesty is not in contradiction to the survivors’ thirst for justice, even if it is an impossible justice. However, blanket amnesty is shown to be morally wrong and unjust toward the victims and survivors. As to forgiveness, the chapter illustrates that it does not contradict the quest for justice, provided forgiveness is not imposed by an external body, or pressured on survivors. This is the proposed road; it remains to walk it.

References Balakian, Grigoris. 2009. Armenian Golgotha: A Memoir of the Armenian Genocide 1915–1918. New York: Vintage Books. Bloomfield, David. 2003. Reconciliation: An Introduction. In Reconciliation after Violent Conflict: A Handbook, ed. Bloomfield, David, Teresa Barnes and Luc Huyse. Stockholm: IDEA. Bloomfield, David, Teresa Barnes, and Luc Huyse, eds. 2003. Reconciliation after Violent Conflict: A Handbook. Stockholm: IDEA.

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Brounéus, Karen. 2003. Reconciliation: Theory and Practices for Development Cooperation. SIDA. Clamp, Kerry, and Jonathan Doak. 2012. More than Words: Restorative Justice Concepts in Transitional Justice Settings. International Criminal Law Review 12: 339–360. Dallaire, Roméo. 2002. A Good Man in Hell: General Roméo Dallaire and the Rwanda Genocide. On https://www.ushmm.org/confront-genocide/speakers-and-events/all-speakers-and-events/agood-man-in-hell-general-romeo-dallaire-and-the-rwanda-genocide, consulted on July 17, 2018. ———. 2004. Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda. New York: Caroll and Graf Publishers. Des Forges, Alison. 1999. Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda. New York: Human Right Watch. Gualde, Andrea, and Natalia Luterstein. 2009. The Argentinean Reparation Programme for Grave violations of Human Rights during the Last Military Dictatorship (1976–1983). In Reparations for Victims of Genocide, War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity, ed. Carla Ferstman, Mariana Goetz, and Alan Stephens. Leiden/Boston: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. Huyse, Luc. 2003. The Process of Reconciliation. In Reconciliation after Violent Conflict: A Handbook, ed. David Bloomfield, Teresa Barnes, and Luc Huyse. Stockholm: IDEA. Ilibagiza, Immaculée. 2006. Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust. New York: Hay House. Jabareen, Yosef. 2013. ‘Conceptualizing’ Post-Conflict Reconstruction, and ‘Ongoing Conflict Reconstruction’ of Failed States. International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society 26: 107–125. Kelman, Herbert. 2010. Conflict Resolution and Reconciliation: A Social-Psychological Perspective on Ending Violent Conflict Between Identity Groups. Landscape of Violence 1: 1–7. Kumar, Krishna. 1999. Promoting Social Reconciliation in Post-conflict Societies: Selected Lessons from USAID’s experience. USAID Program and Operations Assessment Report No 24. O’Driscoll, Dylan. 2018. Good Practice in Post-conflict Reconstruction. Helpdesk Report. Power, Samantha. 2002. A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide. New York: Basic Books. Radzik, Linda, and Colleen Murphy. 2019. Reconciliation. In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2021 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/ fall2021/entries/reconciliation/. Sakalasuriya, Maheshika M., Richard P. Haigh, and Dilanthi Amaratunga. 2018. A Conceptual Framework to Analyse Consequences of Post-conflict Reconstruction Interventions. Procedia Engineering 212: 894–901. Sørensen, Birgitte. 1998. Women and Post-Conflict Reconstruction: Issues and Sources. UN Research Institute for Social Development, Programme for Strategic and International Security Studies. WSP Occasional Paper 3.

Chapter 2

The Courage to Live

Abstract This chapter is foundational to the rest of the book. For if the survivors are the key actors in the processes of reconciliation and reconstruction, then courage is the first virtue to consider. However, which kind of courage? To answer this question, the chapter considers briefly the meaning of that virtue in the Western philosophical tradition, and then contends that such understanding of courage cannot apply to survivors, and at the same time it cannot be completely dismissed. Hence, the chapter works out another understanding of courage from the survivors’ perspective, which takes into account survivors’ experience through their ordeal. Once this new understanding of courage is settled, the rest of the book is to be read from this backdrop, because any effort made by survivors to participate in the transitional processes is an instance of this existential-ontological courage. Keywords Survival · Courage to live · Daring to stand up · Fighting for survival · Being for · Being with · Hiding

2.1

Belying Philosophers

Seneca is credited to have been the first to say that it takes a good amount of courage to live. This maxim seems to be true for survivors of massacres and genocides, and if it is so, it challenges the classical understanding of courage. Indeed, Plato considers courage as part of virtue mostly concerned with the art of war. In his dialogue Laches (1990a) devoted to the examination of courage, Socrates and his discussants Nicias and Laches agree that courage is part of virtue, but they do not come to an agreement about its clear definition. Socrates refutes Laches’s definition which is offered in military terms, defining courage as not running away from a battle. He shows that such a definition does not capture the essence of what courage is in every instance when it is invoked, such as at sea or in disease. When Nicias intervenes to underscore that courage has to involve knowledge, Laches disagrees, and the intervention of Socrates leads Nicias to acknowledge that what he is talking about is rather the whole virtue and not the part of virtue that courage is supposed to be. At the end, no © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 F. Ingiyimbere, Virtues from Hell: Survivors of Conflicts and the Reconstruction-Reconciliation Processes, Philosophy and Politics - Critical Explorations 20, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89173-2_2

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definition of courage is provided, but at least, they agree that it is part of virtue and is concerned with the art of war. This military connection with courage in Plato’s philosophy is also underlined in his dialogue Protagoras (1990b). Rather concerned with the question whether virtue can be taught, the discussion leads to considering courage, once more understood as part of virtue. Here also, courage is linked to going to war seen as noble (360a–c). And in the Republic (1990c), courage is linked to the class which is in charge of protecting the society, as well as the part in the soul in charge of controlling the passions and emotions. In other words, whatever definition of courage is adopted in the Platonic tradition, the definition of courage is attempted in military terms, underlying what to rightly fear and when to rightly have confidence.1 Aristotle continues the same tradition of considering courage in a military way, although he takes it to be a virtue on its own. Actually, for him, while there can be many forms of courage and is the mean between cowardice and confidence, it has to be related to the activity which displays prowess and nobility, which is war (1115a, 30–35). From this point of view, one is to acknowledge that the traditional courage is essentially linked to the war activity (Pinatto 2012: 172). St Thomas Aquinas, however, gives courage a broader definition. Calling it fortitude, he understands it as the capacity “to remove any obstacle that withdraws the will from following the reason” (II-II, Q. 123, art. 3). It is to be understood here that courage is considered in the course of action and in the relationship between will and reason. Courage intervenes to remove that which would impede the will to follow the reason. One is to underline that this Thomistic definition is not limited to the military terms that were familiar with Plato and Aristotle. However, as it is concerned with action, one would infer that it also can apply to the act of war. Now in all these examples, in addition to the adversarial character of courage, it is also and especially an act of reason; it involves knowledge and discernment. Plato insists on the relationship between courage and wisdom (Protagoras), and Aristotle’s definition of courage as a mean between cowardice and confidence requires the knowledge of what is appropriate to resist and when it is time to flee. Aquinas’s emphasis on the capacity to remove the obstacle between the reason and the will also entails the knowledge of those obstacles. Such views of courage seem not to be the ones found in the life-experience of a survivor of massacres and genocide. In such circumstances, there is no time to rationalize what is it to be done because the danger is imminent and choices for escaping are not so many. Is there, then, any meaning of courage that can apply to the situation of such survivor? Can such a virtue have any meaning for a person who is trying to fight for his/her life? Or rather, can survivor teach us another kind of courage?

1 Shiguru Yonezawa (2012) explores courage in Plato’s dialogues. See her “Socratic Courage in Plato’s Socratic Dialogues” in British Journal for History of Philosophy, 20(4): 2012, pp. 645–65.

2.2 Courage in Hiding

2.2

11

Courage in Hiding

In her book Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust (2006), Immaculée Ilibagiza, a survivor of the Genocide against Tutsi in Rwanda, narrates how her family was caught by surprise—as many were!—by the death of the then president of Rwanda, Juvenal Habyarimana. The death signaled the beginning of killings and massacres. At one point, her father had to ask her, her younger brother and a brother’s friend to flee to a Protestant pastor’s house. He was her father’s friend and the father hoped that there they would be safe. Once in the pastor’s house, other ladies came to seek refuge. All remained there for few days, but the situation became complicated as the pastor feared he could be noticed that he was hiding them. Hence, he told the two boys that they could not stay there any longer, and the female “refugees” had to be moved into smaller room where they would stay for three months. Immaculée had to bid farewell to her brother and brother’s friend once for all. Immaculée’s narrative represents many stories of those living in similar situations, where decisions that might seem to betray the philosophical understanding of courage are made. Whereas Immaculée’s father was galvanizing the people who had gathered around his home looking for guidance and protection, he understood that he was no longer able to protect his own children. Furthermore, for both the father and the children, staying or fleeing were not warrant of safety, because danger was everywhere. It was the same situation when Immaculée had to watch her brother and his friend leaving the pastor’s house. While the outside presented an imminent danger, the hiding cell was not a safe haven either. Such are circumstances in which decision are made, which do not fit into the traditional definition of courage. In situation of war, husbands are forced to watch the rape of their wives and daughters, sons are forced to commit incest on their mothers and sisters. Wives and daughters, mothers and sisters are led to watch the killing of their loved husbands and sons, fathers and brothers, from their hiding places. Or simply, like in the case of Immaculée and her father, they have to send the loved ones away in the hope of saving them, whereas the same move exposes them to deadly danger. Is it cowardice that one is not coming out to jump on the perpetrator even if he/she is to die? Is there any courageous attitude for someone who watches helplessly from his/her hiding place the suffering of those who are under his/her responsibility? Between the heroism of those who sacrifice their lives for the loved ones and those who run away on slight threat, there is a whole range of grey area where courage seems to lose its meaning and yet cannot be completely dismissed. To start with, the courage exalted in art of war, in which one expresses strength and nobility—to quote Aristotle—seems to be emotionally detached. Death, in such instances, is a moment of glory. Hence the ceremonies we hold for our veterans and all who fell on the battle field as heroes. But those who fall in their hiding place are forgotten, and it is unlikely that they will find a grave. Moreover, such a courage in war seems to imply choice and deliberation. The situations described above, on

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the other hand, appear to be cases of necessity where possibility of choice disappears. And yet, finding a hiding place, and staying there or changing it, embodies the first level of what we are tracing here: the courage to live. In general terms, a hiding place is a strategic one which protects the one fleeing, but also keeps him or her in contact with the source of the danger. It has to keep him/her at bay from the danger, but it also has to be a position where he/she can monitor the movement of the danger. On the other hand, because this hiding place is not planned beforehand, it does not offer the assurance of safety. Furthermore, because the state of hiding requires the presence of danger, the hiding place itself is constantly under threat of being discovered. The one hiding is under constant fear of being found. That is why the courage to live, at this level, is manifested in carrying on this constant watch and constant strategic planning about the next move. The escape in case the danger becomes imminent again, or the necessary tactics to adopt, if the danger is all around and the escape impossible, constitute acts of courage in such circumstances. Immaculée’s story illustrates that. For instance, she narrates how the seven ladies had to squeeze themselves in the tiny room, whenever those hunting them were hovering around it, or when the housemaid entered the room for cleaning it. She also mentions a time when they had to think of rearranging the closet in order to make sure—as much as possible—they would not be seen. This act of hanging on life in such precarious conditions, where neither prowess nor nobility are at display, is indeed an act of courage, such that living the next second is celebrated as an achievement, and believing in tomorrow is an act of heroism. It shows that even in such situation, life is still meaningful and it is worth preserving. It might not appear so to the one hiding at the moment that life is at all meaningful, and certainly there can be moments of despair and questioning life itself. One can even argue that it is instinctive that every living creature has to protect itself. However true all this might be, the fact of holding on it, manifested in the very act of protecting it through hiding, gives value to life as worth protecting. By the act of hiding the hunted life, denigrated, humiliated, and desecrated through massacres, life is proven to be incommensurate and worth keeping. As the victim’s life has been removed from all the external world and activities that used to give its orientation, the perpetrator may consider it purposeless. Hiding it then is an act of courage because it stands against such view, while maintaining it in that constant contact with the source of danger, without giving up. I have already mentioned that hiding would not have any meaning unless the danger is still active. In other words, even when the person hiding does not have a concrete contact with the danger—through hearing or seeing—he/she still has a vivid presence of that danger from which she/he is running away. In that sense, she is confronting it from afar and yet near, because it is in her mind. She resists the danger in the midst of the precarity of the means of battle. This is a passive resistance that localizes the danger to avoid it, and even confronts it in its own battle field. In other words, hiding is not an act of surrendering. Rather, it is an act of resistance by clinging and resolving to protect life.

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13

Now, the prototype of this life we are talking about is a life targeted by massacres, genocide, and/or other crimes against humanity, yet engaged in resistance in order to stay alive. However, for the perpetrator, it is considered as unworthy and non-human. In his bestseller and inspiring book Man’s Search for Meaning (1985), Viktor Frankl relates a story when the Nazi SS would call them swine; the perpetrators in Rwanda called the Tutsis cockroaches; and gangs which were killing people in Bujumbura were calling them ibōro, that is, a cheap item to sell. In most cases, this dehumanization of the victim precedes the actual massacres, allowing the perpetrators to blur their conscience, and think that, in carrying out their heinous acts, they are not killing a human being—they are removing a non-human being from those deemed to be so. For indeed, as Michael Walzer observes, no one kills a human being. There has to be that moment of dehumanization so that the perpetrator does not feel or hear the call from the face of the other, screaming Thou shall not Kill, as Immanuel Levinas has reminded us. Once there is recognition of the other as a human being, this humanity reminds the perpetrators that they are before a categorical imperative of not to kill. Gross human rights violations and crimes against humanity then are not only the killing of human beings; they are the will to annihilate humanity itself by targeting the humanity of the victim. Romeo Dallaire’s subtitle to his memoirs that Rwanda was the failure of humanity is a euphemism, unless one understands this failure as in the expression of heart’s failure. For in genocides or other gross violations of human rights, humanity is targeted as such and the goal is to make the victim feel to be non-human. Protecting life and resisting the danger through hiding is the negation of that dehumanization that the perpetrator wants to inflict on the victim. By holding on that very life hunted and negated, the survivor is making a statement to the perpetrator that that life is worth respect and living. By refusing to give up, the survivor affirms in fear and uncertainty what the perpetrator negates and wants to destroy. I would even venture to suggest that it is this resistance through hiding as a negation of the dehumanizing act of the perpetrator that frustrates the latter. Perpetrators cannot believe that someone they degrade to the level of insect, animal, or just a simple thing could be hiding and trying to survive. They are contradicted in their own conviction, and this is already the first victory of humanity over the dehumanization. They cannot believe that what they thought was so worthless can be so protected and cost them so much energy. Thus, not only is hiding an act of courage in frailty and uncertainty, but it is also a moment of resistance and a sign of victory of humanity over dehumanization. Furthermore, if the victim is usually identified with an insect or an animal, the latter are mostly despised and aesthetically ugly. In Kirundi, this dehumanization appears through expressions such as: ehe ingene gisa! Ehe ingene gasa! That is, literally, “look how it looks like!” Gasa n’agakoko! Gisa n’igikoko. “It looks like an animal.” Even without identifying the victim with a particular animal, by perceiving and portraying him/her as an animal or a thing, the victim is dehumanized and excluded from the human space and species. She is pushed in the animal realm or the world of physical objects. The Kirundi expressions actually refer to wild animals. In other words, the victim is not even compared with domestic animals. She is

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identified with the wild animal in order to emphasize not only the dehumanization but also the danger she represents. For as a wild animal, you cannot tame them and you cannot expose yourself to its effects. Portraying the victims as a wild animal, once more, gives a deceiving belief to the perpetrator that hunting and killing them is serving the interest of human community, as he/she is chasing away the threatening danger. Here again, hiding appears to be a rebuff of that perception. In her story, Immaculée talks about moments when she cared about her look, her hair, and her eyes; how she had lost weight, etc. Frankl tells a story of a prisoner who came to his hut, telling them how to survive the concentration camp and avoid being sent to the gassing chambers. They were to shave every day, by all means, and walk smartly. As to Primo Levi, in his also well-known book Survival in Auschwitz (1958), he tells a story of one prisoner who would always try to wash his only prisoner’s uniform and to care about the ragged one pair of shoes he had. These examples convey the resistance at work in the act of hiding, by refusing to conform to the image of the wild animal that the perpetrator inflicts on the victim. In the hiding as in those places where humanity is being denied, the survivor resists the dehumanizing prejudices and perception by caring about how to appear and one’s image, if not only in the longing for a good shower and a haircut. The hiding act keeps open the possibility of those acts presently impossible. As every passing moment signifies the victory—though temporary—of life over the threatening death, it also creates space for the dream of looking better; of getting out of that tiny and crowded room to run free and to breathe deeply the fresh air. This possibility of imagining and dreaming oneself other than the image and presentation of the perpetrators is another act of resistance of the hiding act against the dehumanizing perception. It allows the survivor to escape from the situation of uncertainty and constant danger into the ocean of possibilities. It defies the image of the wild animal that was to be cast out from the human society, since the hopes and dreams from the hiding space is to be exactly back in the human sphere. As Levi puts it, “the camp wants to reduce to beast, but there has to be resistance, refuse consent” (Levi 1986: 41). In the act of hiding, there are exactly that refusal and resistance, by allowing the possibility of imagining and dreaming oneself other and otherwise than what the present situation offers. The act of hiding also preserves and displays humanity through the concern for the other. Both Levi and Frankl underline again and again how in the concentration camps the only rule was the survival; that there is no space of moral and ethical norms. Each one was striving to survive by all means. Frankl has this dramatic sentence that “the best of us did not return” (Frankl 1985: 24). And talking about the Golgotha of the Armenians, Balakian acknowledges that the diminution of physical energy went hand in hand with the depletion of moral values. “The panic imminent death engendered had made us all more selfish and less sympathetic toward our wretched companions” (2010: 254). In other words, one might think and understand that in situations like these, gestures of concern for the other disappear. Yet both survivors of concentration camps narrate friendships that were established among those who were striving to survive. They could see some of their companion

2.2 Courage in Hiding

15

prisoners in bad shape than they were and be ready to sacrifice for them. Frankl narrates an episode when he wanted to evade the camp, but renounced the project when one of his fellow prisoners gave him a look, that Frankl interpreted as asking whether he too was leaving. In the room where Immaculée was hiding, there was a little girl and Immaculee would cradle her on her laps so that she could sleep, whereas they did not even have enough space to change positions. These gestures are just a few illustrations among millions of those who have gone through those horrendous moments, which were meant to annihilate humanity, yet with the courageous act of holding on to life, the candle of humanity is maintained lit. Those actions of kindness, in moments when one would have been justified to care only for oneself, show that what was seen as a mere act of courage, because of clinging on a threatened life, is actually a life still devoted to more than itself and open to the need others. What Frankl calls the “basic human capacities: selftranscendence and self-distancing” (Frankl 1997: 97) are still at work during those moments. As such, they manifest the defeat of the first goal of annihilating the humanity of the victim. The latter still has resource to care for the other; to go beyond one’s need and be attentive to the needs of the other. By striving to stay alive in a hiding place, survivors are also striving to keep humanity alive in them. By selftranscending and self-distancing in contexts whose rule should have been selfinterest and self-preservation, the social dimension of human existence is manifested and the goal of the perpetrator defeated. This concern for others helps distinguish the clinging to life in a hiding place as an act of courage from the egoistic dimension of self-centeredness. In his Herméneutique du sujet (2001), Michel Foucault carries out an exegesis of the Delphus’s oracle to Socrates. He notes that before the “know yourself” injunction, there was another part of the oracle to which the philosophical tradition did not pay the same attention. It reminded the subject to care for oneself. Self-care is different from egoist self-centeredness, which is disconnected from others, and uses them for its own interest and its own survival. The self-care for which self-knowledge becomes a stage is rather a requirement for the care for others. Hence, in the hiding place, clinging on to life to prove that it is worth protecting and living it becomes the first step to be able to care for others. It is obvious that, in a hiding space as in similar contexts, this care for others requires more sacrifice than it would be in normal circumstances. Any gesture toward the other is always a deliberate chance to survive extended to the other, while reducing one’s own survival. In calculating, taking the seven years old girl on her laps in such tiny room meant for Immaculée tiring herself in an uncomfortable position, in a place where no one knows how long they are going to stay. Sharing one’s piece of bread in the concentration camp meant diminishing chances of survival. Even in a normal moral deliberation, there is no moral obligation to consider the other at the expense of oneself. We are only obliged to do what we have to or can do as long as it does not endanger us. There is even a classical moral rule that in necessity there is no rule any more. Following this moral reasoning, in contexts of hiding place, one would understand if survivors concern themselves with their own survival and ignore others. Yet, we see those fighting for their survival to be able to go further and sacrifice themselves for others. They are

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able to forgo their chances to survive for an act of kindness toward the other. These instances are another example that the humanity denied by the perpetrator in the survivor cannot be completely destroyed. It gives proof to what Levi says that “to destroy man [human being] is as difficult as creating one” (Levi 1958: 150). If this battle to remain humane in extreme situations of last chances can be defined as a courageous act, then it challenges the understanding of courage displayed in the art of war. For while the latter is manifested by physical strength to resist hardships and the sense of honor that motivates the warrior, here courage is shown in hiding and in the least gesture of kindness toward another person, to the risk of one’s chances. Hence the second level where courage of the survivor is manifested: the life valued through hiding needs to stay alive.

2.3

Fighting for Survival

Levi’s title to his memoirs of the concentration is Survival in Auschwitz (1958). Indeed, once the life that was counted as worthless and hunted down is valued and protected through the act of hiding oneself, it has to be sustained and maintained in existence. Frankl (1985: 97) notes that one is doomed when he/she does not care anymore about survival, when nothing makes any difference. Understandably, the first act of survival is to satisfy the biological elementary needs: eating, drinking, and managing waste. Also understandable is how hard to get them satisfied especially in a hiding place, which is supposed to prevent any physical contact with the perpetrator. Moreover, starvation can be a means to eliminate the victim. However, the survivor has to fight for maintaining this life into existence, by finding what to eat, by not abandoning it to its own fate. In that sense, fighting for survival is an act of courage not in the sense of engaging in an activity of prowess and nobility, but rather by resolving oneself to sustain a life hunted and endangered. It takes an act of courage to believe and to act on that belief that one has to survive in such conditions. Thus, the fight for survival is another level of the victory of humanity where it was meant to shrink. Fighting for survival is believing in life beyond the imminent threat against it. Yet it is not any other life, but the very life that is also diminishing in energy and beauty, in physical strength and psychological resources. By not giving up, but rather resolving to maintain such life, is a “will to live”—to borrow Nietzsche’s expression. In his memoirs, Balakian observes that, despite what he was going through and was witnessing about the plight of his people, he kept convincing himself that he had to survive. It is the same conviction I heard from many survivors. This will to live is the engine behind the fight to survive. But there is more. Frankl remarks that surviving traumatic experiences such as concentration camps is helped by what gives meaning to one’s life beyond the present, in something or someone who keeps one living. It can be a deed or a work we do; an experience or an attitude toward one’s fate. As he puts it, “in such cases we still can wrest meaning from life by giving testimony to the most human of all human capacities: the ability to turn suffering into a human triumph” (Frankl 1997: 64).

2.3 Fighting for Survival

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Indeed, striving for survival is again a sign of the triumph of humanity that cannot be vanquished by what one can go through. It adds purpose and perspective to the life in suffering, and even a certain solace where only pain and tears were expected. Frankl says that thinking of his first wife, who unfortunately perished, would give him escape from the horrible conditions of the concentration camp. Others fought to survive for a child or a love waiting for them outside; still others were able to contemplate the beauty of nature and give them the reason not to give up. For example, Balakian notes that “in such a peaceful state, this marvelous and tranquil environment of Mother Nature, I would sometimes forget that I was a deported and fugitive clergyman” (2010: 358). Others would escape from their hiding place by staring to a blue sky covered with stars. In other words, in fighting for survival, not only humanity is sustained by those significant others who are important in our lives that can keep us moving but also humanity refuses to be restricted to the bare basic needs. There is the possibility of the aesthetic experience beyond the immediate need, which makes one forget, be it for a short moment, the present condition. Survival for the other, but also survival thanks to the other. Survival for the other, when one values his/her fight for survival as preserving a gift for someone dear to him/her, or because one is convinced of a project that he/she has to accomplish. Not just a personal project, but an important work for the benefit of more than one. Naturally, it does not follow that everybody who has those ideals survives or realizes them once freed from the threating situations. However, through these projects and promises, these desires and aesthetic experiences, humanity is displayed and shows resilience when it was meant to be destroyed. As already mentioned, the survival is not only for the other, it is also a survival thanks to the other. Frankl's basic human attitudes of self-transcending and selfdistancing are manifested by that survivors’ love or/and care. The fight for survival gets new meaning and the purpose to be continued: the thought and hope of having someone or something else important outside the present condition. The fight for survival acquires a goal beyond itself; the survivor gathers energy to survive for that which/who awaits him or her. Gabriel Marcel’s insight that to say “I love you” means “you will never die” finds its deeper meaning here. The love/the care for someone becomes the reason to fight for survival. It is no longer to survive for oneself, but to survive because of someone else; no longer one’s own fight for survival, but survival because of the hope of the joy of the other when they meet again, or the joy stemming from the hope of accomplishing something once outside the survival conditions. The question, of course, is to know how one can maintain this hope while death is pressing from all sides. The first part of the answer would come from the suggestion that this fight for survival is another level of courage that defies the courage exemplified by the military prowess and nobility. It takes indeed a lot courage and energy to believe that, despite the constant threat of death and uncertainty of reaching the next minute, you will survive. And working on such hope, one resolves to survive. What I called above the will to live is this extreme courage to believe that you will survive without the assurance of the means to do so, except the very fight for

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survival. As one can understand, it is a difficult act to perform because it requires, at some point, to sacrifice one’s principles and norms, giving up habits and values that used to constitute one’s human universe, and yet still believe in humanity in you as you strive to survive. Narratives of survivors attest to that. While they fought for their survival by all means, they also struggled to maintain the humanity in them. Such a journey is walking on rope between heroism—one dying for core values—and completely giving up both morally and existentially. Morally, by not caring anymore for the humanity in oneself, and existentially by surrendering from fighting for survival. The choice for survival is a navigation between two extremes, one of giving up some of the core values because the circumstances do not allow to hold on them, and yet keep the call to be and remain human by valuing and maintaining this life alive. The second half of the answer comes from Frankl’s strong statement that once one is convinced that life has a meaning, then even suffering and death must have meaning too. This, for sure, requires more than just saying it. Frankl narrates an experience he had in the concentration camp where he was asked to give a talk to his fellow prisoners because the rate of suicide was so high. He talked about giving meaning to life even in dire situations. When he had finished his talk, some came to him with tears in their eyes to his own surprise, because they had been touched. In other words, giving meaning to suffering—and even to death—can become source of encouragement and energy to keep fighting for survival, even when death is threating from all sides. Suffering and death lose their threatening power of annihilating the victim, because they are integrated into the meaning of life itself. I consider that capacity of giving meaning to life through suffering and death and loving/caring for someone as an act of courage displaying the courage to live, because the fight for survival is transformed into an act of generosity at the highest level. Suffering or dying for someone/or something is self-sacrifice. Nevertheless, this self-sacrifice has to be nuanced, since self-sacrifice normally would be an act of freedom to give up one’s life for a higher goal. One thinks of martyrs and heroes who willingly die for their beliefs or their beloved ones. They had a possibility of not doing so—either by recanting their faith or renouncing their loyalty. The circumstances of massacres or genocide do not offer those possibilities. Victims are already targeted, and they are not dying willingly. Otherwise the whole fight for survival would not have a meaning. For, if one has given up his/her life, he/she can no longer want to take it back without betraying his/her belief and purpose. Those fighting for survival do so because they did not choose the threatening situation. That is why, by choosing to give meaning to their suffering and death for someone or something else, they display once more the triumph of humanity by offering their condition of suffering and death for others. While still ready to fight and willing to live, they also endure suffering and death for some higher purpose. That is why, in such conditions, it seems to be the highest level of generosity. Frankl calls it “spiritual freedom. . .that makes life meaningful and purposeful” and for him, it remains available to human beings in all circumstances, as it is “the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way” (1985: 87). To be able, in circumstances of massacres, wars or

2.4 Daring to Stand Up

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genocide, to have that spiritual freedom and choose the attitude of giving meaning to one’s life in the survival context, besieged by suffering and death, even if it is the only freedom that cannot be cleaned from a human being, is an act of courage. It is an act of courage to take that step and make the choice of giving meaning to suffering and death. Hence, not only is the act of survival an act of the will to live, it is also a choice to want to live through suffering and even death. That is why it is indeed another level of courage that the military understanding could not show, and yet at work in the courage to live. But there is more.

2.4

Daring to Stand Up

Frankl recounts a scene when, while digging in the snow under the cold, the guard was pressuring him to work harder and calling him a swine. The guard asked him what his profession was, and he stood up and told him that he was a medical doctor, specialist in brain surgery, commenting that “the new boss” could not have spent few minutes performing such a kind of job. Now, one among the dramas of massacres and wars is that the power and authority to carry out the dirty job is relinquished to those who, in ordinary times, were jobless and without social status. Thus, humiliation becomes one of the weapons against those doomed to die. In such conditions, to stand up and challenge their new status and power to kill, even when such act is a big risk, testifies to the dignity and worth that the existence still has, even in those dreadful moments. Such an attitude leads to another level of courage that I would call after Michel Foucault (2011), “the courage to tell the truth.” This kind of courage consists of telling the truth about oneself or about another to that person. Even in normal circumstances, daring to tell such a truth carries with it risks. Foucault’s analysis is focused on Greek and Roman Antiquity, and that courage of telling the truth is about one telling the truth to a friend. The risk is that the friendship could break up. In the situation of massacres, wars, and genocide, to stand up is to expose oneself to the danger of being killed, since it is about standing up to someone with power over one’s life. This can appear contradictory to what we asserted above about fighting for survival, as this seems to endanger one’s life. But there is no contradiction because to stand up in such circumstances of humiliation is to affirm the inherent value of life. It is to challenge the power that could have thought to have completely emptied life of its inner worth to the point of degrading it so low as a swine. It is to call into question the foundation of the illusion that through humiliation the perpetrator has absolute power over the victim. By standing up, the survivor shows that he/she is worth more than what the perpetrator has reduced him/her to. He/she still is able to show what Frankl talks about of “dying well and in dignity” by reminding the perpetrator that he/she indeed has had life, a goal and a dream, sometimes even better that what the perpetrator had before this sudden power. In a word, it is an existential No to the alienation that the perpetrator inflicts to the victims by not recognizing them as human beings. The opposing No from the victim to the belief of the

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perpetrator that the victim is not human—but rather an animal—takes the latter by surprise, since he/she might have thought to have completely subdued the victim and broken any sense of self-worth. Confident in his/her lethal power at his/her disposal any time, the perpetrator may think that the victim fighting for her survival cannot dare to stand up for him/herself. By daring to oppose the humiliation by telling the truth about himself/herself, a truth unknown or ignored by the perpetrator, the survivor shows that his/her life is beyond the perpetrator’s control and power. The survivor still has part of his/her life outside the present humiliation on which he/she stands to affirm her/his subjectivity. Instead of consenting to the demeaning and humiliating expression of the perpetrator, he/she shows the agency of presenting and representing him/herself as he/she thinks she/he is. Expression of his/her own subjectivity that cannot be erased even in the lowest kind of humiliation. Michel Henry (1990) argues that absolute subjectivity is experienced in the selfaffection of suffering in which no other subjectivity can reach to contradict it. That absolute subjectivity in the self-affection is also the very truth about oneself. Henry’s point is what is at stake in standing up against the perpetrator. The survivor refuses the humiliations and affirms the absolute subjectivity in which, the self-affection is ready to face the ultimate fate in the courageous act of telling the truth about oneself. The truth negated by the perpetrator about the victim, which is the cause of the humiliation itself, is affirmed in the perpetrator’s face. Indeed, while genocides and massacres target a group of people, most of the time, however, the main and first targets are the elite and the visible members of that group. On the other hand, it has already been mentioned that one of the dramas of such horrendous events is that those who, in normal circumstances, were not socially “important,” become the leaders and acquire excessive and uncontrolled power. For the latter, then, to humiliate the former can be seen as a way of negating the existing social order. The perpetrators use humiliation to show that the victims’ social status was not due to their inner worth but rather by accident. Therefore, for the victims to stand up and remind the perpetrators that, actually, that life was and is still part of them is to affirm that the humiliation did not rob/rub the self-affection that had founded their subjectivity. They still have the dignity inherent to their being. An objection could be raised as to whether those who do not stand up means that they have lost that self-affection as foundation of their subjectivity. Does it mean that they have lost their dignity or do no longer believe in it? As a way of responding, many testimonies have shown that—and it is understandable—massacres, wars, and genocides are able to break the will to live and the self-respect. This can also be true in any dramatic event in one’s life. It is only that this study focuses on those dreadful events. Some do indeed and unfortunately, get affected in their self-respect through such humiliating events, and the bravery to stand up and face humiliation gets a hit. Others may simply choose silence instead of speaking up, and there are many other reasons that can lead people to react differently in such situations. Whatever the case, however, there should not be a judgment of value on the attitude adopted by persons going through such circumstances. I am focusing on these acts of courage because the topic of this chapter is about retrieving the resilience of humanity in situation

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usually referred to as hell, in order to use it as seeds for hope of a successful reconstruction and reconciliation. Furthermore, there are many ways of displaying that act of courage of telling the truth about oneself in the midst of humiliation. One of them is the capacity of not giving up one’s good habits and attitudes. Levi tells a story of Lorenzo, a friend he met in the concentration camp to whom he credits his survival, “not so much,” he says, “for his material aid, as for his having constantly reminded me by his presence, by his natural and plain manner of being good, that there still existed a just world outside our own, something and someone still pure and whole, not corrupt, not savage, extraneous to hatred and terror; something difficult to define, a remote possibility of good, but for which it was worth surviving” (1958: 121). This example of Lorenzo shows again the courage of telling the truth of/about who one is, despite the dire conditions. It is an existential No to those hoping/thinking that reducing one to such situations, the sense and the will to be good are broken, which attested the dignity of that life right there. And by living up his goodness in him, Lorenzo inspired others and gave them reason for hope, because he exemplified the possibility of the good and the goodness outside the world of the threatening death and humiliation. Doing so is nagging those who have doubted in the very goodness displayed. One is to remember that part of the allegations for hunting the victims are the propagandas and prejudices about their evil side; their historical sins that have never been atoned; or their social and political responsibilities. Thus, instead of trying them before courts, the perpetrators choose the “final solution.” Hence, courageously displaying goodness and humanity against those demonizing and wanting to destroy them is to expose the lie behind the whole evil endeavor. And as such, it is taking a stance on the absolute subjectivity that has been self-affected in the suffering and yet not destroyed and therefore stands in dignity. So far, we have been analyzing standing up as an act of courage by borrowing Foucault’s concept of courage to tell the truth about oneself or to another. Foucault, as already mentioned, exploits the Greek term, parrhēsia, which means to tell all without reserve. That “telling/saying all” without reservation can have a positive and a negative side. The negative one is manifest when one says all and everything, mixing the necessary and the non-necessary. The positive side, which has been the perspective so far, concerns the courage to tell the truth about oneself or about someone else. We also underlined how this telling the truth carries a danger with it, because the reaction of the listener is unpredictable. The friendship that was the basis for telling the truth can break down; one can even get killed. Foucault gives the example of Plato who decided to tell the whole truth to his tyrant friend Dios and who, after which, planned to kill Plato. Now, the possible negative consequence is preceded by a positive act, which can be qualified to be an act of courage: listening to the telling of this whole truth. Using Aristotle, Foucault calls that capacity for listening the “generosity of heart.” Our case of a victim of egregious crimes against humanity is the opposite of what Foucault presents. Hence the act of standing up in such circumstances is doubly courageous. First, the kind of relationship between the perpetrator and the survivor is

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of enmity and hostility, not of friendship. Therefore, there cannot be an expectation of generosity of heart from the listener. However, not only does it reveal the dignity of the life of the survivor, but it also exposes the perpetrator to an invitation to the possibility of redemption by telling the truth about him/her too. By choosing to address the perpetrator, the survivor recognizes him/her as a moral agent who can heed the voice of reason and recognize the survivor as a human being worth of respect. By offering a hint of what his/her life has been or is, the survivor is inviting the perpetrator not to reduce him/her to the condition in which he/she is. Indirectly, the survivor is telling the perpetrator that, actually, he/she does not deserve to be there, and the perpetrator does not have to do what he/she is doing. It is left to the perpetrator then to seize the given chance and display the generosity of heart by listening, not only to the truth about the life of the survivor—which deserves respect—but also to the truth about the perpetrator him/herself. The latter does not have to do what she/he is doing. She/he is able to receive the Kantian categorical imperative of respecting humanity in every human being. By standing up—in whatever manner—the survivor stands for the dignity of the whole humanity, including the humanity of the perpetrator. The latter can no longer suppose that he/she is dealing with swine. Swine cannot perform a brain surgery. The perpetrator cannot believe to be dealing with inert things. Inert things or animals are not able to display goodness in time of threatening death. Thus, standing up for one’s dignity becomes a call to the moral sense of the perpetrator to recognize in that stance a human being and not a mere thing, and hence act accordingly. Hence the condemnation that comes with it. For by not listening to that truth, by not seizing the opportunity of redemption to regain his/her moral sense to respect humanity in every human being, the perpetrator signs his/her own condemnation because he/she will not claim that she/he did not know. From now on, whenever he/she hits or inflicts pain to the survivor, she/he will remember that she/he is doing that to a person who had such and such experience, who behaved in such and such manner. The perpetrator will have a face of the victim who can no longer be lost in the crowd, because she stood up. That is why standing up can take different forms. Even a reaction such as, “why do you hit me?”, or “why are you doing this or that to me”, takes the perpetrator aback when he/she could have thought that he/she was dealing with non-human beings. But in standing up, the perpetrator is put before his/her responsibility as a moral agent. That is why such an act is an act of courage. The last point related to this standing up as an aspect of courage comes again from Foucault’s analysis of parrhēsia, le franc-parler, the outspokeness. Certainly, this parrhēsia is not the only mode of telling the truth (Foucault identifies three more: prophecy, wisdom, and knowledge). But the all-truth-telling is different from each of these other modes. Prophecy is concerned with the future and the prophet speaks in the name of the other. The wise person can choose silence instead of speaking, or she can speak in uncommon language which cannot be understood by the common people. As to the one transmitting knowledge, he/she has no risk as he/she seeks to establish a tradition or a personal recognition. Contrary to all these, the parrhēsia does not only comprise risks, it is also such that the parrhesiastic—as Foucault calls

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the outspoken person—can only speak in his/her own name; he/she cannot commission someone else to do it. This description fits the standing up as we have been developing it. It also ties together that standing up with the absolute subjectivity experienced in the selfaffection of the self in the suffering. Indeed, such a standing up of the survivor cannot be done by someone else. Sure enough, a third party can stand up for someone else and confront the perpetrator by exhibiting the moral worth of the victim, as well as of every human being. Nevertheless, such a stance would not have the same value as that of the survivor facing the perpetrator, because the latter is a stance to be taken by the survivor as an irreplaceable subject. It is an ethical stance, and this stance joins Foucault’s characterization of parrhēsia because it is linked to the ethos. It carries an ethical weight. Thus, by standing up in the courageous act of frankly telling the truth about who he/she is and, at the same time, speaking frankly about who the perpetrator is and reminding him/her what she/he should do, the survivor asserts the uniqueness of his/her subjectivity as a human person. She/he assumes the risk of her/his existence that she/he cannot discard without selfnegation. And as already underscored, standing up to the perpetrator underscores the affirmation of the survivor’s subjectivity by negating the negation manifested by the perpetrator—to paraphrase the Hegelian dialectic. Thus, by taking up the ethical stance of affirming oneself in the face of the perpetrator, the survivor performs an act of courage that subsumes the previous levels of the courage in hiding and the fighting for survival. The bare life that was protected through hiding and committed to its worth through fighting for survival is confirmed in this ethical stance of the affirmation of the subject worth of respect and dignity. This new level of courage reveals that not only does life have a meaning, but it also is worth living, despite humiliation and degrading situation in which it has been subjected.

2.5

The Courage to Live

In his book quite old now The Courage to Be, Paul Tillich (1952) observes that courage as an ethical virtue is rooted in its ontological reality. He shows how true that assertion is through the history of Western philosophy, up to the existentialist movement. He develops an ontological account of courage on the background of existentialist philosophy and as the foundation of ethical reality. That development leads to the statement that, ultimately, “courage is the self-affirmation in ‘spite of,’ and courage to be as oneself is self-affirmation of the self as itself” (151). The courage of affirming oneself despite nothingness, fear, doubt, and anxiety is characteristic of modern existentialism in its different varieties. That is why the courage to be entails taking on oneself the weight of nonbeing experienced through the consciousness of one’s finitude. The latter is imminently expressed in the indeterminacy that surrounds the future. Not knowing for sure what tomorrow holds is the existential limit par excellence that no matter how strong one can be, one is not absolute master of oneself. Hence, courage as self-affirmation “in spite of” is that

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attitude to brave the fear of tomorrow, and even the doubt about tomorrow, and confront the anxiety sprouting from the consciousness of this finitude. Tillich distinguishes existential from pathological anxiety. The former is an ontological condition that cannot be erased from human existence, while the latter is caused by the impossibility of accepting the former. The courage to be is, therefore, the self-affirmation despite that existential anxiety. This kind of courage is not the one meant here by the courage to live. Indeed, the survivor who is battling for survival trough hiding, and who has the courage to stand up for what he/she believes in by telling the truth about him/herself and about the other, is not faced with the anxiety of nonbeing. The paradigmatic situation of genocide, massacre, and crimes against humanity that we have taken display such radicality of evil—to paraphrase Kant—that the courage to live is not about selfaffirmation in face of the constitutive nothingness of being. Rather, the courage to live is affirmed in the constant fight against the complete annihilation, not only of one’s own existence but also the existence of those who, were they to survive, would remember and keep memory. The courage to live for the survivor is a courage to fight death at every instant, to face the omnipresent death that it does not have any power over you, without knowing how the victory will come about. It is a paradoxical situation in which one’s fate and that of his/her kind is sealed—so to speak—and yet one refuses to take it as fate until the last breath. From this perspective, the courage to live is not the simple self-affirmation of the self or the stoic courage that affirms death and life at the same time. The courage to live for the survivor in the situation we have taken is the highest act of faith in life— as an existential stance rather than a theological statement—which sustains the survivor’s hope that, despite the radicality of evil he/she is facing, it does not have the last word. Through the courage to live, the survivor states in the face of evil that, despite its intensity and its tenacity, it cannot destroy the power of life. It cannot be the guiding principle of humanity, nor can it be the limit of what survivor can dream about. Many testimonies from those horrendous situations show people having projects once the situation is over. Immaculée Ilibagiza talks of what she would do once out from her hiding place; Frankl thinks of his unfinished book that he needs to complete. This is not to deny that there are some who do despair and lose it. Frankl identifies such a category in a way of dealing with concentration camp. Unfortunately, he also shows that those who fall into this despair rarely make it out. But for those survivors who refuse to be reduced to the constant threat of imminent death, they project themselves in a possible future, defying even the existential stance toward finitude expressed in the indeterminacy of the future. Instead of causing anxiety and doubt, the future opens up possibilities of what cannot be fulfilled in the present situation. To think of the future is the negation of the present saturated by the clamor of evil and openness to new possibilities. Instead of representing uncertainty and the threat of nonbeing, thinking of future becomes a source of possibility of being, and not any being, but a different one from what the present is offering. The emptiness of the future becomes the possibility of thinking another world; an offer of a new space for creation and creativity.

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Thus, this self-projection out of the confinement of the threat of death is another act of courage manifesting the will to live not only in present time but also in the future. It is to declare in the face of death: I shall live. The openness of the future avails the possibility of challenging death in its face, despite the precarious situation. It liberates the imaginative potentialities, which break the walls erected by death. It allows to think oneself as a possibility beyond the annihilating capacity of death. Tillich also talks of the courage to be as a correlation to the courage to be part of, the courage of the self as participant. The courage of self-affirmation as individuation would not be possible without the other side of being part of, not as an inactive part, but a participant one. It is about being part of the world in the phenomenological sense, both the natural and human world. Thus, the courage to affirm oneself as part of, is to have the bravery to assert oneself as part of natural and human world. It is to acknowledge that the individuation takes place through the participation in them. As we have now learned from Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1945), our first and primordial participation in the world is through our phenomenological body, the body we are and not the body we have. In that sense, the courage to affirm oneself as part of and participant in the world is not only to affirm that the self is impossible without that participation but also that the participation goes through the body; it is and has to be embodied. This courage to affirm oneself as part of the world through embodiment is such that it exposes the participant to be hurt; to be affected without possibility of avoiding it. By the very fact of affirming oneself as part of the world, one is vulnerable to what that world carries; one is condemned to carry the weight that he/she did not necessary create; he/she shares a fate of which he/she is not necessarily the author. Naturally, the response to the affect from the world will be different—that is when individual responsibility comes in—but the general impact from the world is inevitable. That is why it does indeed take a courage to affirm oneself as part of it. One would even agree with Tillich that there is a need of the courage to accept the acceptance. This acceptance, however, can be negatively formulated as a No against an unjustified harm. It should not be taken for the stoic stance that life and death are alike. Rather, it should be seen and taken as the courage to accept that there is no possible self-affirmation—and even the will to desire/wish oneself otherwise—without taking the self as participant in the world. As Jean-Paul Sartre would say, what is important is not what they did to us but what we do with what they did to us. While not completely agreeing with Sartre, even a selfaffirmation as a negation of the world has, first, to affirm the world. Its negation in the process of individuation cannot ignore that first affirmative moment. This courage as part of and participant is of paramount importance for the survivor of massacres and other gross crimes against humanity and, at the same time, it is a challenge. For, often in such circumstances, the victim is cut off from the world. The natural world that used to nourish him/her becomes the source of threat and death. The rivers and mountains, hills and valleys that used to adorn his/her natural milieu are places and symbols of trauma, as they either represent places of hiding or of fleeing; places of mass graves or simply scattered remaining of those who fell there. How then is the survivor going to be able to state that she/he is part of

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such a place? A place of confused memories as some recall the good memories while others represent traumatic experience? This dilemma of the courage to be part of is heightened when talking about to be part of human world. Indeed, the survivor is confronted with the human world in its complexity—in its largest definition: social, political, cultural, scientific, economic, and religious—which is both the source of his/her misery and the one of which he/she cannot completely cut off. To start with, the survivor is part of the group of those who are victims. It takes a great deal to keep affirming the solidarity with those under threat, especially when such targeted groups are of choice such as ideological ones, which one could deny. If this is even thinkable, it is hard to affirm being part of a world that constructed a politics of extermination; a social or religious group that persecuted you, and scientific culture that engineered the means of extermination. In this sense, the courage to be part of will also involve the courage to denounce; to refuse to be part of such culture of death, and a courage to believe that there is a possibility of another human world. In other words, the survivor will need the courage to be part of the human world, but it will also require the courage to denounce what dehumanizes. That is why the courage to be part of and to be a participant requires a critical eye in order to make sure that that participation is not blind to what causes death. The survivor will need the courage to reconcile with the natural and human worlds which, in a way, betrayed him/her. Furthermore, from the survivor’s perspective, the courage to be part of entails the courage to be with. Once more, one might think that to be with is a normal consequence of being embedded. Therefore, it should not require any courage. However, in case of a survivor, to be with calls for the question: to be with who and what? One needs a tremendous amount of courage to accept to be with the perpetrators who have been condemned or those who are suspected of participating in the crimes. It will summon an even higher amount of courage to be with the absence of the loved ones who disappeared, to be with the graves of those buried, or to be with one’s story. All this will require from the survivor the courage and force to face them and carry some. To be with those condemned or those suspected of crimes will confront the survivor with the system of justice, which will depend on his/her attitude and on his/her sociopolitical status. Indeed, if he/she is in position of power, the survivor will be the one now administering justice to the perpetrators, and clearly it will not be an easy task. In the contrary case, his/her situation will still be a moral case for the system of justice, since it will morally be judged according to the stance of the survivor. That is the reason why, in a way or another, the survivor will be faced with the judiciary system. The survivor will also be confronted with those who disappeared and those who are buried, as their silence and their graves will always remind him/her of what happened. Hence, in addition to what he/she has underwent as a survivor, these memories will add to his/her load what she/he is to carry and live with. Once more, this will display the courage to live as the survivor decides to carry on in spite of all this.

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Finally, in addition to the courage of being with, the survivor will have to have the courage to be for. This kind of courage is different from what we have already underlined that helps one survive in times of death, as described by Frankl. The courage to be for is rooted in the courage to live and is aimed at the purpose to live for others, through being for justice for the victims but also for every innocent person. Once again, one might think that, having survived, it is obvious that the survivor has to be engaged for justice for the victims. However, it will be left to his/her choice to make it a commitment. Moreover, from his/her experience of suffering, it does not follow that she/he has the courage to fight for someone else anymore. The experience of suffering might have been such that he/she is exhausted to commit to something more than trying to live. More so then, when it comes to fighting for every innocent person, and in this context, especially the innocent from the perpetrators’ group. With the evident risk of collective guilt, it might sound obvious that the innocent from the perpetrators’ group becomes the most vulnerable and susceptible to the vendetta, in search for justice for the victims. The courage for the survivor to stand for such person springs from the courage to live as participating in the being for others and the desire to see others live too. Having experienced the radicality of evil, it takes a lot of courage to state with Frankl that “no one has the right to do wrong” (1985: 112), especially when you have to state it in face of those claiming to bring you justice and justice for the victims. Yet, as this chapter is rooted in the perspective of transitional justice and reconstruction after massacres and other crimes against humanity, it is this kind of courage of the survivor to stand for the right and to resist every wrong wherever it comes from, that opens doors of hope for reconstruction and for reconciliation.

***

As announced at the outset, the goal of this book is to search for the “strength in what remains”—to quote Tracy Kidder (2009)—in the survivor that could help in the process of reconstruction and reconciliation of societies emerging from civil conflict. This first chapter has led us to analyze the courage to live as what is first needed for the survivor, from the hiding place to the courage to live, through the courage to fight for survival and the courage to stand up and tell the truth about oneself and about the other. The understanding of this courage is different from what the philosophical tradition has accustomed us with, because it does not arise from prowess and nobility displayed during war by heroes. The courage we identified is earned through vulnerability and uncertainty of what comes next. It is won through sweat and fear, second after second. That is why the survivor’s situation teaches a new kind of courage, which is foundational for rereading some key concepts in the transitional justice field, considered indispensable for reconstruction-reconciliation process.

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References Balakian, Grigoris. 2010. Armenian Golgotha: A Memoir of the Armenian Genocide, 1915–1918. New York: Vintage Books. Foucault, Michel. 2001. L’herméneutique du sujet. Cours au Collège de France. 1981–1982. Paris: Seuil/Gallimard. ———. 2011. The Courage of the Truth. New York/London: Palgrave. Frankl, Viktor. 1985. Man’s Search for Meaning: Revised and Updated. New York: Washington Square Press. ———. 1997. Recollections: An Autobiography. New York/London: Plenum Press. Henry, Michel. 1990. Philosophie et subjectivité. Encyclopédie Universelle de la Philosophie, t. 1., L’univers philosophique. Paris: PUF. Ilibagiza, Immaculée. 2006. Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust. New York: Hay House. Kidder, Tracy. 2009. Strength in what Remains: A Journey of Remembrance and Forgiveness. New York: Random House. Levi, Primo. 1958. Survival in Auschwitz. New York/London: A Touchstone Book. ———. 1986. The Drowned and the Saved. In The Complete Works of Primo Levi, ed. Ann Goldstein. New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation. Ebook. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 1945. Phénoménologie de la perception. Paris: Editions Gallimard. Pinatto, Matthew. 2012. Moral Courage and Facing Others. International Journal of Philosophical Studies 20: 165–184. Plato. 1990a. Laches. In The Collected Dialogues of Plato Including Letters. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ———. 1990b. Protagoras. In The Collected Dialogues of Plato Including Letters. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ———. 1990c. Republic. In The Collected Dialogues of Plato Including Letters. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Tillich, Paul. 1952. The Courage to Be. New Haven: Yale University Press. Yonezawa, Shigeru. 2012. Socratic Courage in Plato’s Socratic Dialogues. British Journal for History of Philosophy 20: 645–665.

Chapter 3

The Necessity to Forget and the Duty to Remember

Intibagira ntibana (Kirundi Proverb which means that who does not forget is a-sociable). Survivors will be remembering their past. Sue Campbell, Our Faithfulness to the Past

Abstract This chapter builds upon the preceding one. For after a person survives the massacres and other crimes against humanity, the first challenge to the virtue of courage to live is to carry the burden of the experience she went through. Thus, there is a tension between the necessity to forget it and the duty to remember for preventive reasons. Now, since both forgetting and remembering are related to memory, the chapter starts by analyzing the intricacies of memory. Then, it examines the tensions between the two, both at the personal and public levels. In the first place, the chapter evaluates the extent to which forgetting can be expected from the survivors whose surroundings are constant reminders of their ordeal. In the second place, the chapter moves to discussing whether there can be a duty to remember, looking at the public remembrance and its consequences. It closes by asking whether there might be conflict between forgetting and remembering. Keywords Memory · Forgetting · Remembering · Amnesty · Public remembering · Public forgetting

3.1

Intricacies of Memory

At the end of the second chapter, I evoked the courage of the survivor as being with and being for, stemming from the fact that, as a survivor of grave violations of human rights, such war crimes, genocides, and massacres, the survivor will be with those who persecuted her/him and will live in a society that represents a trauma. I also discussed the courage that needed to be on the side of the innocent from the perpetrators’ group. This twofold understanding of courage takes almost a normative character rooted into the fact that as a survivor, he/she will have to live again in a political community, to which he/she will have to contribute for its reconstruction © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 F. Ingiyimbere, Virtues from Hell: Survivors of Conflicts and the Reconstruction-Reconciliation Processes, Philosophy and Politics - Critical Explorations 20, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89173-2_3

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and reconciliation. Indeed, it is a trivial truism to say that massacres and wars destroy the social fabric and leave wanting the social capital (Vervisch et al. 2013) for peaceful cohabitation. Today a whole field of study dedicated to the post-mass human rights violations has emerged under the title of transition justice (henceforth TJ). Began by individual initiatives in 1990s1 for helping Eastern Europe countries emerging from communism and Latin American countries recovering from dictatorships, transitional justice has acquired a normative and an institutional validity proposed to—if not imposed on—countries emerging from civil unrest due to egregious human rights violations. In its beginning, the goal was to foster the respect for human rights—especially civil and political rights—and reconnect with democratic governments and the rule of law. Hence, TJ’s advocates pushed for international criminal courts to judge the perpetrators, and they saw it as the inevitable step toward peace and stability. The retributive paradigm of justice was dominant and many critics started raising their concerns against this Western liberal imperialism, as it were. As a way of resisting the latter, new practices were tried, and new dimensions added to TJ, especially through the irruption of Truth and Reconciliation Commissions (TRCs). These TRCs, especially the South African one, focused on the restorative rather than the retributive dimension of justice. The difference between the two paradigms is that whereas retributive justice focuses on the individual culpability, and hence individual punishment, restorative justice aims at reintegrating the offender into the community. TRCs also introduced a third dimension to the TJ practice, in form of reparation for the victims, be it material, symbolic, or memorials. Hence, the whole practice today is built on these three paradigms: retributive justice, restorative justice, and reparative justice (United Nations Security Council, 2004: no 54–5). Now, as far as our subject is concerned—that is, the strength of the survivor as foundational for reconstruction and reconciliation—the question is: what can/should be his/her contribution? I choose to look at this question starting with the last paradigm of reparative justice in its symbolic and memorial dimension as it is related to the task of remembering and use of memory in politics. It is my conviction that the way the survivor relates to memory in post-conflict politics will pave the way to the analysis of the moral demand of telling the story (Chap. 4) and the restorative justice through forgiveness (Chap. 5). These three chapters will then give a solid basis for approaching the retributive dimension of justice (Chap. 6) in its connection to these other pillars. In this chapter, I will not rely heavily on the material reparations, because these do not really depend on the survivor, except when examining what should be his/her attitude toward them. Rather, I will focus on the resources that survivors still have to integrate into a community and contribute to its flourishing.

1 Some scholars trace TJ back in time. See Jon Elster (2004) for whom TJ goes back to the Greek, while Ruti Teitel (2003), one of the TJ’s pioneers, claims that it originated from the international legal institutions erected after 1945, such Nuremberg and Tokyo courts. For my take on this literature, see Fidèle Ingiyimbere (2017).

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Forgetting and remembering refer to memory, and the subject of memory has received an extensive scholarship in philosophy, from epistemology to phenomenology through political philosophy, ethics, psychology, to mention a few (Bernecke and Michaelian 2017). Today a whole field of collective memory studies is blossoming stemming from the work of the French sociologist Maurice Halbwachs (Olick et al. 2011). In such a vast field, this chapter will only rely, as much as possible, on the ethical and political dimensions of memory. However, while it limits itself to these two levels, it inevitably relies on the other layers of remembrance and forgetting, as these ethical and political dimensions are looked at from the survivor’s perspective. For instance, I take for granted the Bergsonian observation—which has become commonplace—that the past is called by the present, and the Halbwachs’s landmark observation that every memory has a social framework. Furthermore, it is common knowledge in memory studies that memory is not just a store of memories—souvenirs—and remembering is not just retrieving them from that store. Rather, every remembrance is a reconstruction. Those are the assumptions I take without elaboration. In other words, a lot of what can be said will be left out, but on this I follow the wise advice of Merleau-Ponty that one has to renounce to say everything in order to say something. These preliminary remarks justify the title of this chapter: the necessity to forget and the duty to remember, and yet leaving open whether the title should end with a question mark or a full-stop. On the one hand, indeed, as the title indicates the journey ahead, it should end with a question mark, question being whether, as a survivor, it is necessary to forget in order to contribute to the reconstruction and reconciliation of his/her political community. If the response is positive, to what extent and what/who should be sacrificed to the oblivion for the benefit of social cohesion? At what price? Should there be a moral duty to forget or is it just an existential necessity? At this juncture, many questions arise concerning the so-called duty to remember. While forgetting sounds a personal discipline—for an injunction to forget would only be a reminder to remember!!—a duty to remember seems to be morally justifiable and can be institutionalized politically. Memorials, monuments, and days of commemorations are there to remind us of that fact. However, does the survivor have to subscribe to all commemorative events as dictated by the ruling politics, or is there an ethical stance needed to be critical for avoiding the manipulation of memory? Furthermore, we owe to Walter Benjamin the reminder that monumental history is the history of victors who build their memorials and monuments on the rest of the defeated and vanquished. What should be the survivor’s contribution to a just remembrance, that is, to remember all that has to be remembered? This leads to a more difficult question: what does that “all” entails? Since it is a fact that not all can be remembered, what could be the contribution of the survivor in the selection of who or what is to be remembered? These are few indicative questions that this chapter intends to bring out. Depending on the result of the journey, the title could then be concluded by a fullstop if it could have been demonstrated that there is indeed necessity to forget and duty to remember. But if the result of the journey is inconclusive, perhaps it will then

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be better to leave open the end of the question. But the choice can only be made at the end. For now, it is just a question mark. Let us heed its call.

3.2

Condemned to Forget

It is part of the human condition that no one can keep everything in his/her memory. If he/she were to do it, it would be just as unbearable as the total loss of memory. In other words, forgetting is part of the human condition as is remembering. Looking at it closely, forgetting might even be more obsequious than remembering, since the injunction to remember comes because of the fear of forgetting. Aleida Assmann holds that “forgetting is the normality of personal and cultural life [while] remembering is the exception” (2017: 335). Indeed, “Don’t forget!” “Remember!” would not mean much if forgetting was not threatening the remembrance itself, for the radical forgetting is “forgetting that one has forgotten”—to quote Taylor Carman (2017: 561). Those injunctions are, therefore, a reminder to fight against forgetting, at least against forgetting that one has forgotten. On the other hand, it would sound awkward to command someone to forget and expect that it happens by the very command. When one says, “Forget!” it may simply mean, “do not give it importance anymore,” but it cannot mean that one has removed it from his/her memory. The begging question then is why we would need to talk about the necessity to forget if forgetting is a basic human condition which one has actually to fight against. Why is there a need to warn against remembering as a threat to social cohesion, as the Burundian proverb shows: Intībagira ntibāna? While the idea behind the proverb is not a command that would make forgetting a duty, it still highlights that if one wants to socially live well with others, he/she will have to forget. It can, therefore, be taken as an advice, making forgetting an individual duty for the goal of social peaceful cohabitation. This is a paradox though because forgetting, on the one side, seems to be a threat to remembering—therefore, one should fight against it, as one is reminded not or never to forget, because it is a real possibility. On the other side, to not forget seems to be dangerous for one’s social integration. Can this paradox be resolved? Instead of trying to resolve it, it is worthwhile to note that the paradox reveals another profound fact: although, as human beings, we are prone to forgetting, we also do remember and what we remember impacts the way we act, either actively or passively. Nietzsche captured that paradox in his second Untimely Meditations on the use and Disadvantages of History for Life. If they might envy animals which enjoy an eternal happiness due to their lack of memory because they live “unhistorically,” without consciousness of yesterday, today, and tomorrow, human beings cannot be like animals without history. Rather, human person “clings relentlessly to the past.” Now, while this Nietzschean comparison captures the paradox, it is unfair to human person. For, while the grazing animal is not unhistorical by a choice, clinging to the past for a human being can be both willingly—as in instances of making effort

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not to forget—and unwillingly, and this in at least two ways. The first way is pathological, when a person would like to forget but cannot, because of the deep impact of the past on one’s life. Or, as Freud has shown, we can cling to the past through repression as a forced forgetting, and yet unconsciously present, and whose analysis will bring out to the open. Second, existentially, even if we can forget the content of our past, we cannot forget that we have a past, a past that we assume both as our own existence and as one we inherit without our consent. For instance, the past of our families, our people, and our traditions are part of us without our choice. Thus, Nietzsche is on target when he suggests that any degree of happiness and action requires some forgetting2—or being unhistorical—but the question that accompanies it is still what to forget and what to keep. Is it possible to select what to forget? Psychologists might say that that is the case anyway, since our memory is selective by nature. However, the question remains at the ethical and political levels, and that is what interests us. Is what is forgotten what should have been forgotten? Is what we remember what we should remember? Are there means we have to put up in order to forget or to remember the right ones? These questions that we have been developing in general terms become acute when brought to the level of the survivor of egregious violations of human rights. Indeed, as Edward Casey has shown in his phenomenological study of remembering, memory is not only about mind. Remembering permeates our body. Every part of our being carries a memory of us. But being embodied also implies that we are spatially and temporally situated. We live in particular space and time which become bearers of our memories. Memories are in the world of the remembering subject, a world understood as lived-world—the Husserl’s Lebenswelt. Halbwachs would say that they contribute to the framework of our memories. From this perspective, the survivor will have to confront his/her world in its complex aspects. Physically, she/he will confront the landscapes that were space of threat and death, of fright and dread. If it does not exhibit the non-yet buried remains of victims, the physical world might be an empty space where his/her kinship have disappeared from, without trace. Or simply, it might be marked by mass graves which have swallowed his/her family and friends without tombstones to carry their names. She/he is likely to find his/her former home completely destroyed, carrying the signs of the brutality he/she endured: family belongings stolen or destroyed, family memories lost and the space of intimacy exposed to the open air. What used to be a peaceful and joyful neighborhood will have the scares of the wars or massacres. Trees and bushes, forests and rivers, hills and mountains which used to be places and sites of relaxation and enjoyments will be signs of betrayal and disappointment. In this sense, although apparently the same physical composition of the world, for the 2

Again here one can oppose this Nietzsche’s assertion with Freud’s theory which is fundamentally built on remembering. As he says, “what we are in search of is a patient’s forgotten years” (Knafo 2009: 173). From this perspective, happiness seems to come from remembering as is the aim of analysis. On the other hand, though, one could maintain Nietzsche’s advice without contradicting Freud, if we maintain that Freud is dealing with pathological cases, while Nietzsche seems to give a practical existential advice in normal circumstances.

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survivor, that space would have changed its meaning, conveying a mixture of happy and tormenting memories. Socially, the survivor is likely to find part of—if not all his/her—family decimated or displaced. His/her neighbors might have endured the same fate, or else might have been part of those who persecuted him/her. The gatherings and social events that were meant to cement social fabric would have vanished. The friendships and relationships built over years would have been destroyed; social trust would have eroded; social sites such as religious spaces, which used to symbolize the presence of the sacred and a haven of peace, might have been massacre sites that desacralized the very sacred that was to inspire serenity. It is not impossible that he/she ends up in a completely different place where she/he does not know anybody. Or simply finds him/herself in her/his former neighborhood that has been occupied by strangers. In other words, socially, the survivor’s coming out from his/her hiding place might confront a social world that has been completely destroyed, marked by suspicion and loneliness. Economically, there is no need to describe what the survivor will have to endure, for part of the methods at work in crimes against humanity and genocide is either to destroy, confiscate, or appropriate the goods and proprieties of the victims. And so, the survivor has to start either from the scratch or from the remains, if he/she is lucky enough to have them. This is where the material reparation can intervene in the form of reparative justice. However, since such crimes do not affect only the victims but also the economic structures of the society itself, it is unlikely that the survivor will rely on such reparations, as they might not come—if they were ever to come at all!— before many years. Therefore, he/she will have to hustle against all odds so that he/she could cover the basic necessities. In the process, someone who was selfreliant might find him/herself reduced to begging for food, water, and shelter. He/she might even be sleeping in open air while his/her proprieties are occupied by those who confiscated them. He/she might be sitting on a bare floor while seeing his/her chairs next doors without possibility of claiming them. He/she might be lacking even bus fare because his/her bank accounts have been confiscated. He/she may be walking every day long distances looking for menial jobs, while his/her cars bypass him/her all the time. Even if he/she is lucky enough to find some remains of his/her properties, the situation will not be as before. It will require adaptation to the new business environment. In summary, economically, the survivor is likely to be vulnerable to economic precarity. The political world will even be more complicated, because it will depend on the outcome of the wars and this will affect the other dimensions of his/her lived-world, or world experience. On the one hand, if political power is maintained by those who were persecuting him/her, it is understandable that his/her political participation will be marked by fear. The assumption here is that there cannot be massive violations of human rights without the passive or active role of the state(s). That is why the politics at stake here is that which is exercised through political institutions. Thus, the survivor’s public space might be restricted and his/her political and civic participation curtained. He/she might even still be constrained to desert the public space for safety or to renounce any political participation that would expose him/her.

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As already said, this political non-participation will affect negatively his/her social visibility, economic viability, and his/her living space. It goes without saying that the effect will be different from one survivor to another. We are only talking in general terms. If the survivor is part of the ruling political power, his/her political visibility might be better than the first scenario, but not without ethical dilemmas. For he/she might now be in position of leadership that has to confront the perpetrators or the group of the perpetrators. Furthermore, while he/she might now easily access the political sphere and exercise his/her political/civil rights, it will be a political space marked by tensions that he/she will have to resolve. How is he/she going to allow the participation or arrange the distribution of those political and civil rights without prejudice against those who harmed him/her, or are from the same ideological allegiance? At this level too, the political position will affect his/her social status and economic income, and his physical space might feel more secure and relatively welcoming, than if he/she was not part of ruling power. Now, being part of the ruling power does not imply that one is necessarily involved in politics; it only means that the victim’s group is in charge, such that one is no longer afraid of or excluded from exercising his/her political and civil rights. Above all, though, the survivor will carry the whole horrendous experience in his/her own body. Having lived under dire conditions of want in every aspect, he/she will have been marked in his/her look, his/his health, strength, and goals. Scars—if not wounds still open—both physical and psychological, would have marked her/him. Even if he/she is part of the ruling group, or the political environment is no longer a threat to his/her life and his/her political participation, such that his/her social, economic, and physical spheres are rather assured, those scars or/and wounds will still be permanent reminders of his/her experience. In this sense, Sue Campbell is on target when she says that “the survivors will remember their past,” and here lies the hardest side of the issue we are dealing with. Sure enough, coming out of such experiences, one needs to forget in the sense of getting over it if he/she is to continue to live with others. There is a necessity to forget in order to have a certain degree of happiness—to paraphrase Nietzsche again. But how will the survivor be able to forget while every corner where he/she steps, every movement he/she makes, everything around him/her is a constant reminder of what he/she went through? Is there any possibility of unhistoricity? Contrary to what Nietzsche said, instead of one clinging to the past, the past seems to cling to the survivor. Psychological advice and practices can be given, and some do work, but one will have to sympathize with survivors who cannot and do not make it, and admire and commend those who do get over it and find reason to continue. And this is the virtue we are looking for as source of hope for reconstruction and reconciliation. There are many stories showing survivors coming back where they lived, reconstructing their houses and reconnecting with their former neighbors, even those who were part of the perpetrating group. Several examples of survivors who prosper economically and even come to aid of some those who stole their belonging are abundant. There exist numerous testimonies of survivors who reconnect with the social life and social

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institutions, which participated in one way or another in the survivors’ ordeal. Such examples testify to the possibility of getting over what happened and be a positive element of social change for the survivor. At the same time though, these examples display at the personal level the resilience and recovery of some survivors, who might have understood the necessity to forget in order to recover a personal and social life. It is not, however, the case with every survivor, and it cannot be expected from everyone. Furthermore, it has been noted that the political position of the survivor will impact the other aspects of her/his life-experience, either negatively or positively. Thus, normative issues arise: since forgetting looks important for social order, can it be morally justified as a duty and politically imposed for the sake of socio-political peace and reconciliation? Forgetting as a moral duty entails two main aspects. On the one hand, it can mean that it is a personal duty to strive to forget for personal well-being and for social cohabitation. This sense is mild and does not entail any moral assessment. Rather, there is an admiration and a commendation of those who achieve it, without blaming those who might fail or who struggle to get to it. This is not the level concerned with the normative issue just mentioned. What is at stake is the duty to forget such that if one fails, he/she should be blamed for it. Can such a duty be imposed on the survivor? To attempt an answer to this thorny question, let us recall what we started saying with Assmann that forgetting is rather the normality of personal and social life. If this statement is true, then if someone does not manage to forget, it means there is a certain level of abnormality that is at work. What sounds true in general becomes evident with the survivor for whom we have shown that all aspects of his/her life experience are reminders of his/her ordeal. From this perspective, then, it is evident that making forgetting a moral duty for the survivor would be to overload him/her with moral obligations than anyone is expected to handle—which becomes morally problematic. On the other hand, however, one can argue that ruminating the bad memories is detrimental to personal well-being and a potential threat to social stability as it can lead to desire for revenge and/or social hatred. The Kirundi proverb that has been used—Intibagira ntibana—takes memory in this sense. Keeping bad memories may constitute a hindrance to social cohabitation and cooperation. That being so, then the question rebounds whether forgetting should be understood as a moral duty. Although the case seems convincing, bad memories should be distinguished from what one does with them, but this question has to be postponed for the moment, until we talk about remembering. For, if the goal of remembering is revenge, then memory becomes morally problematic. But even here it does not follow that forgetting has to become a moral duty. Because, once more, while one can make an effort to forget, for the survivor everything reminds him/her what he/she perhaps would like to forget. And one cannot make a moral duty where there is lack of means to carry it. Thus, without going into the demonstration of how memory is constitutive of our identity as does Avaishai Margality, one can concur with him that “there is no general duty to forget” (2002: 208). It can only be offered as an advice for a better personal and social life. That is why those who manage to get it are commendable,

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but those who struggle and even fail are not and should not be blamed, as if it were their fault. The above statement is more accurate from the survivor’s perspective, because otherwise, one can be blamed for not making an effort to forget or not taking means for it. Nonetheless, for the survivor, most of the time it is beyond his/her means to decide, since everything is a reminder—as already shown. And so, there is necessity to forget—as an advice—and not a duty to forget.3 But then, if there is no duty to forget but merely an advice, can then there be a political action for forgetting? How can it inspire political action? These questions deserve their own section.

3.3

The Dilemma of Public Forgetting

Ernest Renan has this surprising and provoking statement that “forgetting . . . is a crucial factor in the creation of a nation” (2011: 80). It is a surprising statement—at least at the first instance—since as a staunch nationalist, Renan would be expected to advocate remembrance rather than forgetting as “a crucial factor in the creation of the nation.” On the other hand, however, Casey reminds us that, while “forgetting is also a condition of the life of an entire people,” it is also a condition “of their collective remembering” (2000: xiii). This is to say that the two go hand in hand. The question at stake now is whether public forgetting can be institutionalized when we have seen that there cannot be a general duty to forget. How such a public forgetting would be without being “a commended amnesia”—to recall Ricoeur? That is why Renan’s statement is also provoking, because if “forgetting is so crucial for the creation of nation,” it is even so for the preservation of the nation. Therefore, temptations are high to impose such forgetting to the individuals who might not yet be ready to forget, for the sake of the social good. That is the issue at the heart of this section. But before moving further, few remarks on the subtitle. I call it public instead of collective forgetting to delineate its domain of exploration at the political morality/ethic of forgetting, in order to avoid conflating it with the extensive field of collective memory studies. Moreover, it is worth recalling that I consider it from the survivor perspective. Coming back to our subject, in the Edict of Nantes, Henry the King of France and Navarre “said, declared and ordered. . .that the memory of everything which has occurred between one side and the other since the beginning of the month of March 1585 up to our accession to the crown, and during the other preceding troubles and on account of them, shall remain extinct and dormant as though they had never Paul Ricoeur talks of ‘the so-called duty to forget’ asking: “Qu’en est-il dès lors du prétendu devoir d’oubli? Outre qu’une projection dans le futur sur le mode impératif est aussi incongrue pour l’oubli que pour la mémoire, un tel commandement équivaudrait à une amnésie commandée.” In other words, he is of the opinion that there cannot be a general duty of forgetting as it cannot be put into imperative mode in the future tense, and if it were, it would equal to a commanded amnesia (Ricoeur 2000: 589).

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happened” (no 1). He continued, “We forbid all our subjects, of whatever estate or quality they may be, from renewing the memory of those things” (no 2). This is a public statement from a political authority forbidding subjects to remember massacres and crimes for the sake of public order, urging them rather to live as brothers and sisters, friends and good citizens. As a political order, it is of course enjoined with judicial penalties in case of breaching it, while the same judicial institutions are forbidden to adjudicate or even mention those crimes. Yet we have already seen that a command to forget would be awkward. Thus, what the king was asking was less to forget rather than to consider them as “though they never happened.” And he seems to hope that by not renewing the memory of what happened, things will settle down, and peaceful cohabitation be regained. This example of King Henry makes explicit the first part of the dilemma of public forgetting: silencing people from renewing memories about what happened. This, for sure, does not imply that people forget. As a matter of fact, as Dimitri Nikulin rightly observes, “if people start paying attention to the fact that they are made to forget something, they will never forget it” (2017: 533). So people are seen as though they have forgotten and yet still remember. They are asked not to renew the memories, and yet, for the survivor, each corner of his/her life is a constant reminder. Is then this public silencing morally/ethically justifiable? The question will rebound when talking about remembering. For now, let us observe that, on an individual level, a constant reminder of traumatic experiences can be detrimental to the individual “well-being,” opening up wounds that might have started healing. That is why in some instances of commemoration of genocides or other crimes against humanity, cases of trauma spark because some survivors relapse into the horrific experience they went through. As Richard Sennett observes, “Truthful memory opens wounds which forgetting cannot heal . . . there is no solace in the truths of memory” (2011: 283). From that point of view, one cannot justify this public silencing, since the good of the individual also participates into the common good. It can also be argued that, silencing people from evoking or renewing memory of what happened protects future generations from knowing what happened to their fore-bearers and curtaining a possible revenge in the future. As one can sense, there is already a tension between forgetting and remembering, especially at this political level concerned with the impact of both actions on social stability. For, the claim that forgetting contributes to social stability is even further affirmed with remembering. The famous Santayana’s mantra that forgetting the past leads to repeating it is meant to show that remembering helps prevent repeating the past. It is true that many scholars acknowledge that a society need both remembering and forgetting, if it is to continue existing (Mannheim 2011: 92; Renan 2011: 79). However, the question remains which level of forgetting and remembering is needed for that social coexistence. What should be remembered and what should be forgotten? Who should decide? Are the political institutions, on their own, fit to select what to publicly forget and/or remember as we are examining it? When is it appropriate to remember or to forget? These questions are only mentioned here since they require the exploration of remembering.

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Refocusing on the dilemmas of public forgetting, it is worth mentioning that public silencing, despite its potential positive effects that recommend judicial action against those who dare to evoke those memories, is not morally and ethically sound. First of all, on individual level, public silencing as a way to public forgetting encourages living a dubious life, because one is supposed to live as if nothing happened, while actually horrific things did happen. There is no need to insist on the therapeutic value, at both individual and social levels, of narrating and expressing one’s trauma! It is simply unimaginable that people who were cutting each other’s throats will start genuinely smiling and singing together because of a King’s edict. The whole process of TRCs aims at an open space where people can express what they have suffered, rather than keeping them “extinct and dormant.” Social healing needs time and is so complex that it cannot be brought about by political orders at once. Moreover, since it is a political order backed by judicial threat, the state will have to instruct police to monitor its implementation. This will instill fear in the public, which is not the best basis to cement social cooperation and political stability. That fear will erode social trust as people might start suspecting each other’s good faith in what they share and the narrative they vehiculate about what happened. There is also the contradiction in the goal itself, for in constantly trying to implement such an order, even those who did not know, will have to ask why such a situation is prevailing, to which the answer is going to be that it has been forbidden to talk about them. And here they are, just doing that! From the survivor’s perspective, it becomes completely impossible to not renew those memories through the very edict that is supposed to contain them. Even the works of reconstruction and reconciliation are reminders of what happened. Ruins and monuments, ceremonies or their absence, they all recall what happened. In other words, in whatever way, public silencing becomes public reminder, and silence becomes louder than what people could have said had they been allowed. All in all, conclusion on public silencing is the same as in the case of the individual. Public silencing cannot have the moral backing of a general order. Advice against opening the wounds and public education on the importance of letting go—not necessarily through silence, but rather by exploring all possible avenues—would be preferable to public forgetting. Public silencing, however, is not the only form of public forgetting. Public amnesty is rather the most common way of forcing public forgetting, especially for societies emerging from civil wars and social unrest. Paul Ricoeur situates it at the level of the “commanded forgetting” and he underlies the proximity between amnesty and amnesia, both referring to “losing” memory, with the difference that the first one is a juridical and a political act, while the second is a pathological condition. This practice also raises a lot of concern in the field of transitional justice, because it is hailed to prioritize peace to the detriment of justice, whereas on the other hand, there are those who believe that there cannot be peace without justice. Amnesty is usually granted to a fraction of those who were engaged in wars—most of the time the leaders. Citizens are asked to consider what happened as no longer object for judicial procedures, and those who committed them as no longer legally guilty.

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Hence, all trials are suspended. As Ricoeur puts it, amnesty is a “limited juridical forgetting” (2000: 588). Compared to public silencing, amnesty is indeed limited as it is only concerned with the juridical dimension of the remembering. People can still talk about what happened, except that they cannot bring it to court. They can use symbolic actions or other means to keep the memory alive, and there is no fear of repercussion for those who refuse to accept it, and/or condemn it as morally wrong. Furthermore, since crimes against humanity are today imprescriptible, and since there exist international courts and universal jurisdictions, those guilty of crimes can be sued there. In other words, one can argue that amnesty eschews the negative consequences enlisted against silencing. Hence, one can argue that it has a better case for peace, since it allows social peace and political compromises to uphold. Ricoeur, however, draws our attention to the fact that, although amnesty is indeed limited, it has an overreaching consequence, “inasmuch as the stopping of trials equals to turning memory off in its attestatory expression [dans son expression attestataire]” (ibid.). The attesting expression of memory refers to the role of the judge in keeping memory, through the confronting of witnesses and the indicted, through which a light is shed on what happened. As such, the court offers a space of dissention about what happened through the narratives of the defendant, the prosecution, and witnesses. Therefore, the suspension of trials for the crimes prevents dissenting argument on memory and imposes a certain forgetting of what we will now never know. Even if there are possibilities of suing them in international courts, it will not have the same effects, since the hearing itself—suppose it were to be public—will not benefit the right people who will not be able to get there. That is why Ricoeur is on target to ask whether such an “imaginary unity” celebrated through amnesty does not create an unhealthy life of concurrent memories (ibid.). These dilemmas lead to the last point I would like to raise in this section, concerning the kind of institutions which are to be created to help public forgetting, since many scholars advocate for such structures. For instance, Margalit writes that “communities must make decisions and establish institutions that foster forgetting as much as remembering,” giving the example of destroying personal files of former secret services in East Germany as an example of “communal decision to forget” (2002: 13). One can also think of social protests against symbols and monuments referring to segregation in the southern part of the United States of America to apartheid in South Africa or to imperialism and colonialism in other former colonies. There have also been renaming of streets and publics spaces, and even change of political symbols such as flags, seals, capital cities, and so on. All these actions are heralded as a way of breaking with the traumatizing past and openness to a fresh future. I see this phenomenon of destruction of traces as another form of public forgetting. Since they are public acts, one can assume that they are “communal decisions” and have been entrusted to public institutions which carry them out. If that is the case, then one can understand Margalit’s statement, which was not clear as how there can be institutions that help to forget. Suppose this is a correct reading, would the case of institutions destroying all reminders of the past be a good thing? Would

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destroying any possible trace of what happened be a moral project that should be politically implemented? Is this destruction of traces fostering forgetting or rather reclaiming history? These questions bring back, once more, the tension between forgetting and remembering. For, if it is true that, according to Mannheim, “if a society is to continue, it needs both remembering and forgetting,” what is to be forgotten and what is to be remembered? Who is to decide? at what cost? For instance, the shredding of the Stasi files has been reconstructed because of its archival value and it would be the same for other traces for the past. If a present generation decides to put up institutions that foster forgetting, isn’t it detrimental to the work of remembering that is also crucial to the life of a political society? Such questions, as usual, become complicated and complex once looked at from the survivor’s eye. We have many times underlined how every corner of his/her life constitutes a reminder of what he/she went through. Could there be destruction without destroying his/her possible orientation? We have also underscored how the political position of the survivor will impact many of his/her sectors of life. For instance, the changes evoked can only happen if his/her group is in power. In the contrary case, he/she will have to bear with what the political authorities and the dominant social voices decide to go with. However, even for the case when the survivor belongs to the ruling political power, it is not obvious that all survivors will have their voices heard, especially that after such war crimes, the democratic and social institutions that avail channels for discussion may not yet be in place. In other words, the decisions to destroy traces of a traumatic past might be an imposed political decision, rather than a communal one. The symbols destroyed might be those which survivors cared the least or the most, and the new ones (re)presenting no much interest as they are not really related to what the survivors went through. All these questions underlie how complex the issue has become. From this angle, therefore, the wisdom of public forgetting suggests not to impose a narrative by reclaiming history, but be open to face the past as it is as long as some of the survivors hold on to it. In this process, the important question becomes: “when” is it appropriate to start those communal decisions for public forgetting? In his Against Remembrance, David Rieff (2011) gives not only a passionate account of how remembrance can be detrimental to social peaceful cohabitation— and, therefore, calls for “forgetfulness”—he also explores when such forgetting should be sought after. He suggests that there is no moral obligation to remember “once the survivors. . . and their immediate descendants are dead” (2011: 127). From the perspective adopted here, I agree with Rieff in the sense that survivors are not constrained to forget while they constantly remember what happened to them. They will not have to also remember that they are asked the impossible task of not remembering when everything else is a constant reminder. Waiting for their death and that of their immediate descendants would avoid what Paul Connerton calls “forgetting as humiliated silence” (Quoted by Rieff 2011: 127), which might come from the communal decision and political actions for public forgetting, through the

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destruction of traces of the past. It also helps open a space for future generations to claim their own history without hurting those who suffered it the most.4 With that, we are already ushered in into the work and complexities of remembering, which are the object of the coming section.

3.4

A Duty to Remember?5

History is full of monuments and memorials of past events and historical actors meant to remind us of the past. Today, a lot of similar works are used as symbolic reparation in the process of reconstruction and reconciliation of societies emerging from political instability. Do we then need to ask whether there is a duty to remember, whereas it seems so obvious, especially when one remembers George Santayana’s famous aphorism that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it? Indeed, since there are periods of the past that one would like not to repeat, it would follow that it is evident that there has to be constant remembering. And from the survivor’s point of view, it has been highlighted that his/her world has been affected by her/his experience, so much that what is needed is an effort to forget, rather than a duty to remember. She/he constantly remembers. All these elements concur to the conclusion that there is no need of duty to remember. However, following Aleida Assmann’s opinion that forgetting is rather the normality of both personal and social life, it would follow that we have to make an effort to remember. Moreover, we have underlined that there can be some public forgetting actions against which, one might feel a duty to resist by keeping memory. These points show that there are good reasons to take afresh the question on the duty to remember. Once more, it will be addressed from the survivor’s perspective and restraining it to the ethical and political dimensions. Jeffry Blustein notes that the importance of “the duty to remember” in the West in recent decades is traced back to the Holocaust, conferring it an “ethical and political” attraction (2017: 351). This reflection follows the same perspective of the survivor of egregious human rights violations. That is why in addition to analyzing the conceptual foundation of this so-called duty to remember, this exploration aims at asking

4

This idea of limiting the timeline for remembering can also be supported by Mircea Eliade’s observation that collectivities keep a historical event or a real personage for two to three centuries at the most. “For popular memory finds difficulty in retaining individual events and real figures,” because it functions differently, using categories instead of events, archetypes instead of historical personage. He adds, “the memory of the collectivity is ahistorical.” (1959: 43–4). In other words, after a certain time, people are no longer remembering what happened, because the historical event would have been molded into the social and political narratives. Hence its susceptibility to manipulation. 5 Jeffery Blustein (2017) has a chapter with the same title, but I saw it as I had already drafted my section. So I decided to keep it, taking the similitude as a happy coincidence.

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whether such a duty imposes itself on the survivors and if so, what it requires from them. As we already underlined, duty refers to the moral/ethical obligation to perform what is morally required, and the moral/ethical blame that one would endure if a person fails to carry it out whereas she has the capacity and ability to do so. In the present case, it means that there is a moral/ethical obligation to remember, and one would deserve the blame if he/she fails to do so. Margalit has two helpful distinctions between moral and ethical duty as related to memory. Moral duty retains the Kantian dimension of universality, and it concerns all humanity. Thus, the crimes against humanity such as the ones we are dealing with here are not only targeting individuals but also the humanity in them itself. That is why it becomes an obligation for every human being to feel affected through them by the fact of sharing in this humanity. Hence, the human family becomes the subject of remembering, and it has to make it its own duty to remember these events, in the hope that, by keeping their memory, the whole human family will fight against their repetition. Perhaps that is what Santayana’s aphorism intended. From this Kantian perspective, this shared humanity is quite a solid moral basis for founding the duty to remember. It has even inspired the post-WWII international order, meant to foster peace and security, such United Nations and regional organizations, human rights and other legal instruments to prevent and/or punish genocides and other crimes against humanity. Nevertheless, how realistic is this claim that remembering can help prevent the repetition of those crimes? From 1945, when the “duty to remember” was attracting ethical and political attention, genocides have happened in Rwanda, in Burundi, in Kosovo, and elsewhere. Crimes of war and crimes against humanity have escalated. Even now as you read this book, they are ravaging many parts of the world. Can all this be blamed on the forgetting? Certainly not. Rather, at this universal level of human family, one has to agree with Fred Katz that “remembering, alone, is not vaccine against future horrors” (2004: 10). Indeed, since these horrors are state’s acts which surpass an individual’s capacity to resist them, the international institutions should be responsible for counteracting against such crimes. But as we know from Jean-Jacques Rousseau, two causes are necessary for an action to happen. First, there is an internal cause, which is the will to act; second, there is the external cause, which implies the material means to carry out the act of the will. If one is lacking, action will not take place. The moral foundation of this remembering of the crimes against humanity need the political means committed to fulfilling it. Unfortunately, the experiences of the last decades testify to the contrary. The “never again” that are so ceremoniously displayed by politicians “is a noble sentiment, but it is also a wholly unrealistic one”—to once again quote Rieff—because it is not certain whether those who proclaim it believe it and/or are committed to it. As Hannah Arendt has said, once it has happened, it may happen again, because “it is in the very nature of things human that every act that has once made its appearance and has been recorded in the history of mankind stays with mankind as a potentiality long after its actuality has become a thing of the past” (Arendt 2006: 273).

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It is also unrealistic to imagine that every human being as member of the human family will remember different crimes of humanity happening all over the world by the simple fact of sharing humanity. For starters, not everyone will know about them, and not everyone who knows will be affected the same way, in order to keep memory. In this context, while it may be conceptually appealing to state this moral duty to remember, it does not realistically assure an effective political action. The question now is about what a survivor of these crimes can expect from the human family. At the moral level, the moral duty to remember is a source of moral support and encouragement for the survivor to carry on, as he/she might feel the solidarity of the human family around him/her. Furthermore, some individuals or associations might create initiatives to support the survivor in different ways, thanks to this duty not to forget. There can also be some institutional actions that foster the memory of what happened, such museums, festivals, or other social activities. In other words, the failure of the “duty to remember” to secure a political action from the human family to prevent horrors does not completely debunk its moral grounding. At the same time, however, this failure from the international community— taken as the political agent of the human family—is a betrayal for the survivor who, as the representative of the human family who went through those horrific experiences, would not wish for anybody, a similar experience. And so, at this level, for the survivor, the duty to remember is about remembering that humanity has a duty not to forget. He/she, thus, has the responsibility to constantly remind the human family its duty not to forget what happened, and to prevent it happening again. The survivor has the duty to remember that those crimes can happen again, and, therefore, has to gather all his/her energy to mobilize, educate, and fight against them happening again. As a representative of the humanity that has suffered and is suffering, the duty to remember for the survivor offers him/her an opportunity to represent a humanity that redeems and heals. Actually, only a survivor can understand and, therefore, truly utter these two words: NEVER AGAIN, because she/he stands in place of every victim, actual or potential. If she/he has come to this point of believing in these words, to pronounce them represents an outcry of a humanity yearning for redemption. And that is the meaning of the duty to remember for the survivor. One might ask whether we are not asking too much from the survivor. Does he/she still have resources to carry out such a duty? Yet if he/she does not, the duty itself would disappear. A question can also be raised about the claim that the survivor would not wish anybody to suffer what he/she went through, when we know victims who become killers, to use Mahmood Mamdani’s words (2009). Both questions are legitimate and cannot be easily dismissed. Starting with the second question, a survivor is still a human being, subject to moral weakness as anyone else. The assumption that, as a representative of a humanity that has suffered, the survivor would not wish the same experience to anybody else, is based on another moral assumption that, human family aims at well-being and happiness and does not rejoice in its suffering. Human beings as a moral agents move toward the good and cannot have evil as its goal. More profoundly, it is an assumption of the goodness of, and in humanity, despite the presence of evil. That is why the survivor, as representative of the humanity that suffered, is also the clear sign of the humanity

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that survives and that is resilient. Therefore, he/she wishes good to its every member. In case of a survivor who becomes a killer, he/she does not represent any more the humanity that suffers, but he/she rather becomes the agent that makes humanity to suffer. The attempt to answer the second question helps explore the first one, concerning the survivor’s ability to participate in the duty to remember as representative of the suffering humanity, but also a humanity that yearns for healing and redemption. Indeed, not recognizing the survivor, as sharing in this duty addressed to the whole human family, would be to negate his/her own humanity. In that sense, the interpretation developed for him/her of this duty arises from his/her sharing the faith of goodness of humanity. And as someone who shares in that goodness and yet has tested the radical evil—to borrow Kant’s words—he/she becomes the right ambassador of the goodness of humanity. To be a survivor entails such a responsibility. In that sense, the interpretation given to the duty to remember for the survivor is not beyond his/her resources, because it is inherent to him/her being a survivor as such and as a human being belonging to the human family. What is reconstructed normatively here is exemplified by many concrete examples of survivors who, individually or in association with others, have taken steps to fight against the evil they suffered, not only for themselves or for their beloved ones but also for every human being. One can think of the different associations and foundations of survivors against genocides and against crimes against humanity. This is what we have meant by the moral duty to remember for the survivor. So far we have dwelt on the moral dimension of remembering. However, Margalit has a second dimension that he calls the ethical dimension. While the borderline between the moral and ethical is not so clearly drawn, ethical in this context refers to what he calls “thick relations”; persons and things for which one cares about, because they touch him/her personally. It is different from the moral one, as this connects us to every human being, those known and those unknown to us, from here and there, past, present, and those in the future. The ethical dimension relates to people and things that have faces and that we can name. One thinks here of parents and children, friends and relatives, colleagues and comrades. There are sites and places, such as homes and other significant spaces in one’s life, and qualitative moments, just to name but a few. These thick relations correspond to what Ricoeur calls “close relations” [les proches], those who count on me and on whom I count, constituting an intermediary memory between the individual and the collective ones (2000: 161–3). On this level, the ethical duty to remember will depend on how “thick” the relationships with these people and places are. From the survivor’s point of view, we have already underlined how reminders are all over. However, we also have taken for granted that remembering is more than a retrieval of a stored event, but a reconstruction that constantly confronts the present and the past. Furthermore, some traumatic events such as those we are dealing with can affect the ability to remember, or alter the memory. All these elements concur Blustein’s observation that one does not remember at will. There is an effort to remember, and this is true also for the survivor. While he/she is in constant contact with reminders, a reminder plays its role of reminding to the one who remembers that

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it is actually a reminder. Hence, some reminders might disappear, and be replaced by others. A family home might be destroyed and replaced by something else; a place or site can be transformed into something else. In such context, should a survivor have an ethical duty to remember all that? Except that it would be an impossible task, it would not even be healthy for his/her recovery. Therefore, instead of having the ethical duty to remember, he/she will have the call to make an effort to let go some of his/her memories for both his/her well-being and his/her social integration. But there are some others that he/she should remember. It is obvious—but it is worth repeating—that the first ethical duty to remember goes to his/her family members who perished. This ethical duty to remember the survivor’s beloved ones—friends and relatives—emanates from the moral duty to remember shared by and extended to the whole humanity, but here it becomes concrete, as it relates to persons with faces which are permanently absent, except through the memory of the survivor. Being unable to attend to the memory of every victim, remembering his/her beloved ones is a first step to participate in that moral duty to remember. While it is not true that everyone who remembers his/her beloved ones would necessarily remember every human victim, it would be equally absurd to imagine that one who does not remember even his beloved ones would remember any other victim. Furthermore, those who perished rely on their close relationships who survived to perpetuate their memory as Blustein argues (2008, chap. 5). In other words, to remember them is a way of showing that the survivor still cares for them as he/she used to, and would do, were they still alive. Moreover, the survivor has the ethical duty to care for him/herself, and by remembering the beloved ones, he/she does so through mourning. There is no need to enter here into details about the psychological distinction between mourning and melancholia developed since Freud. Suffice to mention here that mourning as remembering will be a tribute to the loved ones and care to the survivor. As once more Ricoeur rightly observes, “the work of mourning is the cost of the work of remembering; but the work of remembering is the benefit of the work of mourning” (2000: 88).6 The second category to which the survivor’s ethical duty is oriented is those who suffered and/or perished in the same horrific events. The justification of this duty follows again from the general moral duty to remember, which makes the survivor a sharer in it toward the whole humanity, especially the humanity that suffered. But there is also the fact that having been lucky to survive the same ordeal creates a certain obligation of solidarity. As Renan said, sufferings unite more than joy (2011: 83). One can already feel the tension between this solidarity of survivor with the perished of her/his group, which might insulate them from the rest of the social groups constituting the make-up of a country. This fact, however, should not be a concern if one keeps in mind that this duty emanates from the universal duty of humanity to remember evils befalling the whole human family, and as long as it is

“le travail de deuil est le coût du travail du souvenir; mais le travail du souvenir est le bénéfice du travail du deuil.”

6

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also open to others who would want to join in carrying it, there should not be any conflict. The third category to which the survivor owes an ethical duty of remembering are those who did what they could under those circumstances to help him/her and/or those who were persecuted. Blustein notes that there is a general duty to remember some persons who led a praiseworthy life, especially in time of horror (2008: 217). Remembering those who risked their lives for the survivor and those who were in the same situation is an ethical duty because they are personally related instead of being just a general duty. They have names and have to be remembered in their particular actions they undertook. This is very crucial for the reconstruction and reconciliation of societies emerging from egregious human rights violations, because risks are high to generalize and criminalize a whole group, which creates tension in society, made of antagonistic social sections. Highlighting and celebrating the goodness of those who helped, especially from among the perpetrating group, will underscore that the whole group cannot be incriminated even if there were mass support, and that the moral failure of the perpetrators did not uproot the goodness of humanity of the whole group. It is manifesting and believing that there are seeds of goodness in the others, which are to be sowed for yielding social stability and reconciliation. Finally, the survivor has an ethical duty to remember those who disappeared. I distinguish those who perished and are remembered even if vaguely—for instance when they are in mass graves—from those who disappeared, that is, those who will never find a sepulcher or a grave; those who were carried away and left without notice. An objection can be raised here whether there is an ethical duty since these are related to thick relationships, and yet there might not even be a connection between the survivor and those who disappeared. The answer to the objection is that the survivor is connected to the disappeared by an act of solidarity, because he/she could have been one of them. The namelessness is a threat to the memory of the disappeared, and the disappeared is emblematic of the success of the perpetrators whose aim was to eradicate from the memory of the living those they were persecuting. Hence, if Blustein is right that “remembrance is a chief means by which we overcome the finality of death and through which we affirm that death has not obliterated the significance of the one who died” (2008: 269–70), then remembering the disappeared is nagging death and the perpetrators that, even those who disappeared are still significant human beings, be it in their namelessness. There is a mound of stones on the famous Robben Island in South Africa, on the quarry where Nelson Mandela and other political prisoners used to work during their imprisonment. After their liberation, Mandela went back to the island, and thought of people who might have died and disappeared there. He then threw one stone as a symbolic gesture of remembrance, and everybody who was with him did the same, creating the now visible mound of stones for those who cannot be, and maybe will never be named as victims of apartheid. This is not only a general moral duty to remember; it is an ethical duty because of the solidarity coming from the common suffering experience, even if one cannot name them. When discussing Santayana’s aphorism, we saw that remembering does not necessarily help prevent crimes from happening again, and the main cause was the

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lack of political will to act according to this moral duty to remember. Is it the same with the ethical duty? Does the ethical duty to remember lead to concrete action that would prevent the past from happening again? These questions lead to the public dimension of remembering, since it is about political actions which are beyond the individual capacity of the survivor. Therefore, the next section is dedicated to those questions. However, one can already reiterate the initiative that individuals or associations of survivors create in order to educate and sensitize the national and regional opinion about what they went through, so that it never happens again. But a thorough treatment of these questions has to situate them into the political dimension of remembering.

3.5

Public Remembering and Its Consequences

Since it has already been introduced in the previous section, the implicit application Santayana’s aphorism that remembering the past would prevent from repeating it is very important from the survivor’s point of view. Preventing implies political action, which is always embedded in social conditions. In other words, to claim that remembering helps prevent recurrence of what happened means that it creates social conditions such that the political action originating from them is oriented toward protecting and fostering human life of every person. That being the case, it is clear that remembering as such is not the recipe. There have to be an intentional act of designing and orienting political institutions to that end. Otherwise, as many scholars have shown, remembering can lead to the contrary expectation. Rieff observes that the Kosovo war was fueled by the memory of the 1336 defeat of Christians by the Muslims; Pierre Nora warns that “to claim the right to memory is, at bottom, to call for justice. In the effect it has had, however, it has often become a call to murder” (2011: 442). As to Katz, he alerts that “if we take history seriously we must acknowledge that many horrors are committed precisely because past horrors are remembered—that generations sometimes engage in horrific retribution for horrors committed against their ancestors” (2004: 10). All these examples confirm that remembering per se does not prevent horrors from happening again, and they, therefore, compel us to look at the moral justification of public remembering and its ethical challenges, if it is to contribute to reconstruction and reconciliation of post-conflict societies. It can hardly be contested that a society owes remembering to its members, victims of horrors. It is inscribed in the ethical duty to remember as members of the same society, they share the same fate such that what happens to one should be felt, at certain level, by the whole social body. And in cases of crimes against humanity which target a whole or part of a section of the society, remembering them is the least the society’s members owe to each other—to paraphrase Thomas Scanlon’s expression. From this point of view, public remembering is ethically praiseworthy because it shows the solidarity of the social fabric, and allows the survivors to feel recognized as worthy members, contrary to what the perpetrators

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thought or said. What they had attested in their courage to live (see Chap. 2) is now confirmed by the public acts of remembering, which are a way of recognizing the survivors’ social and political status. As Jay Winter remarks, “remembrance is an act of symbolic exchange between those who remain and those who suffered or died” (2011: 442), and this exchange reinstitutes relationships between the two social categories. This social and political recognition through remembrance entitles survivors rights and duties as every social and political subject. At the same time, by recognizing what happened to them, the society as a body acknowledges a debt—to borrow Ricoeur’s concept—toward them, because as a body, it failed to protect them. In this sense, the ethical duty to remember is strongly justified. However, it would not be enough if it stops to this ethical justification and the socio-political recognition. This ethical duty also must show a real commitment to protect them as a society. If those crimes were committed by actors internal to the society, then they require more than just remembering what happened. The society has to go deeper to the reasons why what happened occurred. It cannot stop on the events that affected the victims. It also has to do a soul-searching to examine the social causes and the political and economic structures that were put into place to perpetrate the horrors. Those crimes are not committed hazardously; they are rationally planned and meticulously executed. What Jon Bridgman and Leslie Worley say about genocide is true for all the crimes against humanity: “genocide is always initiated and committed by deliberate, calculating, and thinking men [and women]” (1997: 24). It has to re-examine the foundational myths of the society and the glue of the social ties that fueled the social break. For indeed, most crimes against humanity are fanned using some common narratives that have been entrenched into social prejudices that ended up estranging a section as not belonging to the society; narratives that create “us” and/against “them.” Unless these narratives, as well as the socio-political structures nurtured by them, are deconstructed, remembering as an ethical duty would have stopped half-way, and there would be no hope of not happening again. Therefore, there has to be a serious political commitment to take measures that prevent those horrors from happening again. If the crimes came from an external actor, the society should work with neighboring countries and the international community in order to contain its sources. But at this level also, it would not be enough to remember only, without taking some concrete actions toward preventing future recurrences. For example, there can be the creation of regional and international institutions morally supportive of the protection and defense of human rights and committed to preventing their violations. So far, our discussion on remembering has focused—as it should be—on the victim side. However, public remembering has also an ethical duty to remember what the society suffered as a body through the suffering of targeted victims. If, indeed, a society is a community sharing the same fate, then every member suffers from what beguiles one section, and the whole social body is wounded through the wounds of its members. Consequently, though not to the same degree as the targeted group, every member of the society should feel included in the remembering and find some space for carrying out their own ethical duty of remembering beloved ones.

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This though, has to be carefully delineated so that there is no conflation where everybody is victim, thereby diluting victimhood altogether. The point here is that, while remembering the victim—with the social and political consequences highlighted above—and because it is rarely the case that, in such events, only the targeted group is affected, all those who lost their beloved ones should be allowed to mourn them and be publicly recognized as a social loss for the social body. Otherwise, they might feel that they no more belong to the same body, and, therefore, perceive themselves as less valued social and political subjects. Judith Butler rightly says that “if a life in not grievable, it is not quite a life” (2004: 34). A society, therefore, should avoid making anybody of its members feel that his/her life “is not quite a life.” Because such marginalization can lead to frustration, which will negatively impact the social reconstruction and reconciliation that we are looking for. Considering themselves not counted, such members might refrain from social and political participation, as they feel alienated from the social and political institutions. Such non-participation might lead the public authorities to use force in order to subdue them, which does not lead to “stability for right reasons,” to borrow John Rawls’s expression. As those who have suffered from what befell the society, everyone should have the space to mourn the beloved ones who perished and so feel part of the whole socio-political body. In that way, there is hope that the process of reconciliation will shy away from violence. Butler puts it rightly, “it is not that mourning is the goal of politics, but that without the capacity to mourn, we lose that keener sense of life we need in order to oppose violence” (2004: xviii–ix). Affording the space for mourning to every member of the political body is recognizing that every member normatively counts as a valuable member of the sociopolitical order. Actions taken for public remembering vary from building memorials to public commemoration, and punctual activities organized ad hoc. All these raise ethical questions, especially from the survivor’s angle. Memorials can be erected with extensive consultation. But who will be consulted and whose voice is going to count in the decision of the form and emplacement of the memorials? It may happen that the survivors are not the most articulate influence toward the decision-making about those memorials. Walter Benjamin notes that, after the WWI, the men who came back “from the battlefield [had] grown silent—not richer, but poorer in communicable experience” (2011: 98). In other words, memorials may become a political statement for politicians concerned only with the accumulation of power, rather than an expression of remembering as an ethical duty toward the victims. Such a risk is more apparent in commemorations. Playing with the French terms, Paul Ricoeur notes a redoubtable agreement between recalling, memorizing, and commemoration (2000: 104).7 This is so because, as once more Benjamin has shown, history is the history of the victors. Not only do they make it by their victory, but they also want to and do rewrite history. They tend to impose their own narrative of the event or banish the narrative all together. Contrary to the public forgetting mentioned above, we have here a public forging of a national narrative to which

7

“un pact redoutable se noue ainsi entre remémoration, mémorisation et commemoration.”

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every member has to adhere without possibility of dissenting. Everyone has to memorize it and recall it constantly, and commemoration becomes celebration of this new story that is making the new history. This new history becomes a legitimating narrative ideologically manipulated for the benefit of the ruling power. The victims and survivors are used for political purposes, and their stories are forgotten while commemorations are annually celebrated. Remembering through commemorations becomes celebration of victories of some and defeat of others, rather than remembering what victims suffered and how it affected the whole sociopolitical body. To rely on Benjamin, once again, a remembering that honors what happens to the victims, and that is redemptive of the past, has to look back at the ruins and remember those who were not lucky enough to have memorials erected to their memories. For that, public commemorations have to remain open to different narratives and have to resist the constant threat of political manipulation. The biggest threat for memory of the victims is the cynical recuperation of what happened for purposes of the political agenda. It becomes, then, a moral duty of the survivor to resist such manipulation and protect the public remembering that promotes the healing of public fabric that has been shredded by what they suffered. That is, why it has been the assumption from the beginning that the reconstruction and reconciliation of societies emerging from civil unrest rely heavily on the attitude and the role played by the survivor. Sure enough, this role will depend on his/her socio-political visibility. It may be the case that the survivor does not have much space and power to influence the public commemoration. This will simply imply that the society in question has not yet moved toward social reconciliation. The survivor has to resist the ideological exploitation of what he/she suffered, by keeping it open to different stories instead of instituting one official narrative only, and so to allow a space of freedom to remember those who have not been yet recognized; those who might feel not yet represented in the public events of commemoration. In other words, from a survivor’s point of view, public remembering as a way of honoring the ethical duty to remember, in order to contribute to reconstruction and reconciliation, should never be a remembrance of victory, because this would only remind what was a time of glory for some, and a moment of humiliation for others, to use Ricoeur’s words (2000: 96). Understandably, such a remembrance cannot be a unifying event. Rather—to reiterate the fact—the public commemoration should be a moment of acknowledgment of what victims of the targeted group suffered, what other members of the society went through, soul-searching about the socio-political conditions that gave rise to it, and evaluation of how far the social-political body has progressed toward rebuilding and reconciliation, celebrating the contribution of each and every one. Another ethical question concerns the impact of this public (and even individual) remembering on the descendants. For instance, Marianne Hirsch remarks that “to grow up with such overwhelming inherited memories, to be dominated by narratives that preceded one’s birth or one’s consciousness, is to risk having one’s own stories and experiences displaced, even evacuated, by those of a previous generation” (2011: 347). Is it not, therefore, unfair to impose this weight of history over one’s

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descendants and future generations? What should the survivor’s generation load on the shoulders of their descendants and future generations, and what should be the responsibility of descendants and to what extent should it go? The concern about remembering parents by their descendants has been already addressed while discussing the ethical duty toward the beloved ones. However, the worry as stated by Hirsch turns out to be an existential question, because it does not depend on an individual to have a tradition. We are born in family and a society which have a past. Thus, the inheritance of memories is unavoidable. From this perspective, following Ricoeur’s idea of debt, remembrance comes in as debt to those who passed before us and left us what we inherited. However, the accent is put on the dominant memories and narratives of former generation that might not leave a space for the future generations to create their own stories. This question is relevant in relation to the ethical duty of public remembering. For the latter can be done in such a way that the experiences and stories of the new generations do not have space to develop. The new generations may feel in fetters vis-à-vis the memories of the past that they do not dare to invent and create themselves. Such situations can happen especially when memorials and commemorations have been hijacked by political demagogues who manipulate memories to aggrandize and keep their political power, by imposing one narrative of what is to be remembered and one style of remembering. There cannot be a simple solution to such a complex question, but few ways can be suggested. First, as already stated, public remembering should not be closed, but rather open to different stories, even contradicting ones, so that there are no silenced voices. I have advisedly avoided to resort to the role of professional historians in the public remembering—because my goal is to remain at the ethical and political level. However, saturating the narrative through public remembering would be detrimental to the history of the society, as the dominant narrative would replace and even ban any scientific historical inquiry into what happened, for fear of contradicting the dominant belief. Yet, while the survivor wants the society to remember what happened, he/she wishes to remember what “truly” happened. And as much as the truth about what happened can be remembered, the professional history can make a significant contribution to it, without replacing, at any account, the stories of those who went through it. Once the public remembering is open, then the voices of the new generations can be heard, sometimes joining those already existing, other times questioning the foundation of the remembering itself. Having not lived the experience firsthand, they might lack the sensitivity of their fore-bearers, and this should be expected, without feeling offended because they have to make their own lives not only through the remains but also with the flowers that have grown over the ruins. This effort of understanding is, however, also expected from the new generations. If they cannot be required to share at the same level the emotional dimension of those who suffered horrors, they, however, have an ethical duty to remember the causes that led to them, and to strive against them happening again. New generations cannot be ethically unconcerned with grave human rights violations that happened in their societies, for as already mentioned, having happened once means that it can happen

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again. And were it to happen—God forbid!—due to their negligence they would be more guilty than their forefathers. Thus, the ethical duty of public remembering for survivors requires them not to close all the space for creativity and self-invention for the future generations. Instead, there is an invitation to accept divergence and questions that these new generation might bring out, including different attitudes toward the whole idea of public remembering altogether. On the other hand, new generations owe an ethical duty of remembrance to survivors for two different reasons. First, they are to do so as honoring a debt that they owe their forefathers from what they inherited—both bad and good—thanks to what the latter suffered. Second, new generations have to make sure that what happened to their fathers never happens again. Maybe this is where Santayana’s aphorism gets its full qualified meaning, not that a forgotten past will necessarily repeat itself, but rather that, if a past were to be repeated due to negligence of remembering, it would be ethically wrong. And so, instead of understanding it on an indicative mode, it works better on conditional one: New generation keeps memory of what happened to their fore-bearers lest it happens again to them. On the other hand, fore-bearers are to understand and tolerate that new generations conceive and honor differently the ethical duty of remembering, sometimes even, shockingly differently. For their experiences are woven through the temporal distancing from the horrendous events.

3.6

Forgetting and Remembering: Conflict of Duties?

As a way of concluding this section, let us retrieve some questions that we left pending about the relationship that is to be established between forgetting and remembering. For instance, since not everything can/should be remembered or forgotten, what should be forgotten or what should be remembered? For public forgetting and remembering, who should decide? What is the scope of the discretionary power of political institutions on the public memory (understood as both forgetting and remembering)? How far is the destruction of traces beneficial or detrimental to the duty of remembering? More importantly, can there be conflict between the necessity of forgetting and the duty to remember? Most of these questions have already been addressed all along, but it is worth recalling some of the points. Concerning the question regarding what to forget or what to remember, for a survivor, it will be a necessity to strive to forget all that hurt him/her, which is not facilitating his/her social insertion. That task, however, will follow a personal pace and the capacity of every survivor. That is why, since we have seen that there can be no duty to be imposed on him/her, forgetting cannot be prescriptive, but rather advisory. As for remembering, what has been developed under the moral and ethical duty to remember fits here, although there might appear some conflicts. Indeed, it is likely that any act of remembering—be it moral or ethical—will revive the memories of what the survivor went through, and hence thwart his/her effort to forget in order to live socially well. Therefore, he/she will

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have to be patient with her-/him-self as she/he struggles to heal, until she/he reaches the time when she can honor her/his duty to remember without jeopardizing her/his effort to forget. Furthermore, the society has the duty to bear with him/her and accompany him/her on this journey of healing. This conflict present at the individual level is heightened at the level of public memory. For as it has been noted, there can be imposition of what to forget and what to remember, and because of that imposition, there are constraints on what is to remember and how it is to be remembered, as Jeffrey Olick observes (2011: 227). In such circumstances, the effort to forget can be hindered by the constant orchestrated memories, or the duty to remember might be oriented toward political manipulation, instead of favoring social healing. The appeal to the necessity to forget for a survivor can be turned into a duty to remember, since she/he has to obey the political order without a say on what and how to remember. Even when commemorations have been communally decided, it does not ensure that everybody was heard in order to claim that such commemorations represent all who are to be remembered. Clearly the conflict is open and the questions are complex. Hence, no clear-cut answers can be given. Only some suggestions can be offered. First, while it would not claim to represent every voice, at least the decision about the public memory should be as extensive as possible, reaching out to every affected person, as Jürgen Habermas would suggest. It is realistically impossible that every voice would be considered at the end, but it should be the aim of favoring the most representative way of public memory. This goes without saying that the imposition of public forgetting or remembering without extensive public consultation has to be excluded. Second, even after the decision has been reached about what is to be remembered and what is advisable to forget, it should remain open and never should a silence or censure be imposed on what is to be remembered or forgotten. On the contrary, listening to all voices of survivors, even the dissenting ones, should be the goal of the public memory as such. Third, although it is a moral duty for the society to remember what affected it as a whole or in its sections, it should not be made a requirement for the survivor to assist to the public manifestation of the commemoration, since it might not be conducive to his/her healing process. In this sense, the survivor can still try to decide on what is necessary to forget as she/he is also struggling to carry out his/her moral and ethical duty to remember. The last question is about the consequence of the destruction of traces. As we suggested above, the public memory has to be sensitive to the survivors, and we agreed with Rieff that after the death of survivors and their descendants, it would be a good time to think of public forgetting. In this undertaking, destroying traces might be one way to do so, especially if those traces remind traumatic experiences for some people. At the same time, however, there is a tension between this necessity to forget and the duty to remember, because the destruction of these traces is against the very reason why they were put in place: so that people can remember. On the other hand, however, it sounds appropriate that people who have been hurt should be given chance to heal from what affected their forefathers. Furthermore, it has also been

References

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highlighted that new generations need their space to create and invent themselves, and not be clouded by the memories of the past. How then to reconcile the two? Once more, this is a complex question and only suggestions can be indicated as a way of looking forward. The whole question is part of a comprehensive fact of the human condition: people want to keep good memories and avoid the bad ones. That is why the suppression of traces threatens bad memories rather than the good ones, and one can see the civic and educational role of the latter. However, it would be reductive to only present the positive side of life and/or of history. History should consider all that it entails: wars and truces, moments of glory and of defeat, social harmony and civil upheavals. Both sides can serve the civic and educational purpose: the good ones offer examples to emulate, while the bad ones present what to avoid, and both would contribute to social reconciliation. From this perspective, public forgetting through destruction of traces seems unadvisable. Perhaps instead of destroying them, they should decrease their historical importance in public life and preserve them for cultural purpose. Furthermore, such traces are important for historical research, and that is why archives have to be preserved. This suggestion offers a middle way between a complete destruction of the traces and their constant public display which could hurt some people. These are some indications on how to deal with the conflicts and tensions that might arise between the necessity to forget and the duty to remember. This chapter tried to underscore the virtues at work in the survivor when he/she struggles to forget and carry the duty to remember, as his/her way of contributing to the process of reconstruction and reconciliation of his/her society. Another practice that is instrumental to that reconciliation process is telling one’s story. The next chapter looks at it through the survivor’s lenses.

References Arendt, Hannah. 2006. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. New York: Penguin Books. Benjamin, Walter. 2011. The Storyteller. In The Collective Memory Reader, ed. Jeffrey Olick, Vered Vinitzky-Seroussi, and Daniel Levy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bernecke, Sven, and Kourken Michaelian, eds. 2017. The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Memory. New York: Routledge. Blustein, Jeffrey. 2008. The Moral Demand of Memory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2017. A Duty to Remember. In The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Memory, ed. Sven Bernecke and Kourken Michaelian. New York: Routledge. Bridgman, Jon, and Leslie Worley. 1997. Genocide of the Hereros. In Century of Genocide: Eyewitness Accounts and Critical Views, ed. Samuel Tottem, William Parsons, and Israel Charny. New York: Garland Publishing. Butler, Judith. 2004. Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. New York: Verso. Carman, Taylor. 2017. Martin Heidegger. In The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Memory, ed. Sven Bernecke and Kourken Michaelian. New York: Routledge.

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Casey, Edward. 2000. Remembering: A Phenomenological Study. 2nd ed. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Eliade, Mircea. 1959. Cosmos and History: The Myth of Eternal Return. New York: Harper Torchbooks. Elster, Jon. 2004. Closing the Books: Transitional Justice in Historical Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge university Press. Hirsch, Mariane. 2011. The Generation of Postmemory. In The Collective Memory Reader, ed. Jeffrey Olick, Vered Vinitzky-Seroussi, and Daniel Levy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ingiyimbere, Fidèle. 2017. Domesticating Human Rights: The Reappraisal of their CulturalPolitical Critiques and their Imperialistic Use. Cham: Springer. Katz, Fred Emil. 2004. Confronting Evil: Two Journeys. Albany: State University of New York. Knafo, Danielle. 2009. Freud’s Memory Erased. Psychoanalytic Psychology 26: 171–190. Mannheim, Karl. 2011. The Sociological Problem of Generations. In The Collective Memory Reader, ed. Jeffrey Olick, Vered Vinitzky-Seroussi, and Daniel Levy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Margalit, Avishai. 2002. The Ethics of Memory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Nikulin, Dimitri. 2017. Maurice Halbwachs. In The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Memory, ed. Sven Bernecke and Kourken Michaelian. New York: Routledge. Nora, Pierre. 2011. Reason for the Current Upsurge in Memory. In The Collective Memory Reader, ed. Jeffrey Olick, Vered Vinitzky-Seroussi, and Daniel Levy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Olick, Jeffrey, Vered Vinitzky-Seroussi, and Daniel Levy, eds. 2011. The Collective Memory Reader. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Renan, Ernest. 2011. What is a Nation? In The Collective Memory Reader, ed. Jeffrey Olick, Vered Vinitzky-Seroussi, and Daniel Levy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ricoeur, Paul. 2000. La mémoire, l’histoire, l’oubli. Paris: Editions du Seuil. Rieff, David. 2011. Against Remembrance. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press. Sennett, Richard. 2011. Disturbing Memories. In The Collective Memory Reader, ed. Jeffrey Olick, Vered Vinitzky-Seroussi, and Daniel Levy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Teitel, Ruti. 2003. Transitional Justice Geneology. Harvard Human Rights Journal 16: 69–94. UNSC, 2004. The Rule of Law and Transitional Justice in Conflict and Post-Conflicts Societies. Report of the Secretary General. New York: UN. Vervisch, Thomas et al. 2013. Social Capital and Post-Conflict Reconstruction in Burundi: The Limits of Communtiy-Based Reconstruction. Development and Change 44(1): 147–174. Winter, Jay. 2011. Remembering War: The Great War between memory and history in the Twentieth Century. In The Collective Memory Reader, ed. Jeffrey Olick, Vered VinitzkySeroussi, and Daniel Levy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Chapter 4

Silence and the Imperative to Tell

We wanted to survive so as to live one day after Hitler, in order to be able to tell our story. Dori Laub, An Event without Witness: Truth, Testimony and Survival. Il est des témoins qui ne rencontrent jamais l’audience capable de les écouter et de les entendre. Paul Ricoeur, La mémoire, l’histoire, l’oubli.

Abstract This chapter explores the layers of storytelling and their moral/ethical implications as used in the processes of reconstruction-reconciliation of post-conflict societies. Indeed, the perpetrators of crimes against humanity aim at not leaving a witness who would tell the story of what happened. On the other side, however, many survivors consider their miraculous survival as a mission to tell what happened to them. From these radically opposite stands, the chapter discusses the possibility of carrying out such survivors’ mission of telling what happened to them. Yet many of the survivors attest that ordinary words are incapable of translating such horrific experiences. That is why some of them end up opting for silence, which is not less problematic. Therefore, the chapter distinguishes the positive forms of silence from the negative ones and confronts them with the apparent imperative to tell. Now, telling the story creates a space which is open to everyone, including the perpetrators. The chapter looks at the modalities and the advantages of the use of such space without hurting the survivor. The last section of the chapter deals with the issue of talking for the absent, through three main figures: the disappeared victims, the just, and the innocent person, and future generations. Keywords Silence · imperative to tell · incapacity of words · story-telling · listening · the Absent

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 F. Ingiyimbere, Virtues from Hell: Survivors of Conflicts and the Reconstruction-Reconciliation Processes, Philosophy and Politics - Critical Explorations 20, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89173-2_4

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4.1

4 Silence and the Imperative to Tell

“Leave None to Tell. . .”

In 1999, five years after the Genocide against Tutsi in Rwanda, Alison Des Forges published her book on Rwanda entitled Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda. As to Immaculée Ilibagiza, she has called her memoire Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust. These two titles represent two opposite attitudes present in every gross and massive violation of human rights. On the one hand, there are the perpetrators who would want their horrific acts to never be disclosed—therefore, they had to eliminate any and every possible witness. On the other hand, there are survivors who take their survival as a mission to tell the story of what befell them and the story of those who did not make it. While the first intention wants to erase such events from historical records and the records of human history, the other side strives to make sure “that the world may know”—to use James Dawes’s expression—and that the history may not forget. “History must be judged” says Elie Wiesel, and it can only be judged when there are stories of those who suffered under its watch. That is the goal of the survivor, expressed in titles such as of Ilibagiza’s Left to Tell. On the side of perpetrators, however, history must not be judged and, to achieve that end, the possibility of charging history must be avoided by all means, by leaving none to tell the stories. In that sense, as the former minister of foreign affairs during the genocide in Rwanda, Jérôme Bicumumpaka, put it, “there are no witnesses to give evidence” (Dawes 2007: 43). If there are no witnesses, there will be no evidence; and if there is no evidence, there is no judgment. Without judgment, history will continue its course without memory of those who passed on without leaving a story behind; those who left no trace, or rather, those whose traces were deliberately denied. This deliberate will of the perpetrator to leave none to tell seems to motivate and even to ground a moral duty for the survivor to tell the story, not only so that the world may know and history may be judged but also to stand in face of the perpetrator as a sign of his/her defeat and say: someone was left, and therefore he/she is telling the story. Such moral duty could also be justified in the name of those who perished as a way of remembering them. Once more, Wiesel asserts that to forget the dead would be to kill them twice (23). From that point of view, telling the story can be stated as a moral duty of every witness, but most importantly of the survivor who experienced the horror at the firsthand. This also seems to transpire from the first epigraph of this chapter, which is a statement of an Holocaust survivor, who took her survival as a mission “to tell our story” (Dori 1992b: 78). Ari Hirvonen is more explicit, underlying that if “no story is possible after Auschwitz. . . there remains a duty to speak endlessly for those who could not speak because to the end they wanted to safeguard the speech against betrayal” (2012: 157). In other words, there is a duty to speak. However, while the survivor can assign her/himself the mission to tell, can such a mission be formulated as moral duty such that, failing to fulfill it would deserve a blame? The question might sound a truism, as it is obvious that, despite all the reasons shown above, they are not sufficient to make the need to tell the story a moral

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duty for every survivor. Nevertheless, this rhetorical question brings to the fore some ethical challenges, especially when that storytelling is meant for socio-political reconciliation and reconstruction. Some of these exercises of storytelling are done through official platforms such as TRCs—or similar institutions—or courts. From this point of view, the rhetorical question gains a normative tone: should such structures have power to oblige the survivor to appear before them? If yes, does the survivor have a moral right of not complying with such orders? These questions only highlight one aspect of the problem, but one can go further and ask: does the survivor have to tell the story? Can she/he keep her/his story without feeling guilty of betraying his/her companions? Once more, these might appear benign questions as it is clear that the survivor is—or at least should be—free to tell or withhold his/her story. However, once one considers the political role that such narratives can play, it becomes evident that, in some circumstances, survivor are under political and social pressure to tell their story, and to do so in a certain way that fits the dominant narrative. They are constrained to espouse a certain procedure and use a certain vocabulary. If not, their story might become irrelevant. When such instances happen, is it still the survivor’s story? Are they still the ones taking stance as witness to the perpetrator’s defeat? On the other hand, though, can there be narratives that are not conditioned by their sociocultural and political context? Furthermore, in addition to the reasons already mentioned for the survivors to tell their story, there is the belief that telling it—especially through the TRCs—brings healing, not only for the individual but also for the community. The emblematic case was the South African TRC, which played on that healing dimension to encourage people to come to testify before it (Tutu 1999: 167, 279). Yet studies show that survivors who come before those commissions suffer as if they were reliving the traumatic experience (Laura Eramian 2008; Chris van der Merwe and Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela 2007; Claudia Welz 2016; Nthabiseng Faku-Jugula 2014; Fiona Ross 2003). Furthermore, they face the challenge of not being understood, as they try to translate into words what language is not equipped to convey. This fact is more apparent for the historian who is looking for factual truth about what “really” happened, while the survivors’ story is a word of truth about their experience. In addition to these facts, there is the shame that can be attached to the ordeal survivors endured, or the fear of endangering one’s life due to what might be revealed through the story. In such situations, silence might be the best option. However, would it be recommended as an ethical stance for the survivor who is supposed and called to contribute to the reconciliation and the rebuilding of the social fabric? It has already been mentioned that some storytelling are done through TRCs, whose goal—among others—is the establishment of the truth about what happened, with the belief that knowing the truth contributes to personal and communal healing and reconciliation. From this point of view, wouldn’t keeping silence be an ethical flaw that the survivor cannot afford? Wouldn’t holding the truth be detrimental to future generations, with the risks of repeating the horrors because the world did not know, as Santayana’s famous maxim suggests? Is the survivor ethically acting when he/she keeps silence about what happened?

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From another vantage, telling a story requires a listener and there cannot be speech without silence. Moreover, one cannot expect to be listened to without willing to also listen to others. If these claims are right, it seems to follow that the survivor is not only left to tell but also to listen; not only to speak but also to be silent so that others can have space to talk. This is the hardest part of all these storytelling processes in the context of reconciliation and reconstruction: who is to tell and who is to listen when everybody is wounded? Does the survivor still have the energy and capacity to listen to others without breaking down? More challenging still, is the survivor able to listen to the perpetrator’s story, because telling the story and the goal of uncovering truth through telling-listening opens a space that becomes accessible to anybody who has been affected? How is that space to be managed? Who is to manage it? All these queries are raised to underline that, while the process of reconciliation and reconstruction usually relies on the survivors’ storytelling, it is not without ethical challenges. Thus, continuing with the same method of looking at some practices through the survivor’s eyes, this chapter wants to examine those questions from that perspective, assessing their virtuous dimension and what can be asked to the survivor.

4.2

The Incapacity of Words

It has become commonplace that human identity is constituted through story telling; we are storytelling beings; we make sense of ourselves and our surroundings by narrating (Sandel 2008; McIntyre 1981). As Matti Hyvärinen observes, life itself is a narrative (2008: 450); “living and telling about our lives are interwoven” (Hanna Meretoja 2014: 89). This storytelling human condition, however, depends on two powers: the capacity to speak using language and the power of the words to convey the meaning of what we want to say. It is taken for granted that speaking as a faculty is a normal human disposition, and language is able to translate human experiences. In that line, telling a story of survival does not add anything new, since it fits into the normal human activities constitutive of the human condition. However, some of the experiences such as the gross human rights violations and crimes against humanity challenge the two conditions of possibility of narration, that is, the capacity to speak and the power of words to narrate the human experience. We have already come across Walter Benjamin saying that those who returned from WWI had grown “poorer in communication.” That experience is shared by many who suffered trauma in general, but particularly through gross violation of human rights, crimes against humanity and war. For instance, Dawes mentions cases of genocide’s survivors who could not speak for weeks (2007: 22–3). It is attested by the psychoanalysis practice that trauma can lead to the loss of speech capacity, or at least the capacity to talk about the traumatic event, so much so that the process of healing will consist in facing that event and finding the bravery to narrate it (Van der Merwe and Gobodo-Medikezela 2007; Hirvonen 2012; Laub 1992a). In addition to

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the possible loss of the faculty of speech, words themselves become incapable of making sense in narrating what happened during those traumatic experiences. Primo Levi notes that “our language lacks words to express this offense, the demolition of a man” (Levi 1958: 28). As to Wiesel, he observes that he had many things to say but could not find right words. For him, there should have been invented another language (2007: 11; 12). In Kirundi, crimes against humanity are called ivyaha vy’agahomerabunwa, that is, crimes that shut off the mouth. These examples demonstrate that, beyond the trauma, the acts themselves are outside the narratable. They are so inhuman that they cannot fit into words that are human. Another language should have been invented because the existing one is meant to make sense of ordinary experience through which, we build our identities. Not finding appropriate words to narrate it, therefore, is not simply a limitation of the language and the incapacity of words. It is inherently linked to our human condition of not building our identities on those horrible experiences, and not making them ordinary events. The so-often heard expression from the survivors that they wouldn’t wish anybody to undergo what they suffered seems to me to convey that message. Such acts put to test the ordinary language because they cannot and should not be seen as ordinary. They cannot and should not constitute means on which we build our identities and through which we make sense of ourselves and others. Put otherwise, their incommunicability is lodged into their inhumane nature which cannot fit into the human condition. From this perspective, if these horrific experiences challenge the basic possibility of our storytelling condition by their very uncommunicable nature, what can we make then of the imperative for the survivors to tell their stories? From what is said above, it is obvious that an imperative to tell one’s story should not be understood in its strongest sense of a moral imperative requiring the survivor to abide by it. As Victor Frankl said, the demand of heroism can only come from oneself and not from someone else. To tackle the incommunicability of the horrific crimes that defy the possibility of condition as storytelling beings can only come from the decision and effort of the survivor, and not from an external agent. In that sense, survivors who make effort to tell their story are to be commended for their bravery, because the endeavor is beyond human capacity and there are no means to fulfill it. Consequently, the standards of assessing their story have to be different from those of ordinary language and experience. Laub relates an experience of a Holocaust survivor who said that she saw the four chimneys blowing up, and a historian who was there discredited this story for not being true to the facts. We already saw that memory is not a store into which one enters to recover stored information. Rather, it feeds on the present to reconstruct the past. More so for a traumatic memory. “Massive trauma precludes its registration” says Laub (1992a: 57). That being the case, any uttered word by the survivor is a victory over the threat of a total silence, and is to be considered as a stone for rebuilding up the shattered life. It is also a victory over the fear of being judged and/or being not understood. Fiona Ross talks of Yvonne Khutwane, a South African lady who testified before TRC, saying, “I did not know if people would understand” (2003: 86). Indeed, if it is true that gross human rights violations defy the human

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condition of storytelling by affecting the human capacity to speak and the power of words to translate human experience, how could the survivor expect people to understand? He/she is caught up between the dilemma of using the ordinary language, which is not able to say what truly happened, or to invent another language that would be appropriate to such experiences. But even if such a language were possible, the result would be the same: being not understood. Thus, when a survivor breaks the silence, she/he takes the risks of being not understood. He/she jumps into the unknown and performs a very generous act, because normally, the essence of communication is to say something to someone expecting a certain response because you hope to be understood. But when one does not know whether people will understand, when one doubts whether people can understand, what is the purpose of telling the story? There seems to be nothing expected, except letting words overflow, sounding meaningless to the ordinary ears. In addition to being an act of generosity whereby the survivor takes the risks of being not understood and without expecting anything in return, it is also an act of hope. Hope that the story might bear fruit in unpredictable and unforetold ways. The same South African lady says: “I just told myself [prior to testifying] that I would tell the truth and hope. That was the end.” Finding the end of the story in bringing out the truth, a truth that might not be understood and then just hope. She does not even qualify her hope; just hope. For what? Till when? “Telling the truth and hope” becomes the means for overcoming the fear of not being understood. It does not guarantee the understanding—for this is inherent to the crimes themselves—but it liberates a story and opens horizons of hope; an unqualified hope that each hearer can appropriate and qualify for her/himself. That is why when the survivor defies that fear of not being understood, he/she performs an act of generosity and hope. Now, one of the consequences of not being understood is the risk of not being believed. Narrating what is beyond human experience can lead some listeners to doubt whether the story is true; asking how one could possibly survive what the survivor is describing. This, of course, is linked to the previous fear of not being understood. For if one cannot understand, will he/she believe what is being told? That is why when survivors dare to speak, they take that risk of exposing their version of the truth and their life experience to the possibility of doubt. Furthermore, opening up about their pain and what they endured exposes them to the public scrutiny, which can cause shame and even personal threat. Juan Herrera talks of a Chilean lady who met the president to tell him how she had suffered torture, sexual harassment, and rape. Once she finished, she added: “I hope to be alive even when I am eighty years old and I do not want that while I am alive my grandchildren get to know about the atrocities their grandmother suffered” (2018: 94).1 In the words of this survivor, while the story can be told, it has to be preserved from her intimate and close relationships.

1

It is true that other survivors want to tell their stories for the sake of their grandchildren and futures generations (Ross 2003: 87; Wiesel 2007: 23).

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This example shows how, beyond the moral dimension linked to the guilt of not measuring up the moral social norms, shame characterizes the social relationships and the standing before the significant other. Narrating the survivor’s story carries the risks of breaking the esteem and the appreciation that the survivor gets from the social recognition. That is why, while she is able to tell the story to the commission and even to the president, she would like to keep it from her grandchildren. Others might simply want nobody to know what happened to them, because of the risks that shame carries with it, such as “social death” as Kay Schaffer and Sidonie Smith call it. According to them, “to be asked to make visible the shame of the past is to be put in the position of being ashamed once again.” They add: “Such acts of remembering attach the survivor once again to the degradation of social death” (2004). That is another kind of risk to which survivors expose themselves when they choose to tell their stories, and they even face physical threat against. For instance, for some survivors of apartheid in South Africa, their stories involved not only suffering torture but also betraying some comrades in order to save their lives. Revealing that betrayal produced the resentment from their own communities and some received threats against them. It was also reported that during the Gacaca process in Rwanda, the survivors who testified before Gacaca courts were physically threatened and actually some were physically harmed. All these are dangers that a survivor faces by daring to tell the story. Ross rightly notes that “to talk about sexual violence shows. . .bravery” (2003: 94). This can be applied to every story told about pain and suffering endured during gross human rights violations. They are beyond words and imaginations, numbing the human capacity to speak, and these two facts make these horrors hard to believe and understand. Survivors who dare to use words for translating those horrific experiences try the impossible with personal risk of social death and, sometimes, physical harm. That is why such an effort is commendable as brave and as a generous act of hope. Such an act, nevertheless, has to surmount different obstacles depending on the modalities of telling the story. I identify three: (i) intimate telling; that is, when the survivor tells her story to his/her significant others, family, relatives, and friends; (ii) public hearings; these can be public lectures or talks or official structures, such as TRCs and courts; (iii) publications. While all these three venues present the same risks already mentioned, their intensity will depend on each modality. For instance, the decision to tell the story to one’s significant others and to publish are likely not to result from external pressure, while the participation in the official structures might be a fulfillment of an official order. Furthermore, the survivor might expect more sympathetic listening from the significant others than from public hearings, which might be more critical than empathetic. Finally, the intimate telling might be more spontaneous and open to the genuine expression of the survivor’s story, whereas the official fora have to follow a certain protocol in order to accept the story. For example, publishing a survivor’s story has to go through editing, and to testify before courts and TRCs, even for public lectures and talks, the story is distilled in order to fit into the interest of the audience or feed the interests of the market.

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Now, as a result of what has been developed, it is obvious that the survivor should not have an external obligation to tell her/his story. It should be a personal initiative to brave all the huddles and speak up. The imperative to tell should be a personal obligation. Others—be they the significant others, the official structures or the general public—should encourage the survivor to tell her/his story by being patient with him/her and by creating a favorable environment that can ensure him/her sympathetic and empathetic listening. That is why I have tried to avoid the use of witness and testifying, preferring narration of the story, for the former are heavily morally loaded. While narrativity is part of our human condition, witness and testifying imply a moral—and even a legal—responsibility. First of all, most of the time, witness refers to a physical presence to the scene when the event happened. Hence the expression of eye-witness, meaning seeing with one’s own eyes. And once one has seen, it seems to arise a moral responsibility of bearing witness; of telling what one saw that happened. This moral responsibility, therefore, may appear to justify an external pressure on the survivor to come and testify; bear witness to what he/she saw. In such instances, the audience is waiting for the factual truth. Hence, it is alert to identify contradictory statements and other incoherence in the testimony, to fact-check and compare different testimonies. Logical discrepancies within or between testimonies can discredit the stories of the witnesses. Yet, it has been already underlined that, crimes against humanity and all human rights violations are outside human experience. That is why they cannot be captured into words and are beyond the survivor’s capacity to claim to have seen them all for an accurate report. Kelly Oliver notes that “there is a tension inherent in the notion of witnessing in the sense of eye-witness to historical facts or accuracy on the one hand, witnessing in the sense of bearing witness to a truth about humanity and suffering that transcends those facts” (2004: 81). If this claim is true in general, it is even more so when talking about a survivor asked to testify as eye-witness of what he/she suffered. The incongruence of such a demand is to take the survivor as if he/she was a disinterested observer who could register what was going on. Yet the survivor is not an actor. He/she is, alas! acted upon. Therefore, he/she cannot fix the facts for the interest of historical records. As Ross observes “Horror closes the opportunities for witness: throat, mouth, ear, eye, all are destroyed” (2003: 5). That is why a survivor cannot stand as an ordinary witness who has seen or heard an event. He/she has no means to distance her/himself from it. What Laub says about the Holocaust as “an event without witness” might be applied to every egregious and gross violation of human rights. They destroy the inner “thou” which allows the subject to take a distance from what is happening, in order to have a stance on the event. Thus, when, by miracle, survivors manage to tell their stories, it is not about the factual accuracy, but rather about “bearing witness to a truth about humanity and suffering that transcends those facts.” Actually, those horrific events destroy even the possibility of witness itself. As Primo Levi asserts, the events that the external public is expecting the survivor to testify about, have, in fact annihilated the true witnesses: those who did not make it. That is what Giorgio Agamben calls “the lacuna in testimony.” For “the true witness. . .are those who did not bear witness and could not bear witness. The

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survivors speak in their stead, by proxy, as pseudo-witnesses; they bear witness to a missing testimony” (1999: 33; 34). The real witnesses are those who succumbed to the events that survivors are being summoned to testify about. In other words, gross human rights violations and crimes against humanity make impossible the possibility of testifying and bearing witness. They are acts such that none can sustain his/her sight and stare at them as an eye-witness. They intend to leave no story to tell and none to tell it even if there were one. Hence, they intend to make unnecessary the exercise of storytelling and its subject altogether. Thus, summoning the survivors as a witness and loading on them the moral duty of testifying is asking them what is beyond human capacity, because they were not spectators. Furthermore, the true witnesses are no longer there. At the same time, however, we do not have any other voices that can tell what really happened. That is where lies the paradox, which is to be borne by the listener, especially the historian and the judge, who are to discern the factual accuracy from “the truth about humanity and suffering that transcend those facts.” It is up to every particular survivor to decide when and how to tell her/his story, and the audience is expected to have a sympathetic and empathic in listening. It is, therefore, morally wrong to force a survivor to tell his/her story, appear as witness or for testifying. As one survivor in Solomon Islands and TimorLeste says, when such things of forcing survivors to appear happen, “I think this is a disgrace” (Herrera 2018: 96). Perhaps that is why some survivors prefer or would prefer silence instead of telling their stories. But can keeping silence be an ethical option? This question constitutes the thread of the next section.

4.3

Silence and the Imperative to Tell

Having underlined some of the hurdles that survivors have to overcome in order to tell their story, wouldn’t it be a better option to keep silence? After all, there is no language to accurately translate the horror endured, and when a survivor tries to tell the story, there is no assurance that he/she will be understood. Moreover, revealing the ordeal suffered can lead to social death for survivors, due to the shame it causes. All these elements put together support keeping silence as the best option. On the other hand, however, as many survivors attest, they feel a personal imperative to tell what happened to them. Wouldn’t keeping silence, then, be a betrayal of this personal responsibility to let the world know what happened? And in the context of this reflection, would keeping silence contribute to the reconciliation and reconstruction? This is the ethical dilemma that confronts survivors. The previous section opened up on our human condition as storytelling beings who make sense of ourselves and our environment through narration. It showed that gross violations of human rights affect fundamentally those faculties. However, even in the normal situations, silence is constitutive of our human condition as storytellers. A story makes sense when it has a beginning and an end; it starts in and ends in silence. Speaking endlessly would be seen as pathological. Silence feeds the

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uttered words and welcomes them back when they sink into it again, as if they are being refueled in order to regain energy. Silence is the cradle of the faculty to speak and the inexhaustible source of meaning, as well as the receptacle of what is said. Without silence there would be no language; consequently, there would be no possibility of telling a story. As such, therefore, silence accompanies every word and every story. As Maurice Merleau-Ponty says, one has to renounce to say everything in order to say something. Whenever we talk, independently of the context and the style, we select words and we choose the subject of our talk. The story we tell about ourselves or anything else is always discriminatory. There are words deemed inaccurate; there are themes judged irrelevant. There are even themes and words we simply have forgotten, which do not come into picture as we struggle to find words that make sense through our story. Thus, the story told and the words used carry in and with them those silenced or fallen in silence, because they are part of each other’s story. In a certain a way, it is because some themes died in oblivion and some words ceded their place to those we hear or read that a story was possible. Without this primordial silence, there would be no possibility of a speaking endeavor, because the former is the bedrock of the latter. This primordial silence, source of our faculty to speak is tied to our human condition as storytelling beings. Being able to speak and tell the story presupposes being able to keep silence and listen to it. It also supposes to surrender to the impossibility of telling all that the silence contains and accept to be modest when we claim to have said something. If the saying is already far beyond the said, to paraphrase Levinas’s concept, the saying itself is indebted to the inexhaustibility of the Unsayable; the primordial silence that sacrifices itself to let the said to come out. That being the case and as part of our human condition, we have to renounce the ambition—if ever there was!—of expecting a whole truth through our story. We have to always be mindful of the unsaid that is still in the dark, despite the said, which might never be said or will never be said properly and/or accurately. What we say is a result of what we do not even know; what we cannot remember, what we could not tell; what we could tell but we chose not tell; what we chose to tell but in a certain way using certain words rather than others. At the end, little is said considering what should have been said or what wanted to be said. As Ross remarks, “any telling is produced of silences and erasures” (2003: 5). Now, when it comes to survivors’ situation, to this existential condition of primordial silence are added the trauma and the barriers that have been mentioned. Silence is not only affecting our being as storytellers but also the possibility of the will and the capacity to tell. The survivor feels the imperative to tell but faces the inhibiting force of the trauma and the inadequacy of words. As van der Merwe and Gobodo-Madikizela note, “trauma victims have a contradictory desire to suppress their trauma as well as to talk about it. To talk about it, would mean an extremely painful reliving of the event.” Hence, there is “a tension between silence and disclosure” (2007: viii). Whereas there is an obvious need for disclosing and confronting one’s trauma, “for inner survival, they normally suppress the memory” (ibid.). In other words, because of the pain associated with recalling and telling what he/she went through, a survivor prefers the silence “for inner survival.”

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But preferring silence is also due to the lack of words to tell the experience. We have already underscored how the ordinary language is inadequate to relate what happens in crimes against humanity. As Claudia Welz notes, “ordinary language proves to be inadequate vis-à-vis the incomprehensible” (Welz 2016: 105). Thus, in addition to the silence that underlies every word, the words available in ordinary language are incapable of translating the experience of the survivor as an experience of trauma. Thus, this “inner survival” and the inability of ordinary language to tell the experience of the survivor make the silence an inevitable mechanism for the survivor to deal with the traumatic experiences. Hence the need to consider silence as an expression available to the survivor to communicate his/her pain and sufferings. Ross observes that pain can be communicated through gestures, words, and silence, and we bear an ethical responsibility to listen to all the three channels, especially to listen to silence as a legitimate mode of dealing with pain (2003: 49). From the psychoanalysis point of view, conveying the traumatic experience through a narrative is the route to healing. However, enduring the silence as expression of pain has to be recognized and acknowledged, to paraphrase Veena Das’s expression (1996: 88). Through silence, the survivors affirm their agency by deciding to keep silence, instead of forcing words that would betray their life experience. They confront the horrific dimension of the atrocities by bearing in them their memories. Sure enough, that being part of their story, such experiences can appear in different forms and gestures; certain habits and manias, some conscious, other unconscious. However, the decision to keep the secret despite its weight and enduring the traumatic memories is a meritorious act on its own. That is why the ethical responsibility that Ross evokes applies here, when the listener respects the survivors’ silence and pace in disclosing their story. Not only does this suppose not forcing them to speak about what happened to them, but it also entails respecting their silence as a form of expressing their suffering. Once again, such stance can stand in opposition with the juridical and epistemological expectations, and consequently the ethical/moral aspects of considering the survivor as a witness. As already highlighted, the duty of justice about the crimes and the necessity of truth about what happened can give the impression that the survivor has a moral duty to appear before the court to testify and to tell his/her story for the sake of historical truth. There can even be a case for an ethical duty arising from the care that the survivor has to bear for the victims who did not make it. In addition, as mentioned several times, it is believed that finding a narrative for one’s traumatic memories is a way to psychological healing. In other words, it is also an ethical duty for the survivor to care for her/himself by telling the story. All these facts appear to stand against silence, since silence does not tell much about the facts that the judge and the historian would want to know. However, this is where the ethical responsibility toward the silence of the survivor comes in. It is up to him/her to decide when and what to disclose, independently of the imperatives of justice and the epistemological needs of the historian. He/she should never be forced to tell his/her story against his/her will and/or capacity. Such a stance is difficult to hold if a survivor is considered a witness who has to testify, as he/she has to submit him/herself to the official procedures of courts or to the method of the scientific

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inquiry. If he/she wants to be a witness—in every sense of this complex concept—it is fine. But such a burden should never be expected or put on the shoulder of the survivor without his/her consent. As to the care for his/her fellow victims and for his/her own care, silence is not necessarily against it. Many a survivor keep silence, as we saw, “for inner survival” because retelling the ordeal opens the wounds afresh, and it is done in inadequate language with possibility of not being understood. Furthermore, revealing some details of one’s experience might be compromising and therefore be physically threatening. Thus, keeping silence as affirmation of one’s agency can be taken in the effort of caring for oneself. But in addition to that, survivors may keep silence to protect their families and the intimacy of the victims. To the testimony of Yvonne Khutwane who appeared before the South African TRC so that future generations might know what happened, Ross reacted saying that “her actions were unusual: a number of women activists who did not make statements to the Commission told me that they did not want to expose their humiliation to future generations” (2003: 87). One recalls also the Chilean survivor lady who did not wish her grandchildren to know what she had suffered. These examples show that some survivors keep silence through a deliberate decision in order to protect their progenitor and future generations from being exposed to their horrific experiences. This act is, once more, an act of generosity and self-sacrifice. The survivors choose to carry it all alone, because they care about others. Whereas they suffered beyond words, not only would survivors not want anybody to suffer it, but they do not even wish someone to hear about it. They choose to carry the traumatic memories without burdening someone else. On the other hand, we have already talked about the social death that comes from enduring the shame of narrating the survivor’s experience. As most of crimes against humanity include humiliations, revealing them can affect the social status of the survivor vis-à-vis his/her significant others and even in the society. In some societies, some of those humiliations might not be tolerated and be considered as a stain on the whole community. Hence, survivors can choose to keep silence in order to protect themselves, their families, and their communities. Survivors can keep silence due to the respect for those who perished. Indeed, since gross violations of human rights are rarely inflicted on individual persons only, but rather target groups or communities, revealing the survivor’s story will give an idea about those who perished, in one way or another. Thus, having survived, they might decide not to divulge their humiliations for the respect and dignity of those who did not make it. These are other examples of self-sacrifice for self-care and care for others. All these instances are meant to show that there can be a virtuous side of keeping silence for the survivor. At the same time, though, this analysis reveals another side of the coin that there can be a forced or imposed silence. As already mentioned, some survivors may choose silence because they are afraid of the repercussions of their story on their physical safety and their social perception. While keeping silence in such circumstances can be viewed as self-care, it is also a forced silence, because the environment is not conducive for the survivor to freely tell his/her story. It is the same case when the survivor keeps silence due to the fear of the social death, because

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of the shame associated with the humiliations that she/he endured. Although the survivors’ desire to protect themselves and their family by keeping silence are positive points, one has to acknowledge that the silence imposed by the cultural and social conditions, which are not open to hear all the stories that survivors would like to tell, can have negative effects. For instance, the cultural purity might privilege the social structures to the detriment of the survivor’s well-being. These social conditions, the inadequacy of language to translate the experience for the general public and the risks of not being understood make plain Ricoeur’s observation taken as epigraph to this chapter, that there are witnesses who never find an audience capable of listening and hearing them (2000: 208). For not finding an audience and a context ready to listen and hear might force some survivors to keep silence. Ricoeur uses the two verbs in French, écouter and entendre. He does not talk of understanding: comprendre. We shall come back to those two verbs further below, because it is not enough to hear, in order to invite the survivor to share her/his experience. There is also the need for listening, and the absence of the latter can impose the silence on the survivor. Apart from this imposed silence, there can also be an enforced silence. By enforced silence—in contrast with imposed one—I mean the silence resulting from political and administrative pressure. For instance, there can be a case whereby as a political measure, a silence about certain crimes against humanity is imposed and even talking about them is criminalized. Or, it can happen that authorities impose a certain discourse about the crime and any survivor who wishes to tell his/her story has to fit into that dominant narrative. In both cases, a silence is enforced on the survivor. In the first case, he/she cannot tell his/her story, while in the second case, she/he might choose to keep silence altogether because the framework is not appealing. Or if he/she tells the story, it has to be as the political authorities want it and not as he/she would wish to tell it. These different layers of silence manifest the complex ways in which pain and suffering can be expressed, but also how they can be suppressed. That is why, as Das enjoins us, “we must learn how to read silences, for the victim rarely gets an opportunity to record his or her point of view” (1987: 13). Das’s use of silences in plural is very important, because not every silence means the same thing, as we just showed. Some silences are voluntary while others might be enforced or imposed. Thus, before we hail it as a virtue—which, in some case, it can be, as we tried to show it above—it is important to scrutinize whether it is a voluntary or imposed or enforced silence. Even when a survivor makes it a way of affirming his/her agency, we have to be alert to the sociocultural conditions that can encourage or inhibit the possibility of telling one’s story of pain and suffering. At the same time, however, silence should be recognized as another “legitimate discourse on pain,” to borrow again Ross’s words. A question central to the theme of this reflection remains though: should silence as “a legitimate discourse on pain” be recommended as a contribution to reconciliation and reconstruction of a society recovering from gross human rights violations? The worry is complex because, apart from the tension between silence and the imperative to tell—which urges many survivors to let the world know and the

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history be judged—there is also the well-founded opinion from psychoanalysis that narrating one’s traumatic memories is a way to healing. For those who feel compelled to tell their stories, often it is for the sake of the victims who perished, in order to keep alive their memory so that they do not die twice, and for the sake of future generations. As Wiesel says, “if the witness forced him/herself and chose to testify, it is for the sake of today’s youth, for the children who will be born tomorrow. He does not want his/her past to be their future” [I slightly altered the translation] (2006: xv). In other words, the concern for the survivor’s mental wellness, the care for the victims, and the preoccupation for future generations seem to challenge the positive side of silence. Nevertheless, there is a way to reconcile the two. First of all, silence has to be acknowledged and respected as indeed a “legitimate discourse on pain” for the survivor, and it is the responsibility of others to be able to “read” it. But most importantly, there has to be an effort to ensure that silence is not forced or imposed on the survivor, but rather is a result of his/her decision. Second, while there are positive consequences of telling one’s story, the duty to remember the victims and the concerns for the future has to be the survivor’s decision and choice to do so, as Wiesel advises. Put into other words, it has to be left to the survivor’s freedom to choose the best way to remember and to care for future generations. For as we have already seen, for some survivors, keeping silence can be the best way to honor that duty. This consideration calls for respecting the survivor’s choice of the means to communicate his/her pain, be they words, gestures, or silences. It also appeals to respecting each survivor’s pace, as she/he moves from one to another of these means. Most importantly, care must be taken to be attentive to the particular needs of a survivor in telling his/her story. Some might want a total disclosure of their story, and even wish to publicize it, whereas others—like the Chilean lady already mentioned—might desire that their story be only recorded, but not made known to their significant others. Still others might prefer a complete silence. All these forms of expression have to be left to the discretion of the survivor’s choice. In fine, silence is not in contradiction with the impulse to tell the story, since itself is another means of communicating the survivor’s pain, as an alternative way to words and gestures.

4.4

The Opened Space by Storytelling

So far, the focus has been put on the imperative to tell and the necessity to keep silence for the survivor, looking at their moral/ethical implications. The outcome is that, whether in words or through silences, survivors communicate their pain and sufferings; they tell their stories. Such storytelling opens up a space that is beyond the survivor’s control—as any story told is beyond the teller’s control. However, that opening is possible because there was already a space through which the community constituted itself. The existential assumption that has been operative for understanding the imperative to tell and the necessity of silence implies another one situated at

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the same level: the condition of being storytellers is possible because, as humans, we are part of a community which builds its own identity through telling its own stories about myths and facts, glories and victories, defeats and failures. The primordial silence that we identified as accompanying every speech exercise is present in the foundational epopees as well as in the narration of historical event retained to be told and retold from one generation to another in a given community. We owe once more to Walter Benjamin the reawakening of our historical sense that history is always the history of the victors as they are the ones who get memorials built in their memory, forgetting that any such memorial is built on the ruins of those who perished, sometime innocently. He suggests then a redemptive history that extravagates the remains of those that the victors’ history has forgotten (Ingiyimbere 2010). But even here, only in an eschatological sense can such a redemptive history be possible. Otherwise, any story told is a lucky one, ransomed from the possibility of not being told and built on those that will never be told. Especially when it is communally told and held as a foundational one, such story imposes its normativity and becomes intolerant toward any unorthodox one which does not espouse it. The impossibility of telling the whole story condemns the possibility of all stories. Therefore, some stories will never appear into the public space. And for those which are told, some will never find an audience which can hear and listen to them. A survivor’s story can be disruptive or corroborative, depending on who is in control of that space and the dominant narrative. It certainly expands the existent space for storytelling in that it brings something new, but that expansion is not necessarily a positive point, because if the story is against the dominant narrative, it becomes disruptive. For instance, in the framework of our reflection of social reconciliation and reconstruction, a survivor might feel ready to share the story of forgiveness, while the sociopolitical conditions are not yet ripe for such discourse. Or the general context can be advocating for forgiveness and reconciliation, whereas the survivor is still nursing anger and resentment. Such stories will be incongruent with the collective narrative space, and end up considered as contesting and disruptive. Two examples to illustrate this fact. Immaculée Ilibagiza narrates that, one time, she went to the prison where was imprisoned the killer of her family. When she asked the prison director to meet that person, he was diligent to bring him, expecting her to express anger and maybe ask him to be given the harshest punishment. Instead, she rather told the perpetrator that she had forgiven him. The prison director could not bear it; he rebuked Immaculée. A contrary example, during the hearing of TRC in South Africa, the general atmosphere was about forgiveness and reconciliation, while some survivors wanted justice through court and were against amnesty (Hamber et al. 2000: 33; 38). Such survivors did not feel the space appropriate for expressing their anger and resentfulness. From these examples, we can induce that the space created by storytelling is not always available for all. Some of the disruptive stories are not welcome to it. When they do appear, it is through confrontation. As Nicole Ephgrave aptly observes, “in seeking justice and reconciliation, space must be given to all victims to come

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forward and tell their story. But. . .too often a singular national narrative eclipses such complexity” (2015: 178). Ephgrave uses the expression that “space must be given,” which implies that there is an owner of it who distributes it. This raises an important question about the ownership of the space for storytelling. Obviously the answer will depend on the three ways we identified for the survivors to tell their story: to their significant others, through publication, or through public hearings and lectures. (i) From the first mode, the space for telling the story is inscribed in the relationship between the survivor and his/her family, friends, and/or relatives. Such space also is marked by norms; by what to say, to who, and when. The survivor will tell his/her story depending on the kind and the quality of the relationships. (ii) In the mode of publication, the space is mostly shaped by the publishing houses and their editing rules. Wiesel, for instance, mentions how many publishing houses rejected his manuscript and how, when one finally accepted it, he had to translate it into French and cut off many of the things he had mentioned in his mother tongue. Moreover, not every story from a survivor gets a publisher, because the latter has to submit to the rules of the market. In other words, the publishing space is not open to every story, and even the ones that reach it are formatted to its requirements and not necessarily according to what the survivor would like to communicate. (iii) Finally, the space created through public hearings and lectures is controlled by the officials who invite the survivor. He/she has to submit her/himself to their rules and procedures, and sometimes what she/he says is distilled or simply not considered as deserving attention. I could have added the therapeutic hearing through analysis as a separate arena, but I think it fits into the third mode as it also follows certain procedures and responds to certain criteria. These cases show that survivors do not have an available space free from any constrains in order to tell their story. Theirs stories enter spaces that are already marked by certain norms and habits, such that one might say that every survivor’s narrative is disruptive. It tries to curve out an extraordinary space from the ordinary ones. And while the identified channels for story telling that control the space might be resistant, they cannot win because the survivor’s-being-there is already a story on its own. Family members, relatives, and friends might resist hearing the survivor’s story, or hear it partly because of codes guiding their relationships, but they cannot ignore his/her presence. His/her silences and gestures, his/her movements and actions are a story being told. Publishing industries can reject manuscripts of survivors as a non-interesting story to sell, but they cannot deny that it is a story nonetheless. Officials might filter what a survivor wants to say and impose him/her what she/he has to say and how to say it, but they will have to recognize that this was not the way the survivor wanted to tell it; they will acknowledge that they got the story they wanted to hear, not the survivor’s story as he/she would have told it. Thus, being a survivor is itself a story that disrupts the existing norms regulating the storytelling space, and it juxtaposes itself over the latter as a new space by the very fact of being-there. Because the space created by the story of the survivor-asbeing-there cannot be suppressed despite the effort of the usual spaces, it becomes susceptible to grabbing and manipulation by the officials, especially in the politics of reconstruction and reconciliation. Richard Kearney cannot be so right when he

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observes that “history-making and story-telling can just as easily result in propaganda and distortion as in healing and release” (2007: 63). For indeed, in the name of history-making, the survivor’s stories can be manipulated by the governments in their politics in order to avoid and limit their disruptive nature. They can also be used to justify the state violence against the constructed enemy through a survivor’s rhetoric. Jelena Subotić shows how different political actors in the Balkans instrumentalized the suffering of the past to form a narrative that justifies their own atrocities. In doing so, they limited the scope of what could be said, making impossible any form of contestation. As she puts it, “a particular state narrative fixes the meaning of the past and limits the opportunity for further political contestation” (2013: 308). However, even when a state or any other official structure fixes the narrative in the hope of turning the story created by the survivor-being-there into a manipulative device, the survivor’s story remains disruptive, because no manipulation can fill the space it creates, as it juxtaposes the ordinary spaces. Instrumentalization and manipulation are possible only in ordinary spaces. The space created and occupied by the survivor and the story made out of it cannot be occupied by anybody else, since nobody else can reach it. While political manipulation instrumentalizes facts by endowing them with meaning that fits the ideological goal, one is to recall that the survivor’s story tells the “truth about humanity and suffering that transcends those facts.” Manipulators cannot reach that space where the truth of humanity and suffering is told. That is how their endeavor of manipulation is defeated, because the contestation is mounted by the very being-there of the survivor. The manipulators know that their treachery cannot work, because they cannot destroy the survivor’s space. If this space were to disappear, it would uncover the treachery, for then there would be no story to twist. It is only because the manipulators cannot occupy the space created by the survivor’s story that they resort to manipulation, hoping to tarnish it. But that undertaking fails also because, once more, the survivor’s story plays in a space that is beyond the ordinary politics, although the latter would wish to make it its instrument. All in all, therefore, the space occupied by the survivor opens up a space for storytelling that is disruptive and contesting, despite attempts to hijack or silence it through manipulation and instrumentalization. This fact does not go without normative consequences. By being a solid anchor for disruptive and contesting story, the space created by the survivor-as-being-there is susceptible to contestation and even negation. The latter can come from the same political authorities or other officials, on the one hand, and from the perpetrators, on the other hand. Political and other official authorities can embark into delegitimizing the survivor’s story because they believe to be the only legitimate spokesperson of the survivors. Any voice that diverges from this official narrative is righty seen as disruptive. Therefore, it is demonized so that it can be disqualified from the official storytelling space. Such a disruptive and dissonant voice is muted as not corresponding to the true story and is deemed as unworthy noting. It is erased from the book of remembrance. This opposition to the disruptive character of the survivor’s story can even lead to a physical elimination, because such voices are considered to betray the common

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cause of the survivors. Survivors’ can, sometimes, be blamed as betraying the memory of the victims who did not survive. In other words, the disruptive nature of the survivor’s story and its incorruptibility carry a great risk for the survivor him/herself. The alternative option can be to buy in and follow the flow of the dominant narrative. But such act would then dissolve what was extraordinary into the ordinary parlance of political demagogy. The disruptive power of the survivor’s story in the communal space would become inaudible, because it would be buried under the general narrative geared on political agenda. In fact, there would be no survivor’s story any more, particular to each, and which could never be generalized. Rather, there would be a general story that claims to represent each and every survivor, whereas it actually denies survivors space to tell their own particular stories. Such a general story even refuses to acknowledge their being-there-assurvivors as a story. This is another risk of joining the main stream narrative. On the other hand, the space disrupted by survivor is also inhabited by the perpetrators. They too have their narrative and stories. And for these than any other category, the survivor’s story and the space it creates are very disturbing. They expose the perpetrators as the cause of what they suffered that cannot be told. And since they cannot tell, they just indicate them as Wittgenstein would say. And if “the audience cannot hear and listen” to the survivors, it can at least see those who committed those crimes against them. That is why perpetrators do not have to hear the story of their victims to feel uncomfortable; the survivor’s mere presence is a proof of their defeat, since their goal was to “leave none to tell”, and yet here they are! Thus, when the perpetrators are no longer in position of continuing their evil undertaking, they marshal to negate the story of the victim so that “there are no evidence to prove” what they say. As they failed to eliminate the survivors physically and are now no longer able to do so, they aim at suppressing their story from the storytelling space, raising doubt in the conscience of the listener so that the survivor’s might be discredited. By trying to transform the survivor’s narrative into a lie without any factual basis, the perpetrators want to erase the being-there-assurvivor that has resisted all the obstacles of the official storytelling spaces. Fortunately, this perpetrators’ initiative also fails like others already seen, because their negation comes later as a response to that very being-there-as-survivor. If their negation were to come before the being-there of the survivor as a story, it would become a self-accusation. And having the guilt and knowledge of what they did in their conscience, perpetrators rather enjoy silence and would prefer to fall into oblivion. Hence, the negation arises only when the being-there-as-survivor has already occupied a space that shows the story of what happened to the survivor, and exposes the perpetrators. The perpetrators’ negation comes as both a justification and accusation. On the one hand, it comes as justification of the innocence and negation of being perpetrator—a tautology since perpetrators claim to be innocent. On the other hand, it comes as accusation because perpetrators try to demonstrate how the story of the survivor is not true, as they attempt to demonstrate that the “socalled story” is based on what did not happen. That is why the negations aims at the very solid, disruptive, and incorruptible space occupied by the survivor as just beingthere, even before uttering a word or initiating a gesture.

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However, while some perpetrators embark on that route of negationism, others do indeed acknowledge and recognize their evils deeds, and these, in the proper sense, are witnesses. Their statements can/should be verified because they had the leisure to watch or not, what was happening. While entangled into the macabre scenes, they had opportunity to have a distance and observe; they could take a time and reflect on what was happening and what they were doing. These witnesses come in as rescue for the survivor’s survival, in the face of the other perpetrators engaged in denial. In the contrary scenario, if the survivor has power to control the space for communal storytelling, the risk is to ban the perpetrators from telling their own narratives. In order to avoid and fight against the perpetrators’ propensity to negate the survivor’s story, the survivor might feel legitimate to curtail and close the space to perpetrators. The counter-productive result of such measures will be the risk of not encouraging the perpetrators who could take responsibility of what they did and tell it freely, which can open a way to the process of repentance and forgiveness. Furthermore, it can create frustration as a part of the society might feel excluded from the shaping of the common narrative that is to initiate the weaving of the new social fabric. The question to be asked then is what is to be the appropriate stance for the survivor faced with all these dilemmas arising from this opened space of storytelling. First of all, the survivor is to strive to keep the integrity of his/her disruptive and contesting story in the communal space that shapes the communal identity. Needless to underline again that such a stance is not without risk as it resists the political instrumentalization and a possible negation by the perpetrators. If the space for the storytelling is so curtailed such that survivors cannot tell their stories in words and/or gestures, their silence and their being-there-as-survivors will still be a disruptive presence. Second, if it is their power, they are to keep the space open to any and every story, and avoid monopolizing the space by one discourse only. The shared common story should emerge from the diverse stories, cacophonic voices, and contesting, as well as contested discourses about the personal and particular stories of each member of the society. Even the most contestable stories are there to remind us of how low one can fall, and how far we still are on the journey of fostering our common humanity. This obviously leads to another ethical burden: that of listening.

4.5

The Burden of Listening

If survivors are impelled to tell their stories, and in order to avoid the forced or imposed silence, they need to encounter an ear ready to listen. On the other hand, as the space for storytelling that shapes the communal identity is (or at least should be) open to all members of the society, survivors seem to be also obliged to listen. Hence the question: Is there any communal obligation to listen to the survivors’ stories and do survivors have the obligation to listen too? In his work with Holocaust survivors, Dori Laub notes that the listener is part of what brings out the narrative of the survivor. According to him, “a dialogue with an

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empathic listener may restore. . .the victim’s sense of being at home in the world” (2013: 196). Laub parts from the fact that traumatic events such as holocaust and genocide destroy “the addressable other; the thou,” which allows one to be a witness for oneself from the inside. Hence, “the loss of [that] capacity . . . is perhaps the true meaning of annihilation, for when history is abolished, one’s identity ceases to exist as well” (1992b: 82). Thus, recovering one’s identity is also reconnecting with history and the world. From that perspective, the empathic listener becomes the mediating person between the survivors and the world, helping them to feel at home in the world, a world that has been seen as betrayal because it had not been there when they were suffering. What Laub expresses here can be extended to every survivor of gross human rights violations, because each one undergoes unimaginable pain and sufferings, and can lose hope in humanity and trust in the world. An empathic listener can then represent to the survivors the other side of a humanity that cares, although it is also limited because it was not there when they were suffering. However, the kindness of the empathic listener can be an invitation to the survivor to believe again in the goodness in her/him and in others. Laub’s insights are drawn from the therapeutic field, but they also open the door to the existential condition of the survivor and the politics of reconstruction and reconciliation. Indeed, listening is part of what constitutes storytelling. No one would want to tell a story if no one is listening or wants to listen. In other words, the possibility of being listened to is prerequisite for storytelling. In that sense, as Dan McAdams and Kate McLean remark, “the listener matters” (2013: 236), because without listening there is no telling. This general principle underlying our existential condition as storytelling beings, however, is not without challenge for the survivor. We have already seen that one of the barriers to telling the story is that survivor fears to not be understood because the language is inadequate to describe the horror he/she suffered. This doubt actually extends to the possibility of finding a listener. When a survivor finds the language inadequately equipped to translate his experience, he/she is also judging the capacity of the listener to understand, if he/she were “to force her/himself” and tell the story. Thus, while the empathic listener might help re-establish the relationship between the survivor and the world, it is still a big task for the listener to meet the expectations of the survivor. In other words, could there be a listener so empathic that he/she could understand the survivor’s story? What would mean that someone has understood the survivor’s story? Normally we communicate our experiences through language and the listener is supposed to share with the speaker that language if there is to be any communication at all. Yet we are asserting that the ordinary language is inadequate to communicate the experience of a survivor of crimes against humanity. How then could there be a listener capable of understanding the survivor’s story? These questions bring back Ricoeur’s remark that there are voices which will not find an “audience to hear and listen” to them. Is not the remark generalizable to every survivor’s story, rather than being particular to certain ones? This is where the analysis of the two verbs already mentioned—entendre-hear and écouter-listen—is

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apropos. While hearing does not necessarily require attention, listening does. One can hear by accident; one listens intentionally. One can hear and not understand what he/she hears; but one can only listen because she/he is understanding what is being talked about. The French verb entendre, however, has another nuance which can constitute the goal of listening. From its Latin origin intendere, it means being oriented toward, or to orient one’s sight, attention toward. In our context, it means letting sink in. In that line, there is a process from hearing to listening to en-tendre; to not only intentionally listen but also intentionally letting what is heard through listening sink in one’s spirit. Hearing requires one to have the faculty to perceive voices or noises; listening appeals to making sense of what is heard, and entendre calls for accessing affectively, letting one be affected by what he/she heard through listening. Can there be then a listener capable of carrying these three roles? As things stand, it seems impossible because one can listen and entendre only if he/she can understand what she/he hears. Maybe this is the empathic listener that Laub talks about. But we have repeatedly noted that the ordinary language falls short to conveying the experience of abuses and crimes against humanity suffered by a survivor. Yet, despite the risk of not being understood and the limitations of the ordinary language, survivors do tell their stories. As Yvonne Khutwane said, they just want to tell the “truth and hope.” Perhaps that is where the desire to tell and the impossibility to listen meet: in hope. Hope for the survivor that maybe the listener will believe him/her and understand; hope for the listener that he/she might be able to grasp a bit from the survivor’s experience. From this point of view, the listener has to be humble not to claim that she/he has understood the survivor’s experience. She/he has offered what she/he could: ears, time, and affective attention. Ears to hear whatever the survivor is telling, even what one cannot claim to comprehend it; time in order to grasp whatever one can; and affective attention/empathy in order to enter into communion as much as one can with the survivor’s story. Now, it has already been underscored that the survivor can express his/her pain through silences, gestures, and words. The listener then is not only required to hear words but he/she also has to “read the silences and gestures”—to reuse Das’s words—through which a story is told. This is to underline how complex is to listen to a survivor, and invitation once more to the listener to be modest. Thus, while there is a practical impossibility of completely understanding the experience of the survivor, there is the bridge of hope between him/her and the empathic listener, through which there can be communion between them. The possibility of making sense of the world as a home is then initiated, because this communion itself establishes a new kind of relationship between the survivor and the listener, which helps start a new shared story. That is why there is a moral/ethical duty to let open the communal space for storytelling that is meant to enhance the shared identity, and it becomes also a moral/ethical duty to be the empathic listener toward the survivor, provided the listener keeps the modesty. When brought back now in the context of the politics of reconstruction and reconciliation, who is to carry out this moral/ethical duty of listening to the survivor? The quick answer might refer to the three channels already identified (the significant

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others, readers of the published stories, and audiences in the official structures and lectures.) However, except maybe publications and lectures which may not belong the survivor’s sociopolitical context, other means are marked by the same events that affected the survivor. In her book on the encounter with Eugene de Kock, GobodoMadikizela, who was one of the South African TRC’s commissioners, remembers an event in 1990, when she jubilated because a certain captain who attempted a coup in Transkei was savagely killed. Later on in 1996 as TRC’s commissioner, she found herself on the panel to hear the pain of the widow of the slain captain. And she asks: “How could I with honesty convey words of comfort without first addressing my shame and guilt for having celebrated her husband’s death?” (2003: 12). GodoboMadikizela is a trained psychologist with PhD; yet she found herself in an ambiguous situation, whereby one’s history is clogged into the stories she is asked to hear and listen to. Even with the TRCs, are the commissioners not part of the survivors group? Who will be their empathic listener? The same question goes with the significant others. It is true that friends can be from outside, but in case of genocides for examples, family and relatives are part of the surviving group. In other words, the announced moral/ethical duty, while formally valid, it is not easy to identify who is to satisfy it. Perhaps instead of enunciating it in obligatory terms, it would be good to soften it into a plea to any able listener to be the empathic one. In a special way, for people sharing the same storytelling space to be open to listen to each other’s stories. But because some are themselves survivors, one cannot extend the same invitation without examining first its merits toward the survivors. Wouldn’t such an invitation be an unbearable burden for the survivor? Before we consider whether there should be a moral/ethical duty or an invitation to be an emphatic listen for the survivor, it is worthy reiterating that communal storytelling space is open to many and diverse stories. Therefore, survivor, as any other member of the society participating in that storytelling, may hear them. But as already distinguished from each other, hearing does not induce listening. While the former can be an accident, the latter is intentional. In addition, that space is also open to the perpetrators’ narratives. The question, therefore, arises whether there could be a moral obligation for a survivor to listen to other survivors. The answer seems easy as the question itself sounds a truism. Indeed, although we identified the moral duty to be heard and listened to for the survivor, even here the response to it is addressed as a plea to any survivor who would be able to listen empathically. It cannot be an obligation for the listener. Nonetheless, beyond individual initiatives of the survivor who can be able to listener, the question carries a heavy weight because some policies can impose on survivors to participate in public hearings in order to contribute to the reconstruction and reconciliation process. Is such an imposition morally justified? Do these policies provide an appropriate space for an empathic listening for the survivor? Having underlined the process through which one becomes an empathic listener, it would be hard to imagine and believe that an imposed participation into hearing makes the survivor such a listener. For to be the latter, it has to be intentional and coming from one’s will to hear, listen, and entendre. Therefore, it cannot be imposed. On the contrary, the creation of support groups among survivors can be

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a better platform to heed the plea and to honor the moral/ethical duty that the survivor be listened to. Such initiatives would also contribute better to the process of reconciliation, as their narratives and the new story woven through the sharing of each participant helps rebuild the social fabric of trust and mutual support. But shouldn’t at least the survivor be obliged to listen to the perpetrator in order to hear and know what happened, and so to make sure that the perpetrator does not make up facts and negate others? The answer is also rather negative. Having questioned forcing the survivor to be a witness, it would be hard to support any moral and even legal obligation for the survivor to be submitted to listening to the perpetrators’ story. It should come from his/her own initiative. From this angle, a survivor deciding to listen to a perpetrator can actually be beneficial in the process of repentance and forgiveness. She/he can initiate a dialogue with the perpetrator for a communal healing, but again this cannot be made mandatory; it can only be encouraged. Another question can also be asked from the other end: shouldn’t the perpetrators be obliged to listen to the survivor’s story? It could serve to expose him/her to what he/she did, either to prove him/her or make feel him/her guilty. After all, that is what courts do when the survivors appear as witness, testifying against the perpetrator. In this context, however, the survivor does not expect an empathic listener in the person of the perpetrator, neither can the audience be such a listener, because even the judge has to try to be neutral in order to be fair to both parties. That is why the perpetrator is not really required to be the kind of listener we are looking for, as he/she listens in order to build his/her own defense. Furthermore, as already highlighted, in such venues, even the survivor has to follow certain procedure in order to submit his/her testimony, and his/her story as a testimony is not taken as true as it is presented; it has to go through cross-examination from the defense and the prosecution. Put otherwise, the courtroom is not the place to expect an empathic listener neither from the perpetrator, nor from the judge. Sometimes the perpetrator and his team can challenge the survivor’s story to the point of transforming him/her into a perpetrator also. Klog, writing about South African TRC, mentions the torturer Benzien confronting his victim Mr. Yengeni for betraying his comrades (Cited by Dawes 2007: 183). In other words, instead of finding a sympathetic ear and attentive heart, the courtroom can be excruciating for the survivor. On the other hand, since usually gross violations of human rights and crimes against humanity are orchestrated at different levels, not every perpetrator is well informed of what the victims were suffering during those horrendous acts. Therefore, those who were involved at any level should have the moral obligation to know about what the victims suffered, not necessarily as emphatic listener, but in the hope that they might become one and regret what they did, in case they had not yet. Instead of calling this a moral duty to listen, I would rather call it the duty to be informed about the consequences of one’s deeds or about the undertaking one got involved in. For being unformed might delude the perpetrator that he/she is innocent. Sure enough, she/he can always claim his/her innocence, but being informed would confront his/her claim. This duty to be informed goes beyond only the perpetrators. It concerns the whole society, for if they are to build a shared identity on a shared

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story, it is crucial that what the victims suffered be heard and known, as much as possible. We have already underlined the risk that survivors’ stories can be contested and even negated. However, their being told will inform the narratives, since even those contestations will be happening in the communal space of storytelling. This is where we recover the imperative to tell the story, not only for the survivors but also for the absents; for those who did not make it to tell their stories, if not through their words and gestures, at least through their being-there-as survivors. The place of the absent in the storytelling endeavor is the theme for the last section.

4.6

Speaking for the Absent

In his The Drowned and the Saved, Primo Levi talks of the Muselmann, that person who would leave no trace and no story because of being broken down by the harsh conditions of the concentration camp, and who raised interest for no one. Agamben takes this figure as the symbol of the lacuna in testimony, because the Muselmann is the true witness who cannot be there. He/she is the real absent not only because he/she perished but also because no one paid attention to him/her. The Muselmann figure can be borrowed to symbolize here all who succumbed to crimes against humanity without leaving any trace behind them. These people are not part of what Ricoeur said to not even find an audience to listen and hear them. They are those forgotten and that no audience does even think of, as if they never existed. The survivor’s story, in whichever way it is told, is a reminder of that untold and untellable story of the absent, and Agamben’s words ring the right tone when he remarks that “the survivors speak in their stead, by proxy” (1999: 34). Indeed, survivors tell story so that those who underwent humiliation and annihilation do not fall under oblivion; that those who were forced to live without leaving a story do not be forgotten. Though with no names or graves, those who perished are hovering into the survivors’ stories as the latter stand in place to let the world know that not all were lucky to survive. It is through the survivors’ stories that the memories of those who were supposed to disappear forever survive. Once again, Wiesel’s words are on target when he writes that “for the survivor who chooses to testify, it is clear: his[/ her] duty is to bear witness for the dead and for the living.” He adds, “to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time” (2006: xv). In other words, the dead through mass violence and massacres survive through the stories of the survivors. As a matter of fact, no survivor tells his/her story only. His/her story is imbedded into the story of all those who endured the same ordeal. The survivor’s story is that of those he/she can name or those whose names he/she carries. It is also the story of those who remained in the shadow, and of the stranger whom he/she had never met and probably will never meet, yet who disappeared. While a singular and particular story, every survivor’s story is a shared one. One would even say, it is a borrowed story when it is appropriated into a singular one. The first epigraph of this chapter appears then in its full meaning. The author says that the goal was to survive Hitler so that they could tell “our story.” It shows the paradox of a shared story yet

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eminently personally lived that it cannot be shared. The survivor tells their story in the manner he/she personally lived it, lonely and in loneliness. Yet only through the choice to tell these personal stories do we get glimpse to their shared story, even the story of the absent. Wiesel calls it a duty to witness to the dead, but it has to be chosen by the survivor. This is another paradox because, normally, a duty does not offer a choice. Once a moral obligation is recognized as a duty, it has to be followed. But here and rightly so, the survivor chooses to tell his/her story as a response to the duty of witnessing for the dead, stepping into their place and telling a story that they did not leave behind and cannot tell now. That duty has a second dimension: it is a witness for the living because, Wiesel justifies, the survivor “has no right to deprive future generations of a past that belongs to our collective memory” (2006: xv). This is a different articulation. While in the first instance, the survivor speaks as proxy, representing those who cannot be physically there themselves, in this second case the survivor speaks for the absent for making provision for them. The ordeal that the survivors and victims suffered is part of a common past and a patrimony of the collective memory. The survivor stands as the mediator between the past and the future, keeping alive the dead for the not-yet-born, the future generations. Failing the first branch of the duty implies the failure of the second; failing to witness for the dead is failing to witness for the living, the future generations. Nonetheless, Wiesel seems to use strong terms when he says that survivor does not “have right de deprive” for the sake of the collective memory. It is true that, if one keeps in mind that being-there-as-survivor is already a story, then it the survivor is witnessing by his/her very being. However, if one means telling the story with words, then it remains to the discretion of the survivor to impose her/himself that duty to not “deprive future generations of that past that belongs to the collective memory.” Otherwise, we continue to hold that it would be morally inappropriate to coerce the survivor to tell his/her story. She/he has right to his/her story until she decides to disclose it (in which case, the ownership might change, depending on the method and the venue of disclosing the story (see Herrera 2018). On the other hand, however, for the sake of the collective memory, which is the basis for weaving a shared narrative, the duty to be informed requires that every member of the society—whether from the present generation or the future ones— listens to and knows that past. It is indeed interesting that Wiesel seems to focus on the past—the dead—and the future—the future generations—as if the present is no longer concerned. The duty to be informed is rather extended to every member of the society because that past is now part of the collective memory. That is why the society has to put into place structures that allow and facilitate the survivors who choose to tell their stories and “read their silences” to do so without hindrance. Speaking for the absent is not without challenges though. First of all, how is the survivor to know that the dead wanted their story to be told? As the figure of Muselmann shows, some left without trace and story, and they did not commission the survivor to speak on their behalf. Where does, therefore, this duty to witness to them arise from? Furthermore, as so many times mentioned, the language is inadequate to narrate this survivor’s story. Wouldn’t it be betraying the dead if a survivor

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were to claim “to speak in their stead”? For the future generations, who knows whether they will even be interested in what befell their society? If they do, didn’t we see in the third chapter that some historical events should be forgotten rather than remembered as they might steer new conflicts and cause new victims? Why burden future generations with such horrible legacy and tortuous memories? And since the survivor wants to contribute to the constitution of a collective memory which is constantly reconstructed—as Halbwachs taught—his/her story will fall under the same social reconstruction and also be submitted to the scientific scrutiny of the historian. In some extreme cases, survivors’ stories might be banned from the collective memory. In other words, there is no guarantee that the survivor’s commitment to speaking for the future generations will have an impact on them. All these questions and challenges are raised to show the risks that go with the survivor’s imperative to tell his/her story. Once more, Yvonne Khutwane offers the perspective why the survivor speaks despite all those ambushes on his/her way of storytelling: “just tell the truth and hope.” Speaking for the absent is not a second activity in addition to telling the survivor’s story. It is one and the single act through which the survivor, while wondering whether she/he will be understood, chooses to stand for the absent and speak to the present for the sake of the future generations. The survivor consciously challenges “the scornful warning of” a SS that “however the war may end, we have won the war against you; none of you will be left to bear witness” (Levi quoted by Agamben 1999: 157). The survivors stand as witness—not in the sense we recused above, but rather as a convincing sign—that, at least some did survive, and that those who did not, are surviving through them. In other words, their story tells that the perpetrator’s intention failed and though small, it is a victory of good over evil. But the SS also suspected that they might be survivor, but he was sure that the survivor’s story would not be believed, because of its horrifying aspect. As he puts it, “but even if someone were to survive, the world will not believe him/[her]. There will perhaps be suspicion, discussions, research by historians, but there will be no certainties, because we will destroy the evidence together with you. Even if some proof should remain and some of you survive, people will say that the events you describe are too monstrous to be believed. . . We will be the ones to dictate the history of the Lagers” (ibid.). We have already seen that part of what leads the survivors to keep silence is the doubt that they would be believed. Hence, to this threat of not being believed by the world, survivors just “tell the truth and hope” that they will be believed; that current and future generations will believe them; that collective memory will include their stories. They “tell the truth and hope.” But most importantly, their stories stand as stark challenge to the last statement: perpetrators are not the only ones dictating the history about what happened. There is no area where the disruptive and contesting power of the survivor’s story manifests itself than here. Whether believed or not, whether audible or silenced, whether recognized or denied, the survivor’s story challenges the monopoly of the history and failure of the perpetrators to destroy all evidence. That is why, instead of being witness for the dead and the future generations, the survivor calls upon them as witnesses to his/her heroic act of keeping the promise arising from a self-imposed duty to be a living evidence amidst the threat of a total destruction of evidences. He/she calls upon the

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absents to be the living witnesses to her/his refusal to let the perpetrators dictate history. Hence the duty for the society, if not to listen to him/her, at least to be informed of what she/he is telling and about the suffering she/he underwent. The same duty then implies to be informed about the perpetrators. I already noted that the survivor’s story is woven with that of those who perished, known or unknown. Unfortunately, it is also linked to that of the perpetrators. That is why, once again, the author of the first epigraph says that she wanted to survive Hitler in order to tell “our story.” And as I earlier observed, perpetrators are the real witnesses because they had possibility to observe and watch what was happening; to listen and hear what was being said. That is why a society in the process of reconstructing and reconciling itself has the duty to be informed of who were the perpetrators, what did they do, and what were their motivations. Not only is this knowledge important for the collective memory, but it is also crucial for the mechanisms for social stability, such as TRCs and/or courts of justice. Speaking for the absents makes this duty to know about the perpetrators a social imperative that cannot be ignored if a society is seriously engaged into its recovery. Finally, it is not only the Absents from the past—those who perished—and Absents from the future—future generations—who need the survivor’s voice in order to be heard. There is also an absent in the present whose relies on the survivor’s voice to be heard: the voice of the just and the innocent, especially in the side of the perpetrators. By the “just” I understand persons who did or tried to do what they could to save or help any victim and who did not participate in any way in the horror inflicted on the victims. For indeed, there are cases of persons who help and save some victims, and yet participate in killing or harming. I would not qualify such a person as the just intended here. As for “innocent,” I mean a person who was not involved in any way in the gross violation of human rights and was not in a position to help. For if she was able to help and did not, then she cannot be considered completely innocent. Now, after gross violations of human rights and crimes against humanity, a society is so divided between the victims and the perpetrators camps that the voices of those who opposed or tried to do good amidst the reign of evil are inhibited. Such Samaritan voices might even be shy to claim having done anything or claim their innocence vis-à-vis the degree of horror. In such circumstances, the imminent danger is to generalize that a whole social group is guilty and another one has been victimized. That is, when the survivor’s voice becomes important for these absents who cannot speak because the communal storytelling space has either been hijacked by a dominant narrative or completely abolished by resorting to revenge and retaliation. Identifying and naming the just and innocent among the perpetrators is a duty for the survivor to speak for the absent. Only his/her voice can be trusted in such circumstances. Nevertheless, it is also once more risky, for the survivor can be ostracized as betraying his/her camp. This, however, would be another way of manifesting the disruptive and contesting power of his/her story, and it is part of his/her imperative to tell. That is why the just and the innocent also rely on the survivor’s voice in order to survive the possible retaliation and be included in the collective memory as just and innocent.

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*** As a way of concluding this chapter, there is no much to say, except to reiterate that for the survivor, the necessity to keep silence and the imperative to tell his/her story go hand in hand, and that it is a virtuous character for the survivor to assume them as he/she contributes to the process of reconstruction and reconciliation. Indeed, without this effort of telling in keeping silence or/and keeping silence in telling, forgiveness—which is thought to be a cornerstone of the social recovery—is impossible. This chapter tried to explore the ethical/moral obstacles attached to such endeavor. While sounding as an imperative, it can only be decided by the survivor him/herself to tell his/her story in whichever way she/he chooses. No coercion should be exercised on him/her. Leaning on this analysis, one can now look at the implications of forgiveness.

References Agamben, Georgio. 1999. Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive. New York: Zone Books. Das, Veena. 1987. The Anthropology of Violence and the Speech of the Victims. Anthropology Today 3: 11–13. ———. 1996. Language and Body: Transactions in the Construction of Pain. Daedalus 25: 67–91. Dawes, James. 2007. That the World May Know: Bearing Witness to Atrocity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Forges, Des, and Alison. 1999. Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda. New York: Human Right Watch. Ephgrave, Nicole. 2015. Women’s Testimony and Collective Memory: Lessons from South Africa’s TRC and Rwanda’s Gacaca Courts. European Journal of Women’s Studies 22: 177–190. Eramian, Laura. 2008. Representing Suffering: Testimony at Rwanda’s Gacaca Courts. Tension Journal 1: 1–24. Faku-Juqula, Nthabiseng. 2014. The Legacy of Giving Testimony to South African Truth and Reconciliation for Survivors of Human Rights Violations. PhD thesis, Brunel University. Gobodo-Madikizela, Pumla. 2003. A Human Being Died that Night: A Story of Forgiveness. Claremont: Davidphilip. Hamber, Brandon, Dineo Nageng, and Gabriel O’Malley. 2000. Telling It Like It Is: Understanding the Truth and Reconciliation Commission from the Perspective of Survivors. Psychology in Society 26: 18–42. Herrera, Juan. 2018. Victims’ Testimonies in Truth Commissions: Who Owns the Memory? Oregon Review of International Law 20: 79–112. Hirvonen, Ari. 2012. The Ethics of Testimony: Trauma, Body and Justice in Sarah Kofman’s Autobiography. NoFo 9: 144–172. Hyvärinen, Matti. 2008. Analysing Narratives and Story-telling. In The Sage Handbook of Social Research Methods. London: Sage Publications. Ingiyimbere, Fidèle. 2010. De l’écriture de l’histoire à la justice aux vaincus. Méditation sur l’histoire avec Walter Benjamin. Ethique et Société 6: 287–304. Kearney, Richard. 2007. Narrating Pain: The Power of Catharsis. Paragraphs 30: 51–66. Laub, Dori. 1992a. Bearing Witness and the Vicissitudes of Listening. In Testimony: Crisis of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History, ed. Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub. New York: Routledge.

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———. 1992b. Event Without Witness: Truth, Testimony and Survival. In Testimony: Crisis of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History, ed. Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub. New York: Routledge. ———. 2013. Reestablishing the Internal “Thou” in Testimony of Trauma. Psychoanalysis and Society 18: 154–198. Levi, Primo. 1958. If This Is a Man. In Complete Works of Primo Levi, ed. Ann Goldstein. New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation. McAdams, Dan, and Kate McLean. 2013. Narrative Identity. Current Directions in Psychological Sciences 22: 233–238. McIntyre, Alasdair. 1981. After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. Indianapolis: University of Notre Dame Press. Meretoja, Hanna. 2014. Narrative and Human Existence: Ontology, Epistemology and Ethics. New Literary History 45: 89–109. Oliver, Kelly. 2004. Witnessing and Testimony. Porallax 10: 79–88. Ricoeur, Paul. 2000. L’histoire, la mémoire, l’oubli. Paris: Seuil. Ross, Fiona. 2003. Bearing Witness: Women and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa. London: Pluto Press. Sandel, Michael. 2008. Justice: What Is the Right Thing to Do? New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux. Schaffer, Kay, and Sidonie Smith. 2004. Human Rights and Narrated Lives: The Ethics of Recognition. New York: Palgrave. Subotić, Jelena. 2013. Stories States Tell: Identity Narrative, and Human Rights in the Balkans. Slavic Review 73: 306–326. Tutu, Desmond. 1999. No Future Without Forgiveness. New York: Doubleday. Van der Merwe, Chris, and Pumla Goboko-Madikizela. 2007. Narrating Our Healing: Perspectives on Working Through Trauma. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholar Publishing. Welz, Claudia. 2016. Trauma, Memory, Testimony: Phenomenological, Psychological and Ethical Perspectives. Jewish Studies in the Nordic Countries Today 27: 104–133. Wiesel, Elie. 2006. The Night. Trans. Marion Wiesel. New York: Hill and Wang. Wiesel, Elie. 2007. La nuit. Paris: Editions de Minuit.

Chapter 5

The Urge to Revenge and the Call to Forgive

Ihorihori rimara umuryango. A Kirundi proverb meaning: revenge and counter-revenge destroy families.t Le pardon est mort dans les camps de la mort. Vladimir Yankélévitch. No Future without Forgiveness. Desmond Tutu.

Abstract This fifth chapter attends to the question of forgiveness. The normal instinctual reaction against harm is anger and resentment, which can lead to selfdefense and even to revenge. Hence, the chapter explores the possible tension between this urge for revenge after an injury, and the difficult call to forgive. It begins with the apparent impossibility of forgiveness and the untenable position of revenge, showing that revenge is not an option for building a stable post-conflict society. Once revenge is disqualified, the chapter investigates the meaning of forgiveness, using mostly Avishai Margalit’s analysis and comparing it with its meaning in Kirundi language. This definitional work allows then to re-examine what can be or cannot be forgiven, in the line of authors, such as Jacques Derrida, Hannah Arendt, and Vladimir Jankélévitch. The result of this inquiry is used to raise the question whether there can be a duty for the survivor to forgive. Before concluding on being thankful for the forgiveness asked and offered, the chapter considers the tension between forgiveness and forgetting, and the relationship between the descendants of the perpetrators and those of the victims and survivors. It also raises the question whether there can be the possibility of forgiving in the name of the Absent. Keywords Revenge · Forgiveness · The unforgivable · Forgiving and forgetting · Ikigongwe · Imbabazi

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 F. Ingiyimbere, Virtues from Hell: Survivors of Conflicts and the Reconstruction-Reconciliation Processes, Philosophy and Politics - Critical Explorations 20, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89173-2_5

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The Story of a Naked Chicken

As I was researching for this chapter, I heard an experience of someone—let’s call him John—who went to ask for forgiveness to a person he had wronged. The wronged person listened to him as John pleaded for forgiveness, and once he has finished, the wronged person responded by telling him a story. John, she started saying, imagine you take a chicken, you remove all its feathers, you collect all of them and you walk on the streets spreading them one by one until none is remaining in your hands. If now you were asked to retrieve all the chicken’s feathers, would you be able to do it? The obvious impossibility of the task was meant to convey the message to John that asking for forgiveness will not restore what has been destroyed by the injury. From this story, one can induce that forgiveness is impossible. The immediate question becomes: What is then the solution to the situations of injury? One evident answer can be to pay back through punishment, be it by revenge or retribution. By revenge, I mean the injured party taking means him/herself or through a proxy to correct the injury suffered, while retribution relates to correcting the injury through institutionalized legal processes.1 As the question of justice will come later (Chap. 6), the remaining option to be analyzed then is revenge as the appropriate response to an injury, once forgiveness is ruled out. Indeed, it is a common human experience that one reacts angrily against injury, from which arises the desire for revenge. As Seneca observes, “anger is the desire to take vengeance for a wrong or. . .the desire to punish the person by whom you reckon you were unjustly harmed. . .anger is the arousal of the mind to harm the person who has either harmed oneself or wished to do so” (Seneca 2010: 16). In other words, it is natural and normal to be angry to one’s injurer because of the injury he/she inflicted on us, unjustly. The qualification of this harm as unjust is very important for the justification of revenge, because one would not be morally justified if she/he did not consider him/herself innocent. The anger against the injurer arises from reckoning that what one suffers is not deserved. Hence anger and resentment felt because of one’s injury are morally justified and even recommended, because they show a reaction against the violation of one’s moral worth. Expressing them is a message to the injurer that the wronged person is being treated below one’s moral worth. Jeffrie Murphy captures the core of the idea when he says that “if I count morally as much as anyone else (as surely I do), a failure to resent moral injuries done to me is a failure to care about the moral value 1

Without discussing its implications and not necessarily agreeing with all the distinctions he makes, I however follow Robert Nozick’s distinction between revenge and retribution (Nozick 1982: 366–70). See also Peter French who observes that the Nozick’s point is that revenge is more personal than institutional (French 2001: 67). I however disagree with French’s conclusion that vengeance is not socially detrimental. Rather, I argue with many others that vengeance ushers in a process of mutual destruction that is socially harmful, which has to be corrected by the institutionalization of fair legal process. As Francis Bacon says, “revenge is a kind of wild justice; which the more man’s nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out.” (Bacon 1908: 19).

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incarnate in my person. . .and thus a failure to care about the very rules of morality” (Murphy 1988: 18). In other words, it is part of being moral agent to resent injury done unto me, and in way, only if I have the capacity to be indignant against an injury I suffer will I be able to denounce it for other persons. Neglecting the condemnation of injury I suffer would be reprehensible as I would become accomplice to a moral evil. All these remarks concur to the obvious conclusion that anger, resentment, and indignation are normal feelings and sentiments in face of any injury, and even so in face of one’s injury. That being said, does it follow that those feelings have to lead to vengeance? Is vengeance the only way to satisfy them—keeping in mind that forgiveness and retribution have been suspended for time being? Joseph Butler’s distinction of two kinds of resentments can help us out on this question. For him, sudden anger and resentment occur as an immediate response “to the injury or contempt.” This kind of resentment is not morally bad because it is natural—as already mentioned—and is meant for the self-defense through resistance. In contrast to the sudden anger, there is the “settled and deliberate” resentment that leads to malice and vengeance. This kind of vengeance is morally condemnable, and for Butler, the role of forgiveness is to prevent it (Butler 1827: 67–8). In other words, vengeance results from an entertained anger and resentment that have been settled, and it requires deliberation. In sharp contrast with the sudden anger which resists immediately, vengeance takes times and it involves planning. And so, to the question we were asking whether once forgiveness and retribution are suspended only vengeance is available, the answer is nuanced as we see that we can also respond by resistance in self-defense. Since the latter is not morally problematic, the remaining alternative morally problematic is vengeance. Let us begin by trying to define it. Kitt Christensen observes that vengeance is part of a family of words conveying the same desire of paying back. Those words are revenge, retaliation, vindictive, vindication, and retaliation. He shows that the first four—revenge, vengeance, vindictive, and vindication originate from the same Latin verb vindicare, although vindication has taken a positive connotation in English. As to retaliation, it evolved from the Latin verb retaliare, meaning “to pay back in kind” (Christensen 2016: 14–5). Following these etymological elucidations, one can define revenge/vengeance as a planned and prepared “harm done in return for a wrong” (Christensen 2016: 14). The harm inflicted through vengeance is deliberate, aimed at a particular target because of injury committed, and intentionally carried out. An instinctive reaction would fall under Butler’s self-defense. Vengeance occurs after a certain time from the moment the injury happened. Perhaps that it is the meaning of the English expression that “revenge menu is best when served cold.” In addition to these characteristics of vengeance, Nozick also underlies some important feature of vengeance as personal, that is, one cannot avenge for a third party unless he/she feels a certain personal connection with the injured party. As he puts it, revenge is justified as “this is because of what you did to my___ (self, father, group, and so on).” The absence of this personal link with the injured party would forfeit the justification of vengeance itself. That is why vengeance brings a certain personal emotional and psychological satisfaction to the avenger. “Revenge involves

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a particular emotional tone, pleasure in the suffering of another” (Nozick 1982: 367). Trudy Govier holds the same opinion, asserting that “when we seek revenge, we seek satisfaction by attempting to harm the other (or the associated persons) as a retaliatory measure. We expect to feel better if we can somehow express our negative feelings in actions intended to ‘get back’ at those who have harmed us” (Govier 2002: 2). This personal satisfaction in avenging reminds me of my interview with a man who survived the Holocaust. He was a boy in Budapest-Hungary when they started hunting Jews. He was “lucky” to be captured by the Russian forces and joined them to fight against the Nazi. When the war was over, he came back to Budapest and found that many family members have been sent to the concentration camps, except his mother who survived. He looked for some of the Hungary boys who used to bully and beat him up, and engaged a fight against them, to “pay back” what they had inflicted upon him. He said that he felt this personal emotional and psychological satisfaction. Putting these elements together, Christensen identifies seven characteristics of vengeance: (1) revenge is a strategy of deliberate retaliation successfully or unsuccessfully carried out, aiming to injure somebody as “payback” for a wrongful harm they allegedly inflicted on some other party; (2) the motivation for seeking revenge is to achieve emotional satisfaction (broadly construed) on the part of the victimized or those affiliated with them, by means of a harm inflicted on those considered blameworthy; (3) revenge is always intentional, never accidental. Thus, revenge always involves (4) an intended target, (5) a perceived victim, (6) an avenging agent, and (7) a vengeance advocate (Christensen 2016: 21). These features confirm Butler’s point that vengeance is a result of a “settled and deliberate” resentment. The question now is: does vengeance answer, or can vengeance be a response to this kind of resentment? Answers to this question—be they empirical, pragmatic, or moral—seem to suggest that vengeance cannot be an adequate response to the anger and resentment that one experiences in the presence of injury. Even a scholar such as French who appears to be sympathetic to the “virtues of vengeance” does not recommend it as a moral action to be undertaken in its raw material. Rather, for him, revenge has to be “constrained by the epistemological and moral status cautions” and it cannot be “morally mandated” although it can be considered “morally permissible and a manifestation of a good moral character” (French 2001: 111). Some persons might even find French’s last assertions morally problematic, arguing that there is not and there cannot be a moral case for vengeance (Christensen 2016; Govier 2002; Hampton 1988). For in whatever way the argument is formulated, revenge will be a rational and intentional planning of evil to harm another person, in order to gain personal satisfaction. Not only are both end and means evil, but more importantly, one is using a human person as a means only, which goes against the Kantian moral categorical imperative of always considering the humanity in another person as always an end in itself. An objection could be raised against the above stance, arguing that vengeance as retaliation is paying back in kind as a matter of justice, aiming at getting even. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. In a form of joke, Hegel has shown the

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impossibility of the maxim and so the judicious moral progress of it, beyond vengeance. For indeed, if the maxim were to be taken literally, how would it be applied if a toothless person were to remove someone’s tooth? What if the injury is committed by someone who does not have neither teeth nor eye? Even in case of having an eye, if it were to be taken as a maxim to administrate justice, there is no clear and sure measure that the injured party inflicts the same kind of injury, with the same amount of pain in the same manner, to the injurer. To illustrate this, an anecdotal tale says that a certain king was presented with a case of murder, whereby a person who was on a tree fell and killed another who was lying below him. Since the injurer had to be put to death, the king asked those who were accusing the killer, to climb on the same tree and fall as the culprit had done in order to kill him. No one dared to try the execution. In other words, the Golden rule is a way forward in thinking justice, as the impossibility of applying it fairly requires a third party to suggest an alternative punishment. In that sense, even from the justice point of view, vengeance does not fare well. There can, however, be a social pressure for revenge, bordering an ethical duty to avenge, for instance in the name of one’s community or group, in order to preserve their honor. Here too, vengeance inflicts a psychological toll on the avenger, instead of bringing him/her satisfaction, although it might be socially beneficial (Elster 1990: 876). Concerning the so-called social benefit, it would be the detrimental to the individual, and therefore it cannot be morally justified as something good to be pursued for its own. For, on the one hand, the society uses the person as a means only. On the other hand, the community itself is hurt, for anything that harms a part of the whole affects the whole as well. Furthermore, when the cycle of vengeance is initiated between communities, it is unlikely to stop, because each instance of vengeance calls for a response so that there is no loss of the honor from any of those defending it. That is why the Kirundi proverb warns that such cycles of vengeance destroy families. Thus, while there are circumstances that are morally justifiable to raise anger and resentment to the point of desiring revenge, revenge and vengeance are not morally tenable and are practically unbeneficial, both personally and socially. Now, if the above is true of vengeance, in general, it will even be more problematic in the case of survivor of egregious human rights violations, such as war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocides. As we saw in the previous chapters, those horrific acts are not committed by an isolated individual. They result from a deliberate and structured plan to perpetrate them, and they are imbedded in institutions and narratives. It is practically impossible for the survivor to avenge on such impersonal entities as they cannot suffer harm. Sure enough, they can be and should be dismantled, but that would not be called vengeance. Furthermore, if the goal of the period after those crimes is to build stable and reconciled society, vengeance cannot be a founding principle, as we saw that revenge unleashes an endless cycle of violence. One could imagine, nevertheless, that survivors who come out of the ordeal victorious, and are in charge of the new institutions could use them to inflict revenge on the perpetrators. While practically possible, it would not serve the purpose of

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rebuilding a new society, and it is certainly sure that such endeavor would not be representative of all the survivors, for as an immoral act, there will certainly be people who will oppose it. Hence, vengeance is not a moral option for the survivors, but they have right to legitimate anger and resentment. Sometimes, justice will not be able to quench this thirst for revenge due to anger and resentment, either because the judicial process is too slow and too costly—as it usually is!—or it does not meet the expectations of the wronged party, even when it finally pronounce its judgment. For instance, the wronged party might have loved to see the perpetrators suffer the same fate as the victims, or at least have the capital punishment. However, the former would be against human rights and the latter is not applicable in certain judicial systems. In such context of frustration and disappointment, of anger and resentment, what are other ethical/moral resources available to the survivor in order to contribute to the reconstruction and reconciliation of his/her society, in order to conjure the repetition of such horrendous acts as much as possible? Wouldn’t forgiveness be an option? If yes, at what conditions and under which circumstances? Can such abominable acts be forgiven? Should their perpetrators be forgiven? What is forgiveness anyway? These questions are the focus of the rest of this chapter.

5.2

Forgiveness Beyond the Given

Most of Western scholars analyzing forgiveness recognize its religious and theological content, although today it has received a philosophical attention on its own. Hannah Arendt (1958) is among the first modern philosophers to retrieve the existential condition of forgiveness and its political importance in the realm of human plurality, from the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth. Analyzing the characteristics of the human action as inherently marked by irreversibility—since what is done cannot be undone anymore—only the power to forgive can restore the agent into his/her capacity to resume his/her participation in public sphere of human plurality. The power to forgive releases the agent from the consequences of his/her actions and reinvests him/her with a new political life. Forgiveness allows a political rebirth, as it were. That is why forgiveness—as well as the faculty to promise as antidote against the unpredictability of human action (its other inherent characteristics)—is unpredictable as is the human action itself. This understanding of forgiveness is completely different from revenge, which is calculated and deliberate, as we already saw. Furthermore, because it is unexpected, and while it is a reaction to a wrong done, forgiveness is not caused by it—the natural response is rather self-defense or revenge, as already mentioned. Forgiveness comes from above, to use Paul Ricoeur’s words, as if it were from outside of what is supposed to be the normal course of action-reaction. In Arendt’s words, “forgiving. . .is the only reaction which does not merely react but act anew and unexpectedly, unconditioned by the act which provoked it and therefore freeing from its consequences both the one who forgives and the one who is forgiven” (Arendt

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1958: 241). I will come back to this double effect of forgiveness of liberating both the forgiver and the forgiven. For now, it is worth highlighting how forgiveness, as an unnatural response to an action, is actually the contrary of revenge. As Arendt puts it, “forgiveness is the exact opposite of revenge” (Ibid.: 240). This Arendt’s position joins Butler’s definition— and common to many—that forgiveness is the forswearing of vengeance and resentment. Moreover, forgiveness for Arendt is a human faculty; it is a human power. This means that it is part of the human condition. The same human person who is capable of acting is capable of forgiving as well. Or rather, if the human person acting in human affairs were not capable and did not have this power to forgive, he/she would not be able to act because action is unpredictable. As acting agents, we cannot know in advance all the consequences of our actions. Therefore, either we would be tetanized and secluded in our corner for fear of hurting others, instead of exposing ourselves in the public sphere. Or, if we dare, we would be held hostages of those consequences and, therefore renounce to act any more. Hence, the power to forgive and to keep promises are the anchors that allow the agent to engage into action, assured that, on the one hand, the partners are sincere in what they promise, and therefore can be counted on. On the other hand, if they are hurt by the agent’s actions, they can forgive him/her. Arendt’s conception of forgiveness, however, is limited to what can be punished. Actions which are conceptually and practically beyond punishment are also beyond the power to forgive. It is “a structural elements in the realm of human affairs, that men are unable to forgive what they cannot punish and that they are unable to punish what has turned out to be unforgivable” (Ibid.: 241). The unforgivable for Arendt points to the core of our inquiry, that is, the crimes against humanity, crimes of war, and genocides. Such deeds, she says, “dispossesses us of the power” (ibid.). In other words, forgiveness in human affairs has a limit. There are instances where it cannot reach. Can there then be forgiveness even here? This question will come back later. For now, let us pursue our understanding of forgiveness. Aishai Margelit asserts that forgiveness is rooted in the religious traditions and follows its genealogy in the Bible. He finds that it mainly has four images as: “carrying a burden, covering up, blotting out, and canceling a debt” (2002: 191). The “first picture” of forgiveness is taken from the images in the Bible that God takes the sin of his people (Ps 32:5; 85:3), or the Isaiah’s suffering servant who also is carrying the sin of the people (Is 43). From this perspective, forgiveness is to carry the burden of the sinner. The second and third images of forgiveness convey different meaning at different degrees. To cover up would mean forgiving without removing completely the sin, while blotting out would mean to completely erase the sin. Margalit rightly notes that only God can blot out sin, while as human beings, in forgiving, we overcome the resentment and anger caused by injury. We do not erase the fault as such. We are capable of only the “second-order forgiveness.” We shall come back to this observation when we talk about the relationship between forgiveness and forgetting. This observation joins Ricoeur’s analysis that forgiveness can only be understood on the background of the existential situation of human condition of guilt. Our

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human existence would not have a sense without our guilt. That is why human forgiveness may only reach the moral, criminal, and political dimensions of the guilt, but not the metaphysical guilt that is connected to our human condition—to use Karl Jaspers terminology (2000: 25–6).2 As to the last picture of forgiveness of canceling a debt, Margalit contends that it can play at the other three images. All in all, here too “forgiveness means overcoming anger and vengefulness” (2002: 192; 204). The question now is whether forgiveness as covering-up is appropriate to our case of horrific human rights violations. In other words, “are there unforgivable acts?” Margalit takes up this question and responds to it by referring to the woman in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov who is forced to watch her son being torn into pieces by the general’s hounds. He sides with Ivan Karamazov who “believes that she ought not to forgive,” saying that “it sounds hollow if not hideous to say to the mother that she ought to forgive for her own sake” (2002: 208). In other words, there are instances in which forgiveness is difficult—to use again Ricoeur’s words, if not impossible. But here Margalit seems to approach it from a duty perspective: “she ought not to forgive.” Would it make any a difference if one were to make it a call to forgive rather than an ought? Could such an invitation be extended to every kind of acts? If yes, under which justification? Analyzing the use of forgiveness in contemporary discourse, Jacques Derrida also underlines the religious origin of forgiveness—particularly the Abrahamic family. That is why he wonders why it should be imposed on other cultures. For Derrida, the geopolitics of forgiveness is motivated by the invention of the concept of crimes against humanity, which is rooted in the Christian and humanistic traditions, all of Western origin. More poignant is his observation that if all the crimes against humanity committed in the past were to be punished, then we all would be guilty, for we have all benefited from crimes against humanity.3 Such remarks not only challenge the legitimacy of the key concepts of this inquiry—forgiveness and crimes against humanity—but also might blur the distinction between innocents and victims. Furthermore, forgiveness is part of the family of vocabulary which are not synonymous but hovering in the same religious realm, such as excuse, regret, amnesty, prescription. The conflation of the two facts makes Derrida wary that the whole concept of forgiveness is edulcorated into this globalization of only one tradition (2005: 27–8).

2 In the words of Ricoeur, “Même si la culpabilité n’est pas originaire, elle est à jamais radicale. C’est cette adherence de la culpabilité à la condition humaine qui, semble-t-il, la rend non seulement impardonable de fait, mais impardonable de droit. . .Arracher la culpabilité à l’existence serait, semble-t-il, détruire cette dernière de fond en comble.” (2000: 603). 3 In his words, “Nous sommes tous les héritiers, au moins, de personnes ou d’événements marqués, de façon essentielle, intérieure, ineffaçable, par des crimes contre l’humanité. Parfois ces événements, ces meurtres massifs, organisés, cruels, qui peuvent avoir été des révolutions, de grandes Révolutions canoniques et ‘légitimes’, furent ceux-là mêmes qui ont permis l’émergence de concepts comme ceux des droits de l’homme ou de crime contre l’humanité.” (1999: 2).

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I take these remarks as necessary precautions to keep in mind, as we try to understand what is forgiveness and the role it might play in the process of reconstruction and reconciliation of societies emerging from gross human rights violations. They are meant to underscore that the concepts on and with which we are working are not innocent from what they are denouncing. Even when we try to put them in our different contexts, they still carry the violent history that begot them and of which we are heirs. On the other hand, though, I take them as an invitation to explore what would forgiveness mean outside the Abrahamic and humanistic traditions. Therefore, I will analyze the concept of forgiveness in Kirundi to see whether there can be any commonalities with what has been highlighted in the Abrahamic tradition. In Kirundi, forgiveness can be translated into three words: ikigongwe, imbabazi, impuhwe, and they all are related to pity. That is why when used in a sentence, they are added to the verb to have, creating expressions such as kugira imbabazi, kugira ikigongwe, kugira impuhwe, all of them meaning to have pity. And so, when one is asking for forgiveness—gusaba imbabazi, gusaba ikigongwe¼asking for pity/forgiveness—in Kirundi, the requester is asking the injured party to have pity on him/her. But the verb itself “to forgive” is translated into two Kirundi verbs: kurekurira and kubabarira. I start my analysis with these verbs. Kubabarira is derivative of another verb: kubabara, meaning to suffer. Hence, kubabarira is a compound verb, made of the original verb kubabara with the suffix ir-, whose introduction into a verb changes its meaning into doing the action the verb signifies for someone else. Kubabarira, therefore, means to suffer on behalf of someone else; to carry the suffering for someone else. Thus, when someone asks for forgiveness—kubabarirwa¼to be forgiven—she/he is asking the injured party to carry his/her suffering; his/her pain. And if the injured party accesses to the request of forgiving, he/she accepts to suffer on behalf of the injurer— ndakubabariye¼literally: I suffer for you/on your behalf! Thus, with this act of kubabarira—which means to forgive—the injured party removes the suffering from the author of the injury and takes it upon him/herself. Only the victim can remove the pain and remorse that the injurer feels of what he/she has done. Furthermore, forgiving is costly on the part of the forgiver, because the verb implies that he/she accepts to carry the pain. To forgive as kubabarira becomes to carry a double pain: the pain of having been injured and the pain/remorse of the injurer. Maybe that is where the paradox of forgiveness is highly manifested: how would a double pain, the quantitative increase of pain, result into liberation of both the wronged party and the agent who committed the wrong? How could taking up someone else’s suffering erase my own pain? Yet, that is what forgiveness is supposed to do and that is what it does, according to the experiences of those who have been able to forgive and be forgiven. Now, a comparison with all we have already seen about forgiveness from the religious background can already underlie some similarities, especially with Margalit’s picture of forgiveness as “carrying the burden.” For in both instances, forgiveness consists in taking away a burden from the sinner by the forgiver, and carrying it. In the biblical genealogy—as he calls it—it is dramatic if one refers to the

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Suffering Servant of the prophet Isaiah who is completely disfigured in carrying the sins of humanity. This is the cost of suffering the pain endured from carrying the pain of those who wronged you, and this is not unparalleled in the human experience. As I am writing these lines, it is 25 years after the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda and 25 years after the end of apartheid in South Africa. Hearing stories from both tragedies of people who have been able to forgive their perpetrators, they still feel the pain and suffering of what they suffered, and yet they do no longer have anger and resentments against the perpetrators. This aspect of forgiveness gives a hint to what forgiveness is about and also its cost. But it also shows a closeness with another picture from Margalit’s analysis, that of forgiveness as covering up. Although covering up might give the impression of simulating rather than genuinely forswearing, forgiveness here means that one does not forget. Instead, like one who rubs a word in a sentence and does not consider it in the general meaning of the text—I paraphrase Margalit’s metaphor—so does forgiveness. It does not remove the rubbed word. It only discredits it as unimportant in the meaning of the whole sentence and the whole text. The same happens when one forgives in the sense we are pursuing. When the injurer asks the injured person to carry for him/her the suffering, he/she is asking the injured party to suffer to see the injurer free from the pain that he/she should endure as a right/just consequence of his/her act. It is a plea to rub the wrong done as no longer important in their relationship. It is asking to the injured party to suffer the pain of not considering the dark spot that has sullied the relationship. Thus understood, kubabarira can mean covering up. The second verb is kurekurira. In the same way as kubabarira, the verb kurekurira is derived from an original verb kureka, meaning to stop or to abandon an ongoing activity. From there, one can recognize two suffixes: -ur- and -ir-. The first verb derived from kureka by adding the first suffix -ur- is kurekura, which means to release; to let it go. Understandably, this means that one has to have been clinging or holding on someone or something in order to let it go. Furthermore, the effort is on the one holding and not the one held. Put otherwise, there is unbalance in the entangled forces. One has the power to release, while the other one is actually held unwillingly, because he/she is unable to release oneself. In this context, the plea to release falls on the one holding and not the one held. When the last suffix is added, it becomes kurekurira and we have already seen the meaning of this -ir- as fulfilling the action signified by the verb for someone else. From this sense, kurekurira as to forgive means to let it go for the injurer; to release for him/her. While kurekura is a direct transitive verb, kurekurira is an indirect transitive verb. Kurekura is to release something or someone; to forgive as kurekurira4 implies to release something for someone, and to let it go for or with her/him. The analysis of this second verb shows that asking for forgiveness happens in a situation whereby (1) one is tied by another; (2) the tied party cannot release itself;

4 I qualify the verb kurekurira in the sense of verb to forgive because it can still be used in its literal sense, for instance when one asks someone to release his/her dog or goat that was tied.

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and (3) there is a medium through which the holder is tying the one held. That state of facts shows that, although one is supposedly the master of the situation because he/she is the one holding and has the power to keep holding, actually he/she is also captive of who/what she/he is holding. In such situation, the holder spends much energy because the one held against his/her will fights for his/her release. And so kurekura that induces kurekurira is a way of releasing the holder from the struggle he/she is engaged in, by keeping holding. Put in concrete terms of the forgiveness context, kurekurira means that the injured party releases the injuring one with the injury. The injury is the medium through which the injured holds on to the injurer. Kurekurira then means to release both the injury and the injurer. Literally, it is to set them free from the holder. That is one sense, but there is a second meaning without which, forgiveness might be seen as just releasing without caring about the fate of the injuring party. Therefore, the second sense derives from the perspective of the injurer. When he/she asks to be forgiven¼kurekurirwa, he/she actually acknowledges that there is something tied to him/her that he/she cannot release it her/himself, and only the injured party has the key to unlock the fetters. Asking for forgiveness, therefore, is to ask the only one capable of not only to release both the injury and injurer from him/her but also and especially to untie the burden from the injurer so that he/she can be freed from it. Thus, forgiveness in the sense of kurekurira liberates both the injured and injurer from the injury, and the key player is the injured party. This could be related to the other image developed by Margalit of forgiveness as canceling the debt. By pardoning the debtor from his/her debt, the creditor breaks the medium that linked him/her to the debtor and releases the latter from the burden of the debt. By that act, a possibility is open to restart new relationship on new grounds of freedom for both parties. This understanding of forgiveness joins the Arendt’s observation that forgiveness frees both the forgiver and the one who is forgiven from the unpredictable and irreversible consequences of the action. Furthermore, one can easily conceive the three meanings developed here as constitutive of one process of forgiveness. The injured party decides to set free the injurer and him/herself—kurekurira—by accepting to carry on him/herself what the injurer should have incurred— kubabarira. Through the same act, the forgiver shows mercy by having pity on the injured—kugira imbazi, ikigongwe, impuhwe—mercy as the middle way between “force and right” as Jaspers would say. As he puts it, “mercy is what tempers the effects of undiluted right and of destructive force. The humanity of [human person] senses in it a higher truth than may be found in the unswerving consistency of either right or force” (2000: 32). The two extremes of force and right stand for revenge and justice. Hence, not only forgiveness imbued with mercy forswears vengeance, but it also tempers the application of justice for vindicating the trampled rights. We shall come back to this in its due course. This excursus through the explanation of forgiveness in Kirundi was meant to see whether there can be any common elements between the Abrahamic/Western humanistic traditions and other cultural contexts. The result shows that there are many common points. While I would not generalize from this sole example, it however opens up a space to believe—or at least to hope—that the understanding

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of forgiveness we are looking for is not particular to the Western tradition or the Abrahamic traditions. Although we still are indebted to the Western traditions that gave birth to the core concepts of human rights and crimes against humanity that prompted the “geopolitics” of forgiveness in recent decades—to reuse Derrida’s words—it still is the case that there are seeds of forgiveness in other traditions which meet half-way the Western one. Hence, one is not afraid to dig deeper into the latter in order to enhance the comprehension of forgiveness. Thus, as once more Derrida has shown, from its Latin origin, forgiveness (pardon in French) is ultimately connected to the gift (2012). Etymologically, it would mean giving completely; to give beyond what is expected. Without going into depth of its sociology and phenomenology, a gift can be requested or desired, but the one desiring it cannot order it as command from the giver. It is the decision of the giver to act on this desire or request. On the other hand, however, one can decide on his/her own to offer a gift to someone, without the latter having asked for it. In that case, the gift is hanging on the possibility of being received or being refused. Whereas there would be no moral obligation in a strong sense for the receiver to accept it, it would however be morally repulsive to reject a gift offered, without good reasons. It would also be morally repulsive to reject the demand of gift without good reasons. I would call such a duty a decent obligation—borrowing the expression “decent” from John Rawls. Thus, notwithstanding the reservations raised by Charles Griswold about forgiveness as a gift (2007: 62–9), the understanding of forgiveness as overflowing gift beyond the given, freely offered or on demand, seems to fit into what we have been developing. From it arises the decent obligation to forgive and to receive the gift of forgiveness. This view goes in the line of what Margalit observes that “the obligation to forgive, to the extent that such an obligation exists, is like the obligation not to reject a gift—an obligation not to reject the expression of remorse and the plea for forgiveness” (2002: 196). That is how forgiveness repairs what was broken in relationship and sets new basis for starting afresh. Hence, we can make ours Griswold’s definition of forgiveness as the act of “letting go of resentment for moral reasons, as well as of revenge, without forgetting the wrong that was done, and even in some cases (re)accepting the offender as a friend” (2007: 40). The question now is whether such understanding of forgiveness is a positive virtue that a survivor of crimes against humanity should have. Can an act of forgiveness cover up every kind of wrong, even the kind we are concerned with? In the course of our exploration, we have already encountered authors who believed that not all wrongs can be forgiven and not everyone should carry the decent obligation of forgiveness. In addition, the background of the understanding of forgiveness is the interpersonal relations, while crimes against humanity involve communities and institutional structures. Is it then possible or even advisable to talk about forgiveness in such contexts? Can the survivor be called to forgive? We take up those challenging questions in the next section.

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Forgiving the Unforgivable?

Although a result of seminar and lectures in different universities, Derrida’s book Pardonner, l’impardonnable et l’imprescriptible, was provoked by yet another strong voice on forgiveness by the French philosopher, Vladimir Jankélévitch (1986), denouncing the pressure put on the victims of the Holocaust to forgive. Jankélévitch follows Arendt’s position that forgiveness is only possible where there is possibility of punishment. Now if it is to be fair and follows the “unswerving consistency of right” as Jaspers would say, punishment includes a sense of proportion to the crime committed. Thus, the talion law can be one of the primal expressions of punishment interested in paying back in kind, in order to satisfy the fair and just proportion between the crime committed and the punishment incurred. Following this scheme, the highest punishment is the capital punishment. But that can work only in a duel combat. What can be the proportion in punishment of someone who organizes and executes the extermination of millions of lives? What can be a proportional punishment for someone who tortured in many ways for many times hundreds of victims? What can be the proportion of punishment for someone who enslaved a whole people or who organized a gang-rape for hundreds of women? Jankélévitch is right; crimes against humanity defeat common law and practical reason. One even hesitates to call them “radical evil” after Kant, because naming them might give us illusion of having grasp them conceptually, whereas their “nature so little is known.” One would wonder whether anything can be ever known of their nature indeed. Arendt is on target when she writes that such evils “transcend the realm of human affairs and the potentialities of human power, both of which they radically destroy wherever they make their appearance” (Arendt 1958: 241).5 If forgiveness is possible only where punishment is available, then indeed crimes against humanity are unforgivable, because they cannot be punished. At all! As Jankélévitch, once more rightly notes, crimes against humanity are crimes against the essence of human being as such (l’hominité de l’homme en général) (1986: 10). It is conceptually impossible to imagine what could be a punishment proportional to them. Govier Trudy relates a case of Pakistani man who killed 100 children in a retaliatory act against the police. The person was sentenced to death and the judge “ordered that he should be strangled in front of his victims’ parents and his body cut into 100 pieces and dissolved in acid” (2002: 1). One can correlate the number 100 of the victims to the 100 pieces of the perpetrator’s body. However, there cannot be temptation of thinking that there has been proportion between the punishment of the perpetrator and the 100 innocent children. It would even be repulsive to nourish such a thought. Perhaps an objection can be raised here, underlying that punishment is understood as paying back in kind proportionally to the act committed. Yet, punishment In Kirundi, such evil are called “ibibi vy’agahomerabunwa,” that is, literarily, evils that shut up mouths. It means nothing can be conceptually said about them; they literally defeat reason; the logos.

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has other meanings with more social and political benefits, such deterrence, assurance, and education, just to mention a few. Indeed, punishment might discourage other potential offenders, fearing to suffer the same fate. It also ensures the law-binding citizens that the effort to abide by a rule or a law is not vain. On the contrary, it is rewarding and gives them incentives to persevere in their good behavior. Furthermore, both attitudes educate people by cementing the respect of norm as they show both the consequences of violating the law/rule and respecting it. Would such understanding of punishment change the discrepancy between it and the crimes against humanity—as we are pursuing punishment as the condition of the possibility of forgiveness? Even here, punishment would not repair the rift between it and crimes against humanity. For conceiving the punishment of crimes against humanity as contributing to deterrence, assurance and education would be to reduce them to something familiar and normal that could happen again. The very fact that they defeat practical reason implies that they cannot and should not fit into the expectations of the benefits of punishment. Perhaps that it is what Jankélévitch means when he states that forgiving the crimes against humanity would be contradicting morality itself (1986: 11), because such acts fall beyond the moral realm of human affairs—to borrow Arendt’s words. Such a position raises the question of international justice, especially the legitimacy of the International Criminal Court (ICC). We shall come back to this issue later. For now, suffice to mention that the risk of considering such crimes as any case of law might blur their scandalous enormity to practical reason and start to believe that they can be punished satisfactorily. From a justice perspective, maybe the only attempt should be the special tribunals to maintain the special character of their nature. But even here, we should not pretend to have brought justice. Instead, we should acknowledge that we tried our best at the human level to send a symbolic message, that we could not do better, and that we wished that such acts could not have happened! But since alas! They did happen, as a humanity, we posit this symbolic act through judicial process in honor of the victims. It is a gesture, and not justice, because as mentioned many times, such acts defy human justice. Now from moral point of view, only the outcry—if one decides to open the mouth—should be “Never Again!” An outcry to avow the incapacity of practical reason to grasp it and as an expression of exhaustion such evil acts inflict on human kind. For as Jankélévitch puts it, it is impossible to fathom the mystery of such senseless cruelty (1986: 13).6 Thus, from whatever angle one approaches punishment, crimes against humanity do not fit into our categories. And if we maintain that forgiveness is only possible where there is possibility of punishment, then one is to acknowledge that there is no possibility of forgiveness for the crimes against humanity. However, so far, forgiveness has been considered from this binary offense punishment. What if we shift our point of view and take forgiveness as something intervening in human affairs and yet from outside that binary? What if one takes forgiveness as a human power, which is

6

In his original words, “On n’en a jamais fini d’approfondir ce mystère de la menchanceté gratuite.”

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not always at the disposal of the human person, but rather intervenes as a gift—the religious/spiritual/theological term would be as a grace! A gift to both the forgiver and the forgiven! I take Derrida’s strong injunction to mean this when he asserts that “forgiveness is not, should not be, normal normative, normalizing. . .it should remain exceptional and extraordinary” (2005: 32), “at the trial of the impossible” (1999: 3), “as if interrupted the ordinary course of historical temporality” (2005: 32). In that sense, forgiveness is not taken for granted. It is an exception and remains such. To normalize it would be to empty its content. Such an understanding of forgiveness opens a new perspective of looking at, and even imagining its possibility beyond offense and punishment. Perhaps that is the reason why many call forgiveness a sort of madness—Derrida himself calls it so (1999: 9), and so does Paul Ricoeur who puts forgiveness in the same family of love and wisdom, which are celebrated through hymns. That is why forgiveness is “a voice from above” (2000: 604–5). As to Wilfried Okambawa (2017), he states that forgiveness is a madness that liberates.7 Thus, for Derrida, contrary to Jankélévitch, only the unpardonable, the unforgivable calls for forgiveness. Once we move outside the offense punishment for understanding forgiveness, nothing becomes unforgivable, and even forgiveness in the context of crimes against humanity becomes possible. But this assertion has to be qualified. Following our exploration and definition of forgiveness, this last assertion does not imply that forgiveness forgets the wrong done—in the present case, the crimes against humanity. Neither can forgiveness erase the hideous side of them. For Derrida, forgiveness is pure, exceptional, and extraordinary. Whenever it is attached to any goal—be it expiation or reconciliation—it is no longer forgiveness. This is mostly clear in the political dimension of forgiveness, where there are calculations of certain goals to be achieved through the different public display of forgiveness. For that reason, Derrida distinguishes unconditional forgiveness— which is the proper one, pure and exception—from the conditional forgiveness— which is edulcorated and is the ordinary one that we usually talk about. The forgiveness that applies to the unforgivable is the first category of unconditional forgiveness. However, as Griswold would say, forgiveness happens in this world of imperfection. How then is it possible to incarnate the unconditional and pure forgiveness into the imperfect human affairs? Derrida himself acknowledges that, although unconditional and pure, in order to be effective in changing the order of things, “its purity has to be engaged in a series of all sorts of conditions” (1999: 8). However, the two poles should never be conflated into each other or reduce the exceptional into the calculable and predictable. Forgiveness is and must remain “the madness of the impossible” engaged in human conditions. That is how it can conserve its unconditional purity and yet transforming the conditions of human existence. It has to remain the voice from above and yet heard in human voices with human faces.

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Pardon comme folie libératrice.

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This understanding of forgiveness leads to another dimension of forgiveness that can apply in the cases of crimes against humanity. So far, the possibility and impossibility of forgiveness were measured with the evil acts. Yet, while those crimes are indeed beyond what our human reason can reckon, their authors are human faces with names and history. Even when they hide behind the institutional structures, such as in the case of Adolf Eichmann (Arendt 2006)—to mention a known example—still they are known and identifiable. In some circumstances, the perpetrators are neighbors, friends and even family members, or fellow citizens. This is the core of the question of forgiveness we are concerned with, for forgiveness shifts the focus from the evil act to the doer, and the question is: would there be reason to forgive him/her? Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, one of the commissioners of the South African TRC relates her encounter with Eugene de Kock, the icon of the apartheid regime in South Africa, involved in kidnapping, disappearance, and killing of many innocent people. The author recounts her interviews with de Kock as she met him in the highsecurity prison in Pretoria. The scene is prototype of the apartheid context: de Kock is a White male who worked for the apartheid regime, from a middle class family. Gobodo-Madikizela is a Black South-African woman who grew up in one of the townships in Cape Town, experiencing the first hand of the iron rule of apartheid. She ended up earning a PhD in psychology from a prestigious US university, and it was in this capacity that she was a TRC’s commissioner. As it would have been for anybody, her first day in the vicinities of the prison was so dreadful that she wanted to give up. But when she started meeting de Kock and as the interview process unfolded, she found herself emotionally confused about this renowned evil person, the incarnation of apartheid. He appeared emotionally vulnerable, and that fact revealed another side of de Kock that could not have been seen through the evil acts he committed and the heinous system he served. In stark contrast with Eichmann who hid behind career to justify his odious acts, de Kock felt sorry and regretted what he had done. He took responsibility and even manifested a certain empathy for the victims he harmed or hurt through his actions. In fact, Gobodo-Madikizela had decided to interview him because de Kock was a witness before the TRC in the killing of three Black policemen. When he was addressing the three widows of the slain Black policemen, they were touched and started crying and nodding that they had forgiven him. Gobodo-Madikizela met with two of the widows to inquire about what had happened and they recognized that they “felt that de Kock had communicated to them something he felt deeply and had acknowledged their pain” (2003: 14). That was almost the same experience the author had when she met with de Kock, leading to what she calls “a story of forgiveness.” This “communicating something and acknowledging the victim’s pain” from the perpetrator reveals some human side that changes the way one considers him/her. For instance, at some of points of the interview, de Kock breaks down and the author reaches out to one of his handcuffed hands as a way of comforting him. And as they were wrapping up the whole process, having talked about the different people he

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killed, de Kock asked Gobodo-Madikizela whether there had been any member of her family who had been victimized by de Kock. The encounter answers the guiding question of her book: “what should our attitude be to their [perpetrators’] cries for mercy, the cries that tell us their heart are breaking, and that they are willing to renounce the past and their role in it?” (2003: 15). Such breaking down reveals a humanity still alive behind the cockpit of the hideous actions. And “when violators of human rights allow themselves to be emotionally vulnerable, they are giving others a chance to encounter them as human beings” (2003: 16). It is this paradoxical rediscovered humanity amidst the crimes against humanity that begs for forgiveness as a way of being reintegrated into the moral community. Can/should the survivor ignore such a plea? It is not the perpetrator’s side that motivates forgiveness only. As I already mentioned, I am writing this chapter while Rwanda is commemorating 25 years after the genocide against Tutsi. More precisely, it is during the month of April, the time of remembrance. Thus, there are many stories of forgiveness. One that struck me strongly is a man whose family was almost entirely decimated. He got a house in the exemplary villages of reconciliation that were being built, and he found himself surrounded by those who had decimated his family. He got scared that they would do the same to him. Thus, to protect himself, he bought himself a machete, sharpened it and would leave his door open so that if they dare to come, he would defend himself. But he entered into a healing process and came to start forgiving those who killed his family. He went around asking people whether they wanted forgiveness. As if that was not enough, he married a girl whose father had murdered most of his family members. Expectedly, the girl’s family resisted such a union, fearing that the groom was looking for a way to revenge. But the girl chose to marry him and now they are a model family in the whole village. On the top of that, because of the involvement of his now-father-in-law in the genocide, authorities wanted to sell the in-laws’ land and property for compensation to the victims. The son-in-law bailed the family out.8 The man said that after he had forgiven, he felt an inner joy and peace. He started appreciating those he once was afraid of and hated. The journalist who was reporting the story introduced it as a miracle. And a miracle it is indeed! It exemplifies the exceptionality of forgiveness that cannot be taken for granted, but which, when it happens, transforms both the life of the victim and that of perpetrator. This example is just one among many, showing the importance of forgiveness even in the context of crimes against humanity. As Desmond Tutu puts it, “to forgive is not just to be altruistic. It is the best form of self-interest.” For “what dehumanizes you inexorably dehumanizes me. It gives people resilience, enabling them to survive and emerge still human despite all efforts to dehumanize them” (1999: 31). In other words, some survivors may choose to forgive for their own sake, in order to experience peace and to be released. This unpredictable benefit of forgiveness embodies what we have explored above on forgiveness as kurekurira, which found resonance in the religious tradition of 8

Story aired at BBC Gahuzamiryango, news outlet of April 8, 2019.

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removing the burden, and even in the secular terms as freeing both the victim and perpetrator from the consequence of action—to recall Arendt’s words. But surprisingly, beyond Arendt’s expectation, forgiveness appears to be more powerful than what punishment can afford. Provided one maintains the tension Derrida warns about, this kind of forgiveness is not a conditional one as a usual happening in human affairs. It is exception and irrupts in human affairs as a miracle. From this perspective, one can also revendicate Arendt whose concern is the human condition in which we appear through speech and action. Here, forgiveness as unconditional cannot be proposed as the correlate of human action. Transforming it into a casual and habitual action would debunk its content and miss its essence all together. Forgiveness as “madness of the impossible” must remain apolitical if it is to preserve its liberating power from even the most unspeakable acts such as crimes against humanity. It must leave us astonished and surprised whenever it happens, asking ourselves: how was/is it possible? A question only legitimate after forgiveness has happened, and not before. The advent of such forgiveness is a paradox because it finds humanity in an agent that targeted humanity itself. It restores faith in a humanity that the very agents’ acts fought against and tried to destroy. That is what Russell Daye observes in the context of South Africa: “by offering pardon to their oppressors, sometimes even before it had been asked for, they were calling out the humanity of perpetrators and apartheid supporters” (2004: 171). Unconditional forgiveness, however, does more: it restores life in those the very crimes wanted to eradicate from the surface of the earth and the memory of the living. Such event of forgiveness cannot be a familiar face of human affairs. It breaks through them once in a while as miracle, and if a miracle becomes familial, it is no longer one. Yet, it is possible. Indeed, it has to be possible to show that to the depth of fault corresponds even higher heights of forgiveness—to paraphrase Ricoeur. And when the depth becomes an unfathomable abyss in acts such crimes against humanity, the exceptionality of forgiveness is able to resuscitate a faith and hope in a possibility of humanity. It leads to these paradoxical and contradictory hope and faith that, even in the most “monstrous” human being, there still is humanity. In the name and because of this humanity, one dares to utter these “offensive” words: “no moral agent is ever absolutely unforgivable” (Govier 1999: 5). They are offensive indeed, when one looks at the despicable acts such as crimes against humanity. Yet they need to be uttered for the sake of humanity in every moral agent, the very humanity that is threatened in a very crime against humanity. At this point, a question arises: while forgiveness can be justified, even in case of crimes against humanity, can there be a duty or even call for the survivor to forgive? After postponing it for so long, it is time to face it.

5.4 Survivor and Forgiveness

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Survivor and Forgiveness

After showing that revenge is not an option for rebuilding a society in search for reconciliation, and having explored the understanding of forgiveness and its possibility even in case where one would have expected it impossible, questions are still pending as to which extent the survivor is to relate to this whole process of forgiveness. Thus, to start with, does the survivor has a duty to forgive? To attend to this question, one recalls the distinction made in Chap. 2 between moral and ethical duty following Margalit’s distinction. As a reminder, the moral duty was defined as the one we owe to the other as qua human being in the name of humanity, whereas the ethical duty was related to those we care for, those with whom we have some relationship ties. In addition to these kinds of duty, I mentioned the decency duty, such as that of not refusing a gift without good reasons. At all the three levels, duty is understood as an action whose failure to fulfill deserves blame from other moral agents. It is on such backdrop that one asks whether forgiveness is a duty for the survivor. Concerning the moral duty, one might induce that, following what we developed above that in the name of humanity still kindling even in the most monstrous human being, there is a moral duty to forgive. However, such an inducement would have been insensitive to the survivor. Indeed, if one is talking of the need of forgiveness and why there should be forgiveness, there seems to be a moral duty, at least enounced as a wish. Nevertheless, once such duty is to incarnate into human conditions through which it becomes concrete, the survivor becomes the central element of the forgiveness process, and there cannot be a moral duty to forgive, such that the perpetrator would claim it as a right. Forgiveness, as we saw, is a miraculous gift to both the forgiver and the forgiven. The survivor him/herself does not own it to his/her disposal, although she/he is the only one who can forgive. Authors such as Jeffrie Murphy have identified conditions for forgiveness on the side of the perpetrators, such remorse and repentance (1988: 24), but their fulfillment does not entail the automatic forgiveness on the part of the survivor. Jean Hampton calls forgiveness the change of heart from the injured toward the wrongdoer (1988), and this change takes time. It requires time of healing and this differs from one individual to another. Therefore, it would be inconsiderate to force the survivor to forgive or to blame one who has not yet reached the “advent” moment of forgiveness. Le pardon advient both for the forgiver and the forgiven. While the one asking for forgiveness awaits for it from the forgiver, the latter awaits the moment he/she feels ready to do so freely. Russell Daye reports a case of a South African lady whose son was killed during the apartheid regime for attending meetings of ANC. When, 15 years after the end of apartheid, she was asked for forgiveness by one of the persons involved in her son’s death, “she. . .refused, saying she carries a powerful hate for him” (2004: 133). Another case narrates an instance of a South African man whose wife was killed during a Church service. A week after the massacre, he and the whole congregation offered forgiveness. But few months later, he fell into deep depression and “he now

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acknowledges that his choice to offer forgiveness so quickly. . .was a sacrifice that kept him from facing fully his pain and beginning his mending process” (2004: 140). The two stories warn us from condemning those who struggle to forgive as resentful, or praising those who forgive too quickly. If forgiveness is the change of heart that liberates both the forgiver and the forgiven, it has to be done when time is ripe to happen. In any case, carrying a “powerful hate” for the offender is a heavy burden and deep pain that no one enjoys. The survivor would have loved to drop it, but it needs the process of healing to reach to that point. On the other hand, forgiving quickly might not have considered the consequences and the cost of forgiveness. If forgiveness is to free both parties, it should not have a consequence on the survivor. It has to be the result of a process that has faced “fully the pain.” Following these developments, we cannot say that there is a moral duty to forgive for the survivor of gross human rights violations. Would there be an ethical duty though, that is, a duty such that, if the survivor does not perform it, he/she would be blamed for not caring for people who require of him/her a special care? Among the criteria that would push one to forgive, Murph mentions to forgive for “old times’ sake,” giving an example of an old good and loyal friend (1988: 24). This criterion can also cover what I am alluding to under the ethical duty, whereby one would forgive because he/she cares for the kind of relationship that existed between them. It also reminds a story of a Rwandese man—certainly not the only one, alas!—who escaped from his mother who was delivering her own children and husband to be killed during the genocide. When asked whether he had forgiven her, he answered you know a mother is a mother. Notwithstanding these examples, does it follow that the survivor has a duty to forgive them? Once more, the same arguments developed on moral duty apply here. There is no duty such that a friend or a relative would take it for a granted right to be forgiven. Like in the case of moral duty, forgiveness takes time—perhaps even more time when such crimes are committed by close relationships as they destroy not only the lives but also the trust on which every relationship is built. Hence, only when the survivor is ready can she/he forgive. As Martha Minow notes, “forgiveness is a power held by the victimized, not a right to be claimed” and “to expect survivors to forgive is to heap yet another burden on them” (1998: 17). This remark applies both for moral duty and ethical duty. There is, however, another side of ethical duty toward oneself, especially as forgiveness is “the best form of self-interest” to use once more Tutu’s words. Shouldn’t the survivor forgive as a way of caring for him/herself? Isn’t a failure to do so, blameworthy? It would be a truism to ask whether there can be care for anybody or anything if there is no care for oneself. There are devastating consequences of low self-esteem and self-respect on relationships. Furthermore, offenses in general and crimes against humanity in particular aim at degrading the victim, showing that she/he is less worth than human being (Murphy and Hampton 1988). They trample the victim’s dignity, and if carried on for so long, such as in the case of slavery or other socially structured violence, such as the oppression and domination of women in many societies, such crimes can have lifelong impact on the victims and their descendants, leading to believing and internalizing that they are indeed less than human beings. That is why John Rawls ranks self-esteem/self-respect not only

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among the primary goods but as “perhaps the most important primary good” (1971: 440), and Hampton suggests that the first stage of forgiveness “involves regaining one’s confidence in one’s own worth despite the immoral action challenging it” (1988: 83). All these arguments seem to advocate for an ethical duty toward oneself. The question, however, remains: is it a duty such that failing it calls blame of the survivor from the ethical community? Certainly not. Once again, as we saw in Chap. 2, the toil of crimes against humanity on the survivor is such that surviving itself becomes a virtue. Therefore, forgiveness as self-interest will also have to go through the process of healing that every forgiveness calls for. There cannot be then a sense of evaluating the survivor as if he/she has failed to come to terms with what she/he went through, but rather the appreciation of the effort engaged and the progress made, however small they might be. This is also valid for the self-forgiveness.9 For indeed, many survivors feel guilty of having survived while their kindred has succumbed. There can be a feeling of betrayal of not having done enough to protect one’s family and friends, or save others. The survivor might regret his/her surviving altogether. The ethical duty of self-care will have to reach this level also, but it will have to be in terms of appreciating what has been accomplished and expressing sympathy/empathy for the struggles the survivor goes through, rather than approaching it in terms of blame. As to the third category of duty—decency duty—of not refusing a gift or refusing forgiveness to the one who asks for it, there is no need to say more, since it does not involve the kind of moral evaluation of blame or praise. It would rather be ranged into the Rawlsian duties of civility, and this only in normal circumstances. Furthermore, it creates discomfort when there are no good reasons to refuse. But in the present case, it has been sufficiently shown that there are good reasons that the survivor might refuse to forgive, because he/she is still in the process of healing. Having shown then that there cannot be a duty to forgive, and yet forgiveness has been shown to be the viable alternative to vengeance, I suggest that we term it a call to forgive and a call to forgiveness, a call with threefold meanings: (a) as a plea; (b) as encouragement; and (c) as a vocation. Before I explain each of them, a word concerning the two kinds of call. The call to forgive is about the hearing of the “voice from above,” as Ricoeur would name it, asking for forgiveness from the wrongdoer and answering it in the name of the humanity still present in him/her, despite the horrible acts he/she committed. As to the call to forgiveness, it is the embodiment of forgiveness in the concrete cases in which the survivor is involved. It is a call to make it happen for oneself and for the other. Of course, the two calls manifest themselves in the same movement, be it in silence or in open voice, because there would be no call to forgive if there was not an open wound bleeding, whose healing process is the very process of the call to forgiveness. Lastly, I prefer call to duty because it embodies the exceptionality of forgiveness. While only the victim has the power to forgive, she/he does not own it. He/she opens her/himself up to the call.

9

I am making here a distinction between forgiving for as self-interest and self-forgiving.

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Thus, before forgiveness is a gift to the forgiven, it is first and foremost a gift to the forgiver, although both have to hear the twofold call. Furthermore, in the call, the caller relies on the capacities of the called to heed the call, and counts on his/her good will to respond to it. The response to the call comes as a relief to the forgiver who did not know what to expect. This preserves the unpredictability of forgiveness and respects the forgiving process of the forgiver. All these benefits—which fit the process of forgiveness—disappear when one understands forgiveness as a duty because I ought presupposes I can. The process of forgiveness walks on a too tight and thin line to be translated into a duty. That is why as a call to forgive and to forgiveness, (a) forgiveness is a plea, not in legal terms, but in the sense of supplication/prayer toward the survivor to be open to the call. A call coming from forgiveness itself to the survivor as the ambassador of humanity on the verge of failing and falling. It is a supplication that the survivor does not succumb to what the crimes intended and acted: to reduce him/her to lesser than human. Rather, it encourages him/her to arise from the dust and be the agent of humanity in him/her, which can never be vanquished no matter what, and fight to save humanity anywhere and everywhere, even inside those who committed the crimes against the very humanity. It is a plea of humanity to save it in both the victim and the perpetrator through forgiveness. That is why (b) it is also an encouragement, which is a way of recognizing that it is neither easy nor cheap. It requires effort and intensity. Encouragement focuses on the positive progress made in the process of healing and forgiving and acknowledges the support needed for the survivor to continue. A call to forgive and to forgiveness in the form of encouragement is a pledge to support the survivor as she/he takes the necessary means to get to the point where she/he can feel liberated and ready to liberate the perpetrator. For that reason, (c) it becomes a call as a vocation; a vocation as what one is called to realize but also as that what through which one is fulfilled. For the survivor, the call to forgive and to forgiveness as a vocation means that he/she will live through the process, making it happen little by little. At the same time, as he/she makes progress, it will be her/his own fulfillment that will be realized. Such an understanding of forgiveness goes against an institutional and/or institutionalized forgiveness, whereby an external body imposes the mechanisms for forgiveness to survivor. It is also against any external pressure on the survivor to forgive. As a change of heart, it has to respect the journey that it takes to reach the point of forgiveness. In Minow’s words, “when governments or their representatives ‘usurp the victim’s exclusive power to forgive his oppressor,’ they thereby fail to respect fully those who have suffered” (1998: 17). This disrespect is expressed in not taking into account the personal rhythm of the healing process. Moreover, one can even doubt whether there is forgiveness in such context, since forgiveness has to come from inside the victim. The change of heart cannot be ordered. It can only be recommended as a call to heed, and its hearing comes in different forms and at different times depending on different individuals. To quote Minow again, “fundamentally, forgiveness cannot be commanded. No friend, cleric, or official can force another to grant forgiveness to an offender. A victim who considers forgiving must summon compassion, benevolence, love, or profound sense of the flaws shared by

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all human beings, victims and offenders alike” (1998: 20). Again, these are only few expressions of how the survivor can hear the call to forgive and to forgiveness. The important point remains that only the victim has the power to heed that call and she/he can do it on his/her pace. Not under external injunction. This singular power of the victim to forgive raises a question from another end. If it is true that the survivor should not be forced to forgive, can survivor forgive in the name of the absent, those gone forever? This aporia is one of the reasons Jankélévitch strongly opposed forgiveness. For if one wanted forgiveness, it had to come from the victims, but the latter were dead. It seems too that this is the meaning of his famous sentence that forgiveness died in the concentration camps. If forgiveness has to be offered by the victims, then indeed there is no possibility of forgiveness for those killed, because it would have to come from those who are permanently absent, and whose absence the survivor of crimes against humanity carries as a deep void in his/her own existence. But could there be any reason that the survivor could forgive on behalf of his/her kindreds gone? If it were one person, one could imagine that relatives can forgive as way of honoring the memory of the departed, or depending on the character of the latter, they could assume that he/she would have forgiven and then do so. While this situation would still be problematic, it is nonetheless feasible. But there cannot be such a scenario in case of crimes against humanity and genocide for example. Who can dare to stand on behalf of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people and forgive on their behalf? If the reasoning seems to reach an impasse, it also reveals another side of the coin: can someone ask for forgiveness for what they did not do? For instance, can a community leader ask for forgiveness for crimes committed by certain members of the community against a particular victim? Many communitarians have argued that, as historical beings, we carry responsibility without our consent. Being borne in families and communities, we enjoy certain benefits of which we have to take responsibility, not as individuals, but as a community. In such circumstances, representative of community can apologize for harms inflicted on individual and communal victims. Sometimes, these communal apologies can even lead to reparation actions, such as affirmative actions (see, e.g., Michel Sandel 2008). In a way, this discussion recalls Jaspers’ political guilt which underlies a certain co-responsibility in what befalls a political community. Thus, such events are what Derrida called “the geopolitics of forgiveness,” and although it betrays the very nature of forgiveness as pure and unconditional, it also constitutes the possible historical conditions in which the forgiveness is to incarnate. Hence, it sounds morally appropriate to have such actions as long as they are as sincere as possible. Should then the victim not accept such apologies? The common sense would recommend to accept them. If so, wouldn’t be possible then that survivors forgive in the name of the victims? Desmond Tutu (1999) narrates an event whereby a pastor from the Dutch Reformed Church publicly asked forgiveness to the Black Community, for their contribution and support of the apartheid regime. Tutu and another black pastor consulted each other and Tutu stood and acknowledged the apologies and offered forgiveness, without the mandate of the whole Black Community. He felt confident

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that it was the right thing to do. To a possible objection that it was not right, he wonders whether if it were not possible to forgive on behalf of the absent, would it be possible to accept reparation on their behalf? (1999: 275–8). The question, however, does not get to the core of the problem. For in the case of reparation, one can easily renounce both forgiveness and reparation. Hence, what is needed is a moral argument that can justify how a survivor could forgive in the name of thousands of victims gone forever. Such an argument is hard to make in the line we have been arguing. The only available point to make is to suggest some openings; not as an argument, but just suggestions of action based on assumptions. First, the survivor could heed the call to forgive and to forgiveness on behalf of those gone as representing their humanity and counting on their innocence. He/she could imagine that he/she is representing them the best he/she can as the way they would have acted, had they survived. Being innocent, they could have sided with the good that comes from being representatives of humanity threatened by the crimes against humanity. Second, he/she could forgive on the assumption that they would have preferred to liberate the humanity manifested in the vulnerability of perpetrators, in order to bring them back into the human community. Third, the survivor could act on the assumption that the absents could have preferred a society engaged in the process of healing through forgiveness, rather than a community still under strife, with the risk of engendering other victims. As he/she acts in that way, the survivor has to keep in mind however, that he/she is not representing them. He/she is rather taking the risk of being rebuked, as did Tutu, were he/she to meet some of the victims who are not yet ready to hear and respond to the call to forgive and to forgiveness. In other words, just after she/he utters the magical and liberating words I forgive you on their behalf, she/he also has to enter into silence and ask forgiveness to those she/he dared to speak on behalf of, in case he/she might have betrayed them. This again would be another grandeur d’âme on the part of the survivor.

5.5

Forgiveness and Forgetting

There is a common saying that goes “forgive and forget,” as if forgiveness implies forgetting, or even further, as if one would not have forgiven without forgetting. On the other hand, Chap. 3 of this book illustrates that it is part of the human condition to forget because it is impossible to keep in memory everything that happens to us. All these points show how important is the relationship between forgiveness and forgetting. Does the former presuppose the latter? Could it happen that one forgets to forgive, not as a deliberate decision, meaning to give up forgiving, but rather as a losing memory of the call to forgive? Can there be forgiveness where there has been forgetfulness to ask for forgiveness? These and other questions underlie the uneasy relationships between forgiveness and forgetting. From the exploration of the meaning of forgiveness, it was highlighted that forgiveness at human level cannot blot off the wrong. It is rather a cross over the evil deeds, which helps change the heart of the forgiver in order to see the wrongdoer

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in a new light. In the particular case of survivor of crimes against humanity, every element in his/her existence is a memorial. Therefore, it would be unrealistic to expect him/her to forget it, or to condition his/her forgiveness with forgetting. Instead, forgiveness itself as an event deserves to be kept as a memorable act. In that sense, forgiveness can easily cohabit with remembering. One might even say that forgiveness is a remembering purified of resentment and anger, in the sense that the forgiver remembers injuries he/she endured through different lenses. They no longer provoke the urge to revenge; they are seen as measure of the long way made to reach the moment of forgiveness. That is the reason why the same way forgiveness cannot be commanded, there should not be pressure on the survivor to forget as synonymous of forgiveness. Even when there have been public efforts of forgiveness for reconciling communities, they should not imply forgetting. On the contrary, they should leave open the space for individuals to mend their grief and pain, in order to heal and reach the stage of forgiveness on their pace. In other words, forgetfulness cannot be a recipe or a condition for forgiveness. If forgiveness does not imply or presuppose forgetting, a scenario arises when one gets to forget the offense due to the elapse of time. Don’t we say that time heals! Would it be appropriate to call it forgiveness? After all, once one has forgotten his/her injuries, resentments and anger associated with them are also gone. In such particular case, nonetheless, there would not have been forgiveness. Forgiveness, as shown, is an intentional act and it touches inner change for both the forgiver and the offender. In this present case, while the victim is at peace with the injuries and “restitutive emotions” associated with them—to borrow Murphy’s expression—this peace is partial and no sure peace for the perpetrator. For the victim, it is partial because it needs only a reminder to reawaken anger and resentment. Forgiveness has to go through the process of facing the hurt and the pain and come to terms with them, such that their memory is no longer wounded to cause emotional upheaval and urge to revenge. If forgetting follows the process of forgiveness, there is no worry. But there should not be substitution of forgetfulness to forgiveness. The relationship between forgiveness, forgetting, and remembering leads to the role and place of the descendants of both the victims and perpetrators in the forgiveness process. What do descendants from survivors and perpetrators owe to each other? Are descendants of perpetrators guilt of the evil acts of their forebears? Do perpetrators owe apology to the descendants of the survivors? Does survivor’s forgiveness extend to the perpetrators’ descendants? These questions and similar ones are important here because some crimes are committed by future generations to avenge what their forefathers suffered. After reading Imprescriptible, a young German, Wiard Raveling, started a long exchange of letters with Jankélévitch. In one of those letters, he seems to respond to the author’s claim that the descendants of the perpetrators move around happily, as if

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nothing happened in a Europe that once was destroyed by their armies.10 Raveling writes to Jankélévitch that he actually does not feel alright, although he did not kill any Jew. At some times, he does not sleep well. He feels shame, guilt, and revolt; he thinks of different concentration camps. He ends his note inviting Jankélévitch to visit him in Germany and offers him to listen to French music, although he likes the German one. Raveling claims his innocence from the Holocaust, and yet he does not have peace. He experiences nightmares and insomnia.11 In other words, Jankélévitch gets it wrong to think that the descendants are happy as if nothing happened. They—at least some—endure the consequences of the history they are born in “without merit or request” as Raveling introduces one of his letters. Is it fair to blame the descendants for what was done by their forbearers? Is it fair to undergo the consequences of such actions? Before attempting to address these questions—which will lead us to other questions left pending—it is worth mentioning that Raveling letters got two responses, one from the Jankélévitch himself appreciating Raveling’s gesture, as something he had been waiting for so long. Jankélévitch ends his response extending an invitation to Raveling to visit him in Paris. Another response came from a friend to Jankélévitch who condemned the non-pardon of Jankélévitch as a terrible act, to the point of comparing the fanatic Jew to the Nazi (Derrida 2002: 49). He ends his response asking Raveling not to judge all Jews in France on Jankélévitch attitude. I mention the two responses to illustrate what we have been saying of forgiveness, how it opens door to both the forgiver and the forgiven. Reading Jankélévitch’s response makes a huge difference with the tone of his Imprescriptible. He acknowledges how the letter touched and affected him emotionally, and also how Raveling had found the right words to translate his generosity and sensitivity. He even inserts a Merci! thanking Raveling. In other words, Jankélévitch recognizes that not all the descendants of the perpetrators are moving around as if nothing happened. Some do care and are indeed affected by what happened. And such an acknowledgement opened a “new era” for him (ibid.). As to the second response, it shows how we rather expect everybody to forgive and sometimes become insensitive to the personal journey that every victim has to go through up to the breaking point of forgiveness. I find it offensive to compare

In original text, “Les descendants des bourreaux sont de bonne humeur, et ils trouvent tout naturel de se promener en troupes bruyantes, comme si de rien n’était, à travers cette Europe que leurs armées ont mise naguère à feu et à sang.” (1986: 13). 11 Here is the original text: “Moi, je n’ai pas tué de Juifs. Que je sois né Allemand, ce n’est pas ma faute, ni mon mérite. On ne m’en a pas demandé permission. Je suis tout à fait innocent des crimes nazis; mais cela ne me console guère. Je n’ai pas la conscience tranquille [ . . . ] et j’éprouve un mélange de honte, de pitié, de résignation, de tristesse, d’incrédulité, de révolte. Je ne dors pas toujours bien. Souvent je reste éveillé pendant la nuit, et je réfléchis, et j’imagine. J’ai des cauchemars dont je ne peux me débarrasser. Je pense à ANNE FRANK, et à AUSCHWITZ et à la TODESFUGE et à NUIT ET BROUILLARD: « Der Tod ist ein Meisteraus Deutschland»”. Cited in Derrida (2002: 47–51). 10

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Jankélévitch to the Nazi, just because he has not been able to forgive yet. Forgiveness as a miracle that irrupts into one’s existence is a hope for every victim. That is why, instead of blame and condemnation, plea and encouragement to live forgiveness as a vocation seems to be the right attitude. Coming back to the question of responsibility of the descendants concerning what their forefathers did, they certainly cannot be criminally indicted for acts they did not commit. Criminal guilt, as Jaspers notes, is individual and it cannot be transferred to someone else. Jaspers, however, also talks about political guilt, which “involving the deeds of statesmen and of the citizenry of a state, results in my having to bear the consequences of the deeds of the state whose power governs me and under whose order I live” (2000: 25). Along these lines, descendants can and should have the feelings Raveling mentioned. This is partly the consequence of being historically and socially embedded, as Sandel notes. There are some responsibilities that befall us without our consent, the fundamental one being that of taking up our own existence itself. Thus, the same way we celebrate when our national teams win trophies and are proud of the prowess of our history, the same it is morally appropriate to feel shame and revolt against the evils that affected our history, without being criminally reliable. Once this point is cleared, it opens the way of addressing the extent to which forgiveness should be applied and the relationship between descendants from victims and perpetrators. Because of this shared unconsent responsibility due to our historical embeddedness, descendants of perpetrators can offer apology to the victims or to their descendants in the name of their forefathers. Following the assumptions developed above on how the survivor can forgive on behalf of his/her kindreds, survivors or their descendants can accept apologies from the perpetrators’ descendants. Furthermore, since it is possible—and indeed it happens—that the victims’ descendants take revenge on the perpetrators’ offspring, the former should also be able to forgive the latter in the name of their forefathers. Here forgiveness accomplishes the same task as that on immediate victims, because it forswears resentment and the urge to revenge. Now, once forgiveness is offered, not only does it foreswear revenge from the victim on his/her actual perpetrator, but it also breaks down the cycle of violence that could have ushered in by revenge. Therefore, the survivor’s descendants would not be morally justified to search revenge where their forebears have forgiven. Forgiveness cements new basis for relationship between the offender and the victim—be they individuals, communities, or generations. The challenge here is that the forgiveness process, as we have repeated many times, has to obey the pace of every victim, rejecting any attempt to force him/her to forgive. The consequence is that in the same community there might be those who have already gone through the healing process and forgave, and others who have not yet reached that point. It can then result in tensions within the survivors’ community, some advocating for forgiveness while others resist because of where they are on their forgiving journey. The same kind of tensions can arise among the perpetrators’ community, insisting on the personal responsibility and rejecting the responsibility arising from the historical embeddedness.

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Such tensions are inevitable and are healthy, as long as they respect the suffering and acknowledge the effort made by those still struggling to forgive. On the one hand, they are inevitable because each victim has his/her pace and guiding principles that lead him/her to heeding the call to forgive and to forgiveness. On the other hand, such tensions are healthy because those still on the way of forgiveness can be encouraged by what their peers have achieved. Furthermore, a call to forgive and to forgiveness from one’s camp will likely be heard, as both parties share the historical background. Otherwise, a survivor can respond to the external appeal to hear the call with Jankélévitch words, that it is coming from “those who did neither suffer nor resist” (1986: 22). A similar discussion would be beneficial to the descendants of perpetrators also, as it would help shape a common identity as they search together the right attitude to respond to what they inherited from their history, engaging both individual and communal responsibility. In short, not only does forgiveness not require forgetting, but it also extends to future relationships between the descendants of victims and perpetrators, both within each community and between communities. This, however, does not go without some healthy tensions, as each individual journeys in his/her forgiveness process, and each generation shapes its individual and communal responsibility.

5.6

Being Thankful for the Forgiveness Asked and Offered

In the movie Woman on the genocide against Tutsi in Rwanda, Yolande explains how she did not get the chance to have the assassins of her family coming to ask for forgiveness. For her, without that experience of meeting those who killed her family, she could not tell whether she would be able to forgive. Thus, in order to check whether she was able to forgive, she hired workers from the family whose members had killed some members of her family. She pays health care for some and school fees for others.12 I was touched by Yolanda’s story because she says that she did not have a chance to see whether she could forgive. This acknowledgement of uncertainty to forgive from the survivor exemplifies the meaning of forgiveness that was developed here. It is a grace even for the forgiver. No one is sure whether he/she can forgive until the moment he/she finds her/himself in the situation and is surprised that indeed it is possible. Its exceptionality and purity is in this unpredictability of its advent in human affairs. After an injury and even so after crimes against humanity, the capacity to forgive is/should not be taken for granted. In that sense, it becomes a chance when one is asked for forgiveness and that is how we can understand Jankélévitch’s Merci to Raveling. The forgiveness asked by the perpetrator becomes a precious gift to the forgiver. Jankélévitch says that he had been waiting for such moment for 35 years. As to Tutu, he tells a story of a lady who, during the hearings

12

On BBC gahuzamuryango, accessed on April 16, 2019.

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of TRC, said that “we want to forgive, but we don’t know whom to forgive” (1999: 121). In other words, while there is possibility of forgiving without even being asked for forgiveness, when it happens, it comes as a gift filling a longing that has been there. That is why it deserves a Merci; a Thank you. Now if forgiveness is received as a gift for the survivor who forgives, one can imagine the situation of the one asking for forgiveness. For him/her, the forgiver is not obliged to access to the demand; he/she is free to forgive or not. Moreover, it requires humility to acknowledge one’s responsibility, go through the process of remorse and repentance, and finally dare to ask for forgiveness, with possibility of being rejected, or ignored. When none of these alternatives happens, but instead the wrongdoer receives forgiveness, she/he certainly receives it as a real grace, as a gift that one does not deserve at all. Such a miracle exemplifies again the unpredictability of forgiveness. He/she cannot claim it as a right, since even the forgiver is not its depository, although she/he is the one to deliver the wrongdoer. In such circumstances, the offered forgiveness deserves indeed a Merci par excellence. From this perspective, one gets the insight into the decency duty accompanying the forgiving process. Considering it on both sides as a grace to forgive and to be forgiven, it would surely appear awkward to refuse something that one is longing for. If it were to happen to refuse such a grace, a spectator, although he/she would not have right to condemn, would be surprised and doubt whether those engaged in the process of forgiveness were sincere in their desires. Contrarywise, when forgiveness is asked and offered, it is a moment of thankfulness on both sides, for the grace received and reciprocally offered as gift. Thus, without being a duty to him/her, and since revenge is not a viable option for rebuilding a reconciled political society, the call to forgive and to forgiveness is suggested to the survivor as a virtue to strive for, for his/her own liberation and that of the perpetrator. Received as a grace to be offered as a gift, forgiveness empowers the survivor to release and to be released through forgiving, and the perpetrator has a chance to be released through being forgiven. This process, of course, is not without huddles. As Tutu observes, “when you embark on the business of asking for and granting forgiveness, you are taking a risk” (1999: 268–9). However, it is a risk worth taking for “no future without forgiveness.” That is the reason why the call to forgive and to forgiveness is addressed to the survivor as a plea, encouragement, and a vocation in his/her contribution to a reconstruction of a reconciled society.

References Arendt, Hannah. 1958. Human Condition. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. ———. 2006. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. New York: Penguin Books. Bacon, Francis. 1908. Essays. New York: Charles Scribror’s Sons. Butler, Joseph. 1827. Fifteen Sermons Preached at Rolls Chapel. Grand Rapids: Christian Classics Ethereal Library. Christensen, Kitt. 2016. Revenge and Social Conflicts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Daye, Russell. 2004. Political Forgiveness: Lessons from South Africa. New York: MaryKnoll. Derrida, Jacques. 1999. Le siècle et le pardon. Entretien receuilli par Michel Wieviorka. Le Monde des débats. ———. 2002. Pardonner, l’impardonnable et l’imprescriptible. Paris: Galilée. ———. 2005. On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness. New York: Routledge. Elster, John. 1990. Norms of Revenge. Ethics 100: 862–885. French, Peter. 2001. The Virtues of Vengeance. Lawrence: The University of Kansas. Gobodo-Madikizela, Pumla. 2003. A Human Being Died that Night: A Story of Forgiveness. Claremont: David Philip. Govier, Trudy. 1999. Forgiveness and the Unforgivable. American Philosophical Quarterly 36: 59–75. ———. 2002. Revenge and Forgiveness. New York: Routledge. Griswold, Charles. 2007. Forgiveness: A Philosophical Exploration. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hampton, Jean. 1988. Forgiveness, Resentment and Hatred. In Forgiveness and Mercy, ed. Jeffrie Murphy and Jean Hampton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jaspers, Karl. 2000. The Question of German Guilt. New York: Fordham University Press. Margalit, Avishai. 2002. The Ethics of Memory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Minow, Martha. 1998. Between Vengeance and Forgiveness: Facing History after Genocide and Mass Violence. Boston: Beacon Press. Murphy, Jeffrie. 1988. Forgiveness and Resentment. In Forgiveness and Mercy, ed. Jeffrie Murphy and Jean Hampton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Murphy, Jeffrie, and Jean Hampton. 1988. Forgiveness and Mercy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nozick, Robert. 1982. Philosophical Explanations. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Okambawa, Wilfried. 2017. Pardon, une folie libératrice. Dakar: Publications Lux Africae. Rawls, John. 1971. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Ricoeur, Paul. 2000. La mémoire, l’histoire, l’oubli. Paris: Seuil. Sandel, Michael. 2008. Justice: What’s Right to Do? New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux. Seneca. 2010. Anger, Mercy, Revenge. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Tutu, Desmond. 1999. No Future Without Forgiveness. New York: Doubleday. Yankélévitch, Vladimir. 1986. L’impriscriptible; Pardonner? Dans l’honneur et la dignité. Paris: Seuil.

Chapter 6

The Promises and the Impossibility of Justice

Quand on rend justice, on met tout en balance. Corneille, Le Cid. The Nuremberg trials were seen as a necessary action. War crimes needed to be defined and punished, but the trials did not have an impact on us as survivors. Terna, a Holocaust Survivor, quoted by Yael Danielli. Any form of reparation cannot overcome the suffering of the individual. Clemens Nathan.

Abstract After the previous chapters have looked at a certain number of virtues important for the survivors’ contribution to the reconstruction and reconciliation of a post-conflict society, this sixth chapter focuses on the virtue of justice through the three branches of criminal, restorative, and reparative justice. Concerning criminal justice, this chapter follows Arendt and others who have argued that there is no possibility of justice for acts such as the crimes against humanity and genocides, because such crimes are beyond human practical reasoning. That being the case, the chapter attempts to suggest another moral reason for trails where there is the impossibility of justice. Concerning the restorative component, its analysis suggests modesty in promising the restoration of the survivors to their previous state. The same observation and advice are highlighted with reparative justice, because there cannot be a full repair of what has been destroyed by crimes against humanity and crimes of war. The chapter proceeds by examining whether such efforts of justice are not in contradiction with amnesty and forgiveness. A nuanced analysis shows that partial and conditional amnesty is not in contradiction with the survivors’ thirst for justice, while blanket amnesty is shown to be morally wrong and unjust toward the victims and survivors. As to forgiveness, the chapter illustrates that it does not contradict the quest for justice, provided forgiveness is not imposed by an external body, or pressured on survivors. Keywords Criminal justice · Restorative justice · Reparative justice · Justice and forgiveness · Justice and amnesty · The irreparable © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 F. Ingiyimbere, Virtues from Hell: Survivors of Conflicts and the Reconstruction-Reconciliation Processes, Philosophy and Politics - Critical Explorations 20, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89173-2_6

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The Quest for Justice

It seems to be a moral obligation that if there is a breach of order, it has to be restored through some mechanisms, whether by restoration/restitution of what is destroyed/ damaged, or by punishing the author of the wrong. The two mechanisms might even go hand in hand. When it comes to interpersonal relations, whereby one is harmed, such restoration can take a personal revenge or resort to formal systems of justice. In fact, Ronald Waldron et al. observe that criminal justice came to replace private vengeance, because the society believed that a harm to any of its members affected the whole (2009: 11). In other words, while judicial system is different from the personal revenge because it intervenes as a third party, it still is built on the idea of satisfying the vengeance of the wronged party. That is why, ideally, it has to be fair to both the victim and the perpetrator, procedurally as well as in the outcome. But most importantly, it has to achieve a general feeling that what the perpetrator suffers is, in a certain way, proportional to the harm he/she inflicted to the victim. This general feeling of fairness might be tolerated when biased against the perpetrator of the harm, but rarely will it be easily taken when there is a sense that the victim is not vindicated. Whatever the form this action takes, it works on the assumption that there is proportionality between the harm suffered by the victim and the punishment inflicted on the perpetrator. Hence, the quote from Corneille’s Le Cid that “when justice is rendered, it puts everything into balance.” On this model, one can understand the talion law, whose principle is an eye for eye and tooth for tooth, a life for a life. Taken at its first value, it would mean just that: to restore an equilibrium that is broken when one is harmed. As to its applicability, we have already shown its r-evolutionary contribution to moral reasoning in the previous chapter. Now, the paradigmatic case of our endeavor is about the gross human rights violations which cause crimes of war, crimes against humanity, and genocides. In this instance, is it possible to expect justice understood on that model of proportionality between harm and punishment to be applied? Could it even be morally fathomable to personally render what the perpetrator did as a way of justice? Certainly not. If it might be—and is—morally reasonable to impose capital punishment to someone who has also killed (through personal vengeance or a judicial process), it would be morally repulsive and indeed wrong to think of torturing, raping or decimating a whole people to avenge one’s beloved ones. We are beyond the proportional principle underling the quest for justice. In addition, if formal criminal justice emerged from the replacement of private vengeance, would the former be possible when the latter is not thinkable? Put otherwise, is criminal justice equipped to deal with gross human rights violations and all the crimes that originate from them? What could possibly be the proportional punishment for someone who planned and executed a genocide? For someone who organized a gang-rape as weapon of war? Aren’t we back to Arendt’s observation that such crimes exceed our practical reason, and therefore we cannot punish them? On the other hand, though, should we leave them unpunished? What should be done in such instances?

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That is the quandary that we face when we confront massive human rights violations and the yearning for justice, and it does not end there. For methodologically, we set to look for the kinds of strength remaining to the survivor if there is to be hope of reconstruction and reconciliation. Being the most political virtue per excellence, as Aristotle would say, there cannot be a stable and reconciled post-crisis society without a functioning judiciary system. How will such a society emerge if there is no possibility of punishing crimes that have been committed? In the face of these questions, Transitional Justice theories and practices have tried to imagine other forms of justice beside the criminal justice, such as restorative and reparative justice. But even at this level, questions remain unanswered. Are they really more effective in addressing the quest for justice after egregious human rights violations than criminal justice is? Can they offer a better way of achieving the general feeling that it has been fair to both the victim/survivor and the perpetrator? These questions are just indicative of how justice systems might promise to keep everything in balance, and yet when confronted to heinous crimes such as crimes against humanity and war, there seems to be impossibility of justice. This chapter is dedicated to this tension, exploring in which sense a survivor can be required to practice justice and could ask for justice. We shall look at it through five main points. In the first place, we will look at the dilemma between the need of justice and the scale beyond justice of the crimes at stake. The second point will examine the merits of restorative justice, while the third part will analyze the contours of reparation. In the fourth place, it will be question of amnesty and justice and we will finish by considering the place of forgiveness in such a yearn for justice.

6.2

Crimes Beyond Punishment?

In his The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky relates a tragic story of a retired general who leashes his hounds on a small boy who had hurt one of them, and the dogs evidently tear the boy into pieces in front of his mother. Then Ivan, one of the characters in the novel, asks his brother Alyosha: “Well—what did he deserve? To be shot? To be shot for the satisfaction of our moral feeling?” And Alyosha answers “To be shot” (498). This satisfaction of “moral feeling,” which arises even in the most innocent person embodied by Alyosha, arises from the general intuition that justice is to make things even. Where there is justice, things are in equilibrium, says Corneille. In our example, the general had destroyed an innocent life, he had to pay it by his. That is the moral feeling. It is as if for every wrong done there has to be a price to pay back, and that there is such an equivalent price. Once more, the general formula of this understanding of justice is the talion law, whereby an eye is paid by an eye; a tooth by a tooth. However, to recall what we have already explored, the talion law is a progress in moral reasoning because it leads not only to the outcome— rendering the same harm—but also the way you render such a harm. Suppose the tooth is harmed by a toothless person, what would be the equivalent? It might even be true that the harm was inflicted by accident, rather than being an intentional act.

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The moral feeling of justice as rendering even changes. For instance, in Dostoevsky’s example, if the hurt-hound had, in return, injured the boy, our moral feeling would not have been satisfied by the General deserving to be shot. There has to be an established responsibility in the harm, because the paying-back act has to be intentional. This need of establishing responsibility without bias for every party involved explains the difference between vengeance—the victim taking into his/her hands the satisfaction—and the retribution that requires an institution that regulates the whole judicial process. Susan Sharpe notes that there are three primary attitudes toward injustice: revenge—when the victim decides to pay back the injury; retribution—when a responsible authority pays back the injury on behalf of the victim; and repair—when the offender is the one who pays back to the victim (2007: 25–6). In all these three instances, the assumption is that the unbalance can be corrected by paying back. Usually, in case of harm, the correction of inflicted injury is done through a punishment. According to Lode Walgrave, punishment has three main components: “hard treatment, the intention of inflicting it and the link with the wrong committed” (2007: 566). In the punishment, there always has to be a pain intentionally aimed at and inflicted on the perpetrator of the wrong, as a way of correcting the imbalance caused by the injustice. That pain has to be linked to the wrong done. Otherwise, it would not be a punishment. It occurs as a painful consequence of a wrong done, and it has to be purposely administered to the offender. Nonetheless, the idea behind this understanding of punishment is the belief that there is a proportion between the harm inflicted to the victim and the pain endured by the offender. It might not be easy to measure with precision this proportion between the pain caused by the harm to the victim and the one caused by the punishment to the offender. However, the general moral feeling we talked about is satisfied when a wrong is punished, and the equilibrium restored. Intuitively, when due process is followed and punishment inflicted, there is a certain sense of justice done, because there were expectations from both the victim and the offender, as well as the general public. A sense of proportionality always underlies our expectations of justice. That is why we can ask for paying back; we believe that every offender, once his/her responsibility is established, she/he should and is able to pay back. These expectations, however, remain in the limits of our practical reason, whereas our reflection is concerned with cases of gross human rights violations, with crimes against humanity and war crimes and genocide. Such crimes are not only against humanity, they are outside humanity. They exceed practical reason in its moral reasoning, categorizing crimes, wrongs, and their correspondents. Following Kant, Hannah Arendt sees them as radical evils whose remedy is Jesus’s suggestion that authors of such crimes be thrown into the sea with a heavy stone on their neck, so that they do not return on the surface, lest we be tempted to call them names or recall them in our memories. It is the same idea in the Kirundi names of crimes against humanity as ivyaha vy’agahomerabunwa; ivyaha bitagira izina; literally, crimes that shut up mouths or crimes without names. For indeed they defy our logical capacities of making sense of events. Naming them would be integrating them in our ordinary language, taking them as normal happenings in our ordinary lives. Yet, as

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we saw, victims of such ordeal cannot find words to translate their experience. The ordinary language is short of words to say what happened. Here then arises the challenging question: can justice apply in such instances? Can there be justice where no words are possible? What can be the proportional punishment of someone who organizes and implements a plan to exterminate a whole people? What can be the paying back of someone who enslaves a whole race? What can be a punishment for someone who organizes gang-rape of all females of people, from babies to old ladies? Few years after the genocide against Tutsi in Rwanda, some of the masterminds were short in Kigali in a stadium full of people who came to watch. Was it really proportional to what the victims and survivors endured? Did the shooting even convey any idea of what victims and survivors had suffered during the 100 days? These crimes are simply beyond our expectations of justice because they are beyond what we expect humans to do. While no one can predicate what freedom can do, these kinds of acts are not in the orbit of what a free and rational human person can do, although only rational beings can actually commit such ignominious acts! They are indeed crimes against humanity, not only as those that target the humanness—to recall Jankélévitch’s words—those aiming at destroying humanity as such, but also as those which humanity cannot integrate in itself understanding. They are out, beyond, outside, the human realm. In that line, if and as justice is a human virtue, both individually and politically, these crimes are outside justice, because there cannot be a proportional punishment for them. When Arendt says that we cannot forgive what we cannot punish, it is because to punish requires judgment, and it is a truism to say that judgment, be it moral, legal, and logical, is an act of reason. Something beyond reason is not subject to human justice. We cannot claim to render justice about these crimes, because we do not, and we should not expect them to happen to humanity. When they happen, we are short of means to correct them. We can never, never again reestablish the equilibrium; we can never pay back. There is nothing theoretically and practically possible to reestablish the broken order. It is damaged forever. It is already a pain and hard to believe that they came from human beings. They make a moral agent shiver when thinking that they are possible and actually happened, and fall into “fear and trembling” when reality recalls him/her that because it happened once, it can happen again. That is why the only possible attitude is the wish that anybody with such thought and capable of such acts be thrown into the sea with a stone on the neck, but this is not justice; it is neither revenge nor retribution; there is no proportion. It is a simple wish for a practical reason short of arguments. But then, what should be done for a post-conflict society? Should it just abandon the very idea of justice as a response to those crimes? Certainly not. Frederick Terna quoted in the epigraph and who is a survivor of many concentration camps, says: “we wanted to know whether the commanders and troops of the SS of the camps where we had been inmates were captured and brought to trial. . .The Nuremberg trials were seen as a necessary action. War crimes needed to be defined and punished. . .” (2009: 68). This need of justice through bringing the perpetrators to court is shared by many survivors. At the same time, however, the latter are confronted with possibility and feasibility of justice, as well as the fact that no

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justice system can ever adjudicate what such crimes destroy in humanity and in human society. For instance, even for normal cases, society recovering from massive human rights violations suffers from lack of institutions to administer justice. Human and material resources are missing, and even the institutional remnant is usually fraught with corruption. Priscilla Hayner is right when she remarks that “fair and decent trials are rare in post-atrocities countries” (2011: 92). But there have been ad hoc tribunals such as Nuremberg and Tokyo Tribunals, the special Tribunal For Rwanda and for former Yugoslavia. Today we have the International Criminal Court (ICC), specifically dedicated to punishing such crimes. But still, can we really say that there is justice to make even the situation and re-establish social equilibrium? Could there be possibility of trying perpetrators of war crimes and crimes against humanity which, sometimes, involve thousands of people, with possibility that a section of the society was opposed to another? For instance, it is said that it would have taken more than 100 years to bring to court all those who were arrested for participating in the genocide against Tutsi in Rwanda (Bachmann 2005: 143). This is to say that, even if it were to be accepted that justice is possible for such crimes, its implementation would remain problematic. Another example, some of the judicial systems do not include capital punishment as a possible punishment. While there are good reasons to dispute its fairness and could even be discarded by reflecting on the talion law, capital punishment can be considered in reasoning about justice as re-establishing the equilibrium by paying back an injury. In any of these instances, though, can there be satisfaction of the moral feeling that justice has been rendered when few individuals are punished for wiping out millions? Would there be any mechanism or any punishment that could produce the moral satisfaction that justice has been done in such cases? To push the question further, should we wish to see it happen, to have a judicial system that could claim to render even a situation of crimes against humanity? I wonder whether it is a good idea to have established a permanent court dedicated to such crimes, for it might lead us to consider them as ordinary as any other common crime, thus concealing their exceptionality that challenges our moral reasoning. There is a risk of banalizing them—to once more paraphrase Arendt’s Banality of evil—and to accommodate them in our judicial systems, with the consequence that we would then believe that we are delivering justice where, actually, justice is not only impossible, but unthinkable. Hence the feeling of deception for survivors about these trials, particularly when they take place outside the contexts and places of those violations, and it is unfortunately the case with many of these international tribunals. Terna underscores that “the trials did not have an impact on us as survivors. . .Justice was a far-away concept. It certainly was not available on a personal or local level. The Nuremberg trials were a distant happening, important of the abstract concept of international law, but did not touch us personally then” (Danieli 2009: 68). Another Holocaust survivor remarks about the same trials that “the only interest was among the warring powers. It was not about people or anything to do with racism. They dealt only with war: who gave the orders? Who was responsible for the outbreak of the war? How were prisoners treated?” (Danieli 2009: 69). The same complaints are shared with

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many other survivors who do not feel that justice is done for them through these international tribunals, whereas the local judicial systems are incapable of delivering “fair and decent trials.” They are far from them and they do not feel associated in the process. Even with an institution such as ICC which has a section dedicated to victims, there cannot be possibility of contacting all of them. Moreover, when survivors acknowledge the fact of indicting the perpetrators, questions remain as to how the indictment satisfies the moral feeling of the justice done. The same Terna observes that Holocaust survivors could see the importance of indictment, but then would ask: ‘“what is it going to do?” “Can it bring one person back to life”?’ (ibid. 68). These questions underline the gap between the yearning for justice and its impossibility when it comes to the kind of crimes we are dealing with. Its incapacity of bringing one person back to life highlights its incapacity to compensate the loss. As already mentioned in the introduction, the proportional principle is blown off when one person or a group of persons plan and implement the extermination of a whole people or any other gross human rights violation. Once that principle is missing, the quest of justice is condemned to remain unquenched. Yet, that quest is there and survivors want justice; an impossible justice. What could then be a reasonable justification of holding trials, which do not satisfy the moral feeling of a justice done? Perhaps it is worth trying to think differently about the goal of criminal justice, not as paying back injury in order to restore an equilibrium that has been affected by the harm, since in the present case, it cannot be restored. In such cases then, what if one approaches trials as ensuring the protection of an innocent from being unjustly condemned? Dostoevsky puts in the mouth of one of his characters that “better acquit ten guilty men than punish one innocent” (1574). This maxim may offer a reasonable justification for trials after massive human rights violations and rekindle our moral expectations of justice. For while justice understood as restoring the social balance is excluded by the magnitude of the crimes, it remains the fact that the survivors’ unspeakable harm might lead them to the urge for vengeance if nothing is institutionally arranged. As Jeffrie Murphy has shown, “criminal law seeks to satisfy the desire for vengeance” (1988: 3). From that perspective, although not affording the feeling of justice, the survivors can still feel vindicated at the best of what can be done and renounce to revenge. Furthermore, the harm inflicted on victims during gross human rights violations is always beyond the physical realm, as it is also a message of contempt that affects the self-respect of the victim. This is more so in generalized human rights violations whereby, often, they are accompanied by social stigmatization and discrimination against the targeted group. Letting perpetrators walk free would be, for the survivor, a message that the society as a whole does not consider him/her as worthy member with equal dignity deserving the same protection and preservation. It is, therefore, a social obligation toward the survivor to try the perpetrator, even when we know that no justice can be achieved in such instances. The consequence of such measures is that revenge is forsworn even if resentment might subsist. By forswearing revenge, a venue for not condemning an innocent is opened at two levels. First, usually crimes against humanity and crimes of war occur

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through the participation of more than one person, and they target a certain social category. If no attempt of punishment is done, revenge will aim at the whole suspected groups, with evident risks of affecting innocent persons. Yet, we saw with Jaspers that there can be shared political culpability, but criminal culpability is personal and it has to be established as such. Therefore, though limited in their reach in terms of justice, trials are necessary for preventing a collective revenge, which can ignite another circle of violence. The second level is the judicial process itself. Survivors are usually frustrated against international tribunals for being far-away and money-consuming for so meager results. At the same time, being also moral agents wishing to reestablish a stable society based on decent judicial system, survivors desire to see due process in trying the perpetrators. The legal principle of “innocent until proven guilty” shows its force here and it operates on the assumption of Dostoevsky maxim: an innocent is worth all the money and the time required just to avoid that he/she be condemned unjustly. If one innocent person is or can be spared through these trials, then they are morally justified to be held, even when they are not able to correct injustices by restoring the previous equilibrium. It is true that risks are high that some perpetrators might walk free from courtrooms, since the legal procedure has its own rules and requirements, which have to be satisfied in order to condemn someone. Nevertheless, it is also through those legal snares that an innocent person can be cleared. Thus, proposing justice as protection of the innocent instead of re-establishing balance offers a reasonable purpose of the trials in postatrocities societies longing for impossible justice. Now, it is by looking at the shortcomings of criminal justice in situations of gross human rights violations such as apartheid, that some authors started looking for alternatives, such as restorative justice, to address the quest for justice. As Desmond Tutu claims, criminal justice is not enough to heal a wounded nation; “the law alone cannot repair the scars of war” (cited by Kristjánsdottir 2009: 168). But does restorative justice offer a better option to the survivor to feel morally vindicated? The next section focuses on this question.

6.3

Restorative Justice and Gross Human Rights Violations

“Let other nations think of retribution and the letter of the law, we will cling to the spirit and the meaning—the salvation and the reformation of the lost.” This is what Dostoevsky, once more, puts into the mouth of one of his characters in The Brothers Karamazov, and it translates fairly well the ambitions of restorative movement. According to its founder Howard Zehr (1990, 2003), the concept of restorative justice developed from a frustration about the criminal justice system. The latter expropriates the crime, since a crime that harms a victim is understood to be against the state, and doing so, the system excludes the victim of the crime from its vindication. In the criminal justice, victim is summoned only when there is a need of his/her testimony. Otherwise, the whole process is focused on the offender who is pitched against the might of the state, analyzing what he/she did so that she/he may

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pay back and/or be isolated from the society until he/she is reformed and rehabilitated. The offender is perceived negatively as a threat to the society. The restorative movement proposes an alternative view and role of justice. First, it claims that crime does not affect first the state. It rather hurts the victim, the offender, and the community in their mutual and reciprocal relationships. That is why restorative justice puts the victim on the central stage1 and strives to make possible the encounter between the victim and all who have been affected by the crime. As Gerry Johnstone and Daniel Van Ness note, restorative justice tries to bring “together as many stakeholders affected by a crime as possible” (2007: 8). The aim is the restoration of these relationships between the victim, the offender, and the society as a whole that have been affected. That is why, instead of focusing only on the negative action of the offender, restorative justice considers the latter as a moral agent capable of positive and constructive action (Radzik 2007: 192), who can make right the wrong he/she has done. From this perspective, the punitive response has to integrate “both compassion and condemnation” (Daly and Stubbes 2007: 156). Restorative justice seeks to mend the effects of the crime on the persons and the community in which the crime happened. Thus, while the victim is central to the restorative justice, the offender is not left out. His/her well-being is a concern as is that of the victim, which imparts the well-being of the community. In Tony Marshall’s words, restorative justice is “a process whereby all the parties with a stake in a particular offense come together to resolve collectively how to deal with the aftermath of the offense and its implications for the future” (Marshall 1995: 5).2 Beyond the verdict of criminal justice, restorative justice aims to heal and mend the broken relationships between the victim, the offender, and the community and restore the dignity of all the stakeholders. This outlook changes the goal of justice. According to Kay Pranis, restorative justice operates a paradigmatic shift from “justice as getting even” to “justice as getting well” (2007: 60), because of this attention paid to the well-being of all those affected by the crime, instead of isolating the offender. The proponents of restorative justice believe that criminal justice is still animated by the desire for revenge and does not improve the betterment of those hurt by the crime. For instance, Paul Roberts argues that public executions are illustration of retributive justice as a “depraved” revenge (2003: 125). As to Zehr, he contends that prison is not the place where to learn values; it is rather a dehumanizing structure (1990: 35; 37). Thus, in the line of Dostoevsky’s observation, for restorative justice, judicial system should not be only for punishment. It also and mainly has to strive for “the salvation and reformation of the lost.”

1

Kerry Clamp calls attention to this victim-centeredness of restorative justice, in the sense that it creates imbalance between the stakeholders of restorative justice. In her own words, she says, “As such, the notion that ‘victim-centred’ justice is restorative justice becomes questionable given that it creates a further imbalance, albeit one that favours victims, rather than prioritising all stakeholders equally.” (Clamp 2014: 4). I thank one of the reviewers for recommending this author. 2 I am grateful to one of the reviewers who recommended this author.

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Some of its proponents even think of restorative justice as capable of replacing the criminal justice altogether. Johnston and Van Ness suggest that the goal of restorative justice should be to replace criminal justice with “community basedreparative justice and moralizing social control” (2007: 5). However, others are more nuanced and they recognize that there are cases that are beyond the restorative mechanisms and, therefore, have to be referred to criminal justice. In such instances, it cannot completely replace criminal justice (Zehr 2003: 60; Garrielides 2007: 132). Still other voices raise some criticisms against restorative justice. For instance, Christopher Bennett questions how restorative justice deals with recalcitrant, since it works on the assumption that all affected parties participate and cooperate in the process. As he puts it, “how far can it be right to compel such individuals to participate in restorative justice processes against their will?” He goes further to ask whether the society has a right to get involved into the relationship between the victim and the offender. And if it does, how can such involvement be justified? (2007: 258). Hennessey Hayes, on his part, observes that restorative justice is not mainly concerned with deterring future offending (2007: 427). Ann Sketton and Makubetse Sekhonyane claim that restorative justice might create conflict with the rights of the victims (2007: 282–3), and James Dignan expresses doubts about the performances of restorative justice (2003: 138). Kerry Clamp and Jonathan Doak (2012) push the critique further, showing that the extension of restorative justice concept and practice does not take into account the transitional settings, which are quite different from the individual offender– victim relationships. For instance, whereas restorative justice paradigm was born in democratic societies, transitional settings are concerned with nation-building and reconciliation of nascent democratic societies without institutional supports, comparable to those found in more stable democratic societies. Another difference is that the inception of restorative justice was meant for individual victim and individual offender of a given community. On the contrary, transitional contexts sometimes involve state or other institutions as perpetrators of criminal activities, which destroyed communities themselves, without talking of individuals and social fabric. In such cases, restorative justice is not capacious enough to deal with institutional actors of criminal activities such crimes of war, crimes against humanity, and genocides (Clamp 2014: 6; Clamp and Doak 2012: 350).3 Although Gerry Johnston (2007) and Andrew Von Hirsch (2003) try to address the main criticisms leveraged against restorative justice, there are still valid questions to be taken into account when one is considering its pertinence in the context of gross human rights violations. For if this model raises questions in the normal criminal justice, such queries are heightened in societies which lack the minimum of institutional structures to administer justice. Yet, one of its advocates argues that restorative justice is “a sophisticated theory of transition” (Braithwaite 2003: 4), and many

3

I thank again one of the reviewers for recommending these readings.

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transitional societies have adopted it through TRCs .4 Hence, while its proponents argue that restorative justice processes are more effective than criminal justice (Garrielides 2007), it is still a question whether it can handle better than criminal justice the cases of crimes against humanity and crimes of war. Can restorative processes produce in moral agents the satisfaction of the moral feeling that justice is done? Before dealing with these questions, one is to recall the outcome of the first section of this chapter, which showed that criminal justice is not able to try all the suspected persons. Even if it were, there would never be such moment whereby one would feel morally satisfied that justice has been done. Stefanie Heinrich rightly observes that there is impossibility of justice in societies with widespread violations of human rights (2008: 4). Can then restorative justice succeed where criminal justice has failed? In addressing these worries, the first obstacles arise from the consideration of the concept “restoration” itself. It underlines the idea of returning to the previous good conditions. And as already underscored, restorative justice aims at mending the relationships between victim, offender, and the community that have been damaged by the crime. It strives to restore them. Yet, even at the level of personal crime, there are certain damages that can never be restored, for instance, the murder (Garrielides 2007; Clamp 2014; Clamp and Doak 2012). That being the case, how could there be restoration in situations of crimes against humanity and crimes of war, which are marked by massacres and massive abuses? Furthermore, gross human rights violations shatter not only the life of the victims but also the environment and the social fabric. More than often, the conflict takes place in midst of the community itself, opposing a section of a society against another. As Clamp notes, “both sides of the divide will often have committed offences against each another” (Clamp and Doak 2012: 347). Would it not be too ambitious to claim that there can be restoration of all that has been destroyed in such circumstances? From this perspective, one is to be modest when talking about restoration in the process of justice. On the other hand, though, restorative justice is right to point out that a crime affects more than the victim. With widespread human rights violations, the destruction of the victims targets a section of the community, which implies that the social fabric is seriously damaged. In that sense, any quest for justice as a political virtue has to take into account the healing of the community as well. Moreover, since criminal justice is in a practical impossibility of bringing to court all those who got involved into the crimes, looking for alternatives or supplement to criminal justice is a good initiative. Restorative justice can play such a role, but it has to remain modest. Perhaps that is what Zehr does when he asserts that restorative justice “seeks to repair the harm as much as possible” (2003: 21). Because it cannot pretend to restore all that has been destroyed. From this perspective, restoration is about doing the possible, instead of promising to bring back the original good conditions. The latter might happen, but it is not the rule. In some instances, restoration might be

4 Priscilla Hayner (2011) gives an excellent overview of almost all the TRCs at the time of the publication of her book.

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impossible or simply undesirable. Some authors,5 for example, argue that, for postconflict societies, restoration as going back to what was before is not necessary a good idea, since the previous state might have been characterized by notorious injustices and discrimination against some members of the society. Other questions come from the very core of the restorative justice, that is, being victim-centered. “Victim and victimization” are contested and malleable notions (Dignan 2005: 35; Zehr 1990: 56). Ideally, a victim is the one who has been harmed by an offender. This would be the direct victim. However, consequences of such harm can gravely affect the dependents of the direct victim, such that they also become victims. For instance, a murder of a father will have consequences on the wife and the children. In societies with strong community ties, it will also affect other family members and all those who depended on the victim. Now, as the process of restorative justice aims at involving all those who have stakes in the conflict, where will be the limit of those to be considered as victims? More so when talking about victim, in the context of political violence, where segments of the society are confronting each other. Victim and victimization and their content will depend on who shapes the dominant narrative. Although “some people who start fights lose them, ending up victims” (Dignan 2005: 20), it is not obvious that all those who take part in the fights will recognize each other’s victimhood. That is why these notions of victim-victimization are very much susceptible to political manipulation (Green 2007: 184), as they participate in political legitimation or de-legitimation of those in power. The winners—who naturally will be in power—will likely refuse any responsibility in the abuses and violations of human rights that occurred. If ever they acknowledge them, they will still downplay them by the moral standing of their cause. For instance, in South Africa whose restorative process is considered as a success story, African National Congress (ANC) challenged the TRC when the latter tried to point out ANC’s violations of human rights. In other words, in cases like this of ANC, there is refusal to acknowledge some victims who may end up being excluded from the whole restorative processes. On the side of the losers, they may blame the victor’s rhetoric, and also refuse to acknowledge the victimhood of the survivors. All this development is meant to show how the notions of victim and victimization are not as clear as one would expect at the first sight. This fact raises the question on how restorative process is relevant to rendering justice in the context of gross human rights violations. Would/does it lead to the general moral feeling that justice has been done? Most of the time, restorative process in post-atrocities societies is implemented through the so-called TRCs. These institutions are a result of political agreements and they are legally established (Hayner 2011). Hence, as a political compromise whose main goal is to achieve reconciliation through truth-telling, they define who will be recognized as victim. Now, by this very act of defining who is a victim, some de facto victims are excluded from the list, when they do not fit into the official 5

Jennifer Llewellyn discusses this objection (see Llewellyn 2007: 358–9).

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definition. As Heike Niebergall notes, in this context, care is given to the victim who falls into the legal framework (2009: 149). Furthermore, in many instances, these TRCs emphasize the participation of perpetrators in uncovering the truth about abuses and violations of human rights, in exchange of amnesty. That is why, while Jennifer Llewellyn claims that TRC is the best choice for justice (2007: 357), she also underlines that some critics see it as sacrifice of justice (2007: 351). Llewellyn tries to correct some of these shortcomings of being victim-centered of restorative justice, by saying that restorative justice is “relationship centered” (2007: 356). The question, however, remains, since the constitutive elements of those relationships have to be determined. If we cannot determine who is the victim, it will also affect the determination of the relationships that are to be mended. Another important point in the same line is that, in some social conflicts with widespread human rights violations, decisions, and operations are directed by an organization, such that it is not easy to assign responsibility, as decision-making is in the hands of the few. Eichmann case is just one example of perpetrators who hide behind their work for a system beyond their control in order to decline any responsibility. If the system is recognized as the perpetrator, it becomes difficult to see how restorative process would proceed to restore relationship. One can respond to this objection, saying that all organizations have a representation, which has to take the responsibility. While the response is taken, it remains that the responsibility has to be established individually in order to summon the responsible of the system. This raises, once more, the question of the recalcitrant who would not want to cooperate freely. Finally, the goal of restorative justice is to bring the victim, the offender, and the community together. For a particular case, this is doable and may yield satisfying results. But for the situations we are concerned with of crimes against humanity with massacres and extermination of sections of the society, it becomes problematic, for four main reasons. First, victims are gone, offenders are denying and the community has disintegrated because of the conflict. Second, we fall into the same practical impossibility already encountered with criminal justice, of listening to every victim. Third, as already illustrated, it is not easy to talk about those experiences, and fourth some persons affected by those crimes refuse to identify themselves as victims, because such identification connotes vulnerability and helplessness. Following all the reasons exposed, does a survivor of gross human rights violations feel that justice is done through the process of restorative justice? As already acknowledged, restorative justice processes intervene not only because of incapability of criminal justice to bring to court all perpetrators (Oette 2009: 219) but also because of the shift of emphasis from the offender to the victim. It is also the conviction of restorative justice proponents such as Tutu that criminal justice cannot repair all scars of war and other social conflicts. From this point of view, restorative process opens another venue more promising for a post-conflict society, as it seeks to involve victims, offenders, and the whole community. Survivors might feel recognized in what they suffered, instead of being only used as witness in the court of law where they may be exposed “to new abuse by the

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perpetrator or his/her associate,” as Jamie O’Connell has shown (2005: 335). Narrating one’s story can be liberating and ushering in a process of healing. At the same time, however, the concern that narrating one’s pain can lead to a re-traumatization has to be kept in mind. Furthermore, while appreciating being victim-centered, some victims may still want the criminal justice to take its course, in addition to the processes of restorative justice. Hayner observes that “many South Africans still demanded strict justice and punishment for their perpetrators, despite the TRC” (2011: 3). Amy Gutmann and Dennis Tompson go further to challenge the possibility of justice outside the courtroom. According to them, “justice is not achieved when a murderer or rapist publicly acknowledges his crimes but is not brought to trial and suffers no further punishment” (2004: 25). Moreover, as the restorative process involves the perpetrator, it is not an easy task to balance the latter’s interests with those of the victim (Hudson 2003: 188). All these elements highlight that restorative justice has to be modest in its ambitions. The stakes have to be realistic in terms of outcomes, especially in situations of gross violations of human rights. That is why these remarks lead us to examine another pillar of transitional process: the reparative justice. Can we really claim to repair what has been destroyed by widespread human rights violations? The coming section takes up this question.

6.4

Repairing the Irreparable?

Like restorative justice, reparative justice claims to be victim-centered. It even contends to be solely victim-centered, and the international community has developed guidelines in that regard (UN 2005). Entitled Basic Principles and Guidelines on the Right to a Remedy and Reparation for Victims of Gross Violations of International Human Rights Law and Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law, they take a step further what a UN Declaration of 1985 had already initiated. For instance, one point common to both documents is the definition of victims as: persons who individually or collectively suffered harm, including physical or mental injury, emotional suffering, economic loss or substantial impairment of their fundamental rights, through acts or omissions that constitute gross violations of international human rights law, or serious violations of international humanitarian law. Where appropriate, and in accordance with domestic law, the term ‘victim’ also includes the immediate family or dependents of the direct victim and persons who have suffered harm in intervening to assist victims in distress or to prevent victimization. (UN 1985, no 1–2; UN 2005, no 8)

As we can see, this definition of victim, which is the anchor of the whole reparative process, brings back the huddles already encountered with the restorative justice, of identifying the victim. As victims are “persons who individually or collectively suffered a harm,” does it imply that reparation is also to be individually or collectively attributed? Does it imply collective victimhood? On the other hand, as widespread violations of human rights affect more than just one individual, it is

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obvious that the community suffers as well, not only through the harm of the members but also in the communal institutions. This collective dimension of victimhood will have to be addressed later, because as we already saw, in situation whereby those who started the war lose it and become victims, how will this collective victimhood work? Furthermore, in some conflicts, the perpetrators are from the same community. For example, Kristjánsdóttir observes how it is not easy to identify victims and perpetrators in the North Uganda crisis, because children were forced to kill their relatives (2009: 181). For a process that is victim-centered, how would it disentangle who is victim and who is not? How will a collective reparation be only for victims, excluding perpetrators of the same community? If it were possible, would it contribute to the process of reconciliation and reconstruction of a post-conflict society? Those are questions that we will have to tackle later. The second part of the definition also raises some questions. First, it is no longer universal. It only applies “where appropriate and according to domestic law.” In this situation, the family, the dependents, or persons who suffered harm protecting the direct victim are included in the definition. Now, in cases of crimes of war, crimes against humanity and genocides, we are talking about the survivors because many direct victims died. In this situation, would it not be unfair not to give reparation to the surviving members of his/her family or his/her dependents? On the other hand, in case of two sections of society opposing each other, should a person from the “perpetrator group” be considered as victim on the same footing as the direct victim? On the other side, not considering and recognizing his/her harm, would it not be to jeopardize the whole reconciliation process? In other words, should it be “where appropriate and according to domestic law” or rather, be stated as universal as the other segment of the definition of a victim? I raise these worries because they will have a bearing on the application of reparation. But before that, the same 2005 UN resolution defines what reparation is. According to it, “reparation should be proportional to the gravity of the violations and the harm suffered” (no 15), and it comprises fives forms: “restitution, compensation, rehabilitation, satisfaction, and guarantee of non-repetition” (no 18).6 Restitution is about restoring the victim to the original situation, when possible (no 19), and compensation is for “any economically assessable damage” (no 20). Rehabilitation concerns the medical, psychological, legal, and social services (no 21), and the satisfaction and guarantees of non-repetition dimensions are rather lengthy and announce suggestions that are to be followed, “where applicable.” For instance, satisfaction includes the truth about what happened and the search for the disappeared, an official act that restores “dignity, reputation and rights of the victims,” public apology and commemoration, punishment of the perpetrators, and inclusion of “an accurate account of the violation” in education (no 22). As to the guarantees of non-repetition, it is basically about putting in place a society where there is the rule of law. Indeed, they concern the control of the military and security forces by the civilians, the independence of the judiciary, abiding by and promoting

6

These are explained at length from no 19 to 23 of the same document.

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international standards, law reform and protection of certain categories of persons, such as media professionals and human rights defenders (no 23). As one can see, according to this UN resolution, reparation covers a quite large field of interests. But there are some problematic suggestions. The first one is the proportionality that is supposed to guide all the five components. Is it possible to repair proportionally what a survivor of gross human violations suffered? As Cristián Correa et al. note, it is already difficult to implement reparation whatsoever after mass violence (2009: 387), how could it be proportional? While reparation is a “right owed to survivors” (Ferstman et al. 2009: 9), I agree with former authors that reparation programs should “avoid to open much hope for victims” (Correa et al. 2009: 391). Another problematic proposition is that “restitution should restore the victim to the original situation.” It is true that they add “whenever possible.” However, is there any situation where it would be possible to restore a survivor of gross human rights violations to his/her former situation? So much has been destroyed and discarded in all areas of life that it would be pretentious to claim to restore and repair the previous situation. The resolution also explains that “restitution includes, as appropriate: restoration of liberty, enjoyment of human rights, identity, family life and citizenship, return to one’s place of residence, restoration of employment and return of property” (no 19). This statement supposes that the previous situation had all these. Yet as we already saw, some conflicts erupt in a social context that was already detrimental to human rights, at least for some social categories. In such cases, the survivor would not want to be fully restored to his/her previous situation. Instead, the crisis might be a Kairos moment for change of the social structures that embedded injustices and violations of his/her human rights. That is why not only is it highly improbable that it can be possible to restore the victim to his/her former situation, but also it may not be desirable in some instances. Sometimes, what is needed is an overall change of social structures and institutions, especially if they were the cause and the source of violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law. Concerning compensation, some of the suggestions are easily economically assessable, such as lost opportunities, material damages, or loss of earnings. But others are not so obvious. For instance, how would one economically assess a mental harm or moral damage? The resolution also insists that compensation has to be “proportional to the gravity of the violation and the circumstances of each case” (no 20). This proportionality question brings into fore again the idea that we can economically measure the suffering of the victim. However, it hard to imagine a reparation that would compensate what a survivor went through. That is why, as Pablo de Grieff rightly observes, reparation programs should avoid the language of “proportional compensation” (2006: 466), for “reparation can never achieve ‘restitutio in integrum’. It can only provide victims with the means to attenuate their suffering, making it less unbearable, perhaps just bearable” (Gualde and Luterstein 2009: 434). In addition to these concerns, reparation involves material and financial cost at all levels. Whose responsibility is it to sponsor it, especially for poor countries in which

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those violations happened? The obvious response is that the responsibility falls on the state. But then it means that the reparation programs will depend on the capacity and political will of each particular state. Depending on how deep were the crisis and the scale of institutional destruction—which might have affected the state apparatus and other social institutions—the first priority will be the re-establishing of a functioning state and putting up new social structures. This can prejudice the individual victims as the state will consider its work as reparation, benefitting victims, although not only them. Or at least, reparation for the victims might not be the top priority of the government. Other states may simply not be able to repair due to their economic precarity. For instance, I cannot see how countries such Burundi or the Democratic Republic of Congo, just to name a few, would be able to implement the reparation programs as designed by this UN resolution. Actually, all the five elements depend on the realization of the last one, which guarantees the non-repetition. Now, non-repetition is secured by establishing a decent society where there are basic functioning institutions, respecting a minimum rule of law. Many of these countries, due to repetitive gross violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law, have not yet got to that level of guaranteeing non-repetition of the same if not worse atrocities. Hence, the reparation programs for victims become secondary if not completely absent from the state agenda. Furthermore, the problem of determining the victim becomes more evident here than in any other case, because in many instances, those who were victims yesterday become perpetrators today in vicious circle of violence. Depending then on who is holding power, the narrative changes, imparting the reparation program itself. Another option is to depend on foreign aid, but even here, as Alexander Segoria aptly shows, such strategy is “unreal and counterproductive” (2006: 162). With all these obstacles to the reparation program, could survivors expect the reparative justice to bring the moral feeling that justice has been done? After conflicts, many survivors find themselves in destitute situation and some have been irredeemably impaired in many ways: physically, emotionally, socially, and economically. It is therefore a matter of justice that they receive reparation and support to restart a living. Even for those who are not in such destitute situation, reparation gestures will show them that they are socially recognized as “citizens with equal fundamental rights” (de Grieff 2006: 460–1). However, whatever provided reparation should not be considered proportional to the gravity of the suffering they endured. If it can alleviate the present situation of their living, “making contribution to the quality of life of survivors” (de Grieff 2006: 466), reparation cannot be and should not be expected to provide a moral satisfaction that justice is done, because what was destroyed is not back and could never be restored. This modesty in raising expectation of survivors has to be heightened when one thinks of the dilemmas they go through about reparation itself. As many authors observe (Lira 2006; Guembe 2006; Ferreira 2006), some survivors feel guilty of taking money as compensation for their beloved ones who disappeared or perished, some preferring to simply not taking it, because it is “‘tainted’ or ‘cursed money’” (Guembe 2006: 47). If there were no trials, reparations can be seen as buying the

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survivors’ silence. For instance, in Argentina, those who opposed economic reparation demonized those who accepted it, saying that they “prostitute[d] themselves” (Ibid.). It was the same experience in Chile, where dependents were reluctant to perceive the economic compensation for the same moral reasons and the fear “that such benefits could compromise everyone’s commitment to pursuing ‘truth and justice’” (Lira 2006: 62). The same tension was observed in Brazil, where one mother put it bluntly: “It will not be through coins stained with [the victims’] own blood, profaned by violence, tortures and indignities that the dignity of their lives will be restored and returned to them. We just fight for truth, which was what they believed in” (Ferreira 2006: 139). These are examples of moral and political doubts and queries that survivors go through when facing the reparation programs, especially in forms of economic compensation. It is true that, in the South African context, the perception was different. Survivors did not see economic compensation as “bloody money.” Instead, they complained about how little it was, compared to the challenges they were facing. But this view was not shared by all neither, as some of them refused to be identified as victims who needed economic compensation. Others who were somehow economically well-off preferred symbolic compensation. Another kind of conflict, however, arose between those who were receiving the compensation and those who had not qualified to be part of the 22,000 survivors who benefited from the reparation program. The latter were jealous and threatened to harm the former. It also caused tensions in families. According to Christopher Colvin, “almost all of the victims reported that many of those who did not receive the UIR [Urgent Interim Reparations]—because they were not considered urgent cases—‘became jealous and mad’, and sometimes threatened violence. Similarly, almost all those who did receive UIR reported increases in family and community conflicts.” He continues, “often those receiving UIR informed neither their neighbors nor even their immediate family members for fear of creating conflict or having money simply taken away. Women, the elderly, and the disabled in South Africa face similar problems of conflict and abuse with monthly pension and grant money from the government” (Colvin 2006: 189). Such tensions confirm the remarks of Anne Saris and Katherine Lofts that reparation should focus on the way injustices were produced and consider victims as individuals imbedded in communities (2009: 92; 94). It is in the same vein that some authors highlight tension between collective and individual reparations (Ferstman and Goetz 2009: 341), and that collective reparations might jeopardize reconciliation (Walleyn 2009: 363). These cases illustrate that reparation programs not only may cause political and moral problems but may also provoke social conflicts and tensions in families. This aspect leads to the questions we highlighted at the beginning of this section related to the scope of the definition of “victim.” Once its determination is linked to certain economic interests in a context of generalized poverty, it becomes a source of danger for the survivor. “Victim” may not be anymore the de facto one, but rather the one defined by the Act that creates the reparation programs, such as in the case of South Africa. On the other hand, those fitting into the UN definition risk of feeling

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a moral burden to accept such compensation, because of their relationship to the direct victim. All these elements show that reparation justice cannot claim, on its own, to satisfy the moral feeling that justice is done to the satisfaction of survivors. At the same time, though, not having any of these reparation programs implemented, or at least the will to implement them, would mean for the survivors that they are still not recognized as full citizens enjoying the same fundamental rights in a society of equals and could jeopardize the process of reconstruction and reconciliation (Makhalemele 2009: 559). That is why, as some survivors express it, reparation programs have to be articulated with the quest for truth and thirst for justice. They have to be in relationship with other transitional mechanisms (de Grieff 2006: 401) and, most importantly, be modest in their ambitions as have to be all these other mechanisms. For as Guembe remarks, “neither truth nor justice, including economic reparations, has the virtue of repairing the loss of a victim, but measures such as these do provide recognition for the victims, and for the pain and suffering experienced by their families” (2006: 47). Those programs are trying to repair the irreparable, but that is what we can do at our human level. Now, in face of the “impossibility of justice” can there be possibility of amnesty? This is the topic for the next section.

6.5

Justice and Amnesty

Although up to this point we have encountered inadequacy of justice systems—be it criminal, restorative, or reparative—for addressing gross violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law and to provide justice for victims and survivors, the exploration has showed that survivors yearn for justice. Even if it does not make things even, or restored to their original situation, survivors want that what can humanly be done in terms of justice be done to make their lives at least “bearable.” They long for structures that can guarantee non-repetition of the crime, at least a minimum of rule of law and insure respect for basic human rights. They strive to reconstruct themselves economically and emotionally, although it is a gigantic task. In short, they would like to live a “normal” life. However, there cannot be a normal life when survivors still fear for their lives and/or they have been reduced to a precarious life. That is why different transitional mechanisms are used in order to reconstruct the social fabric, and one of those mechanisms is amnesty. The question now is whether amnesty helps survivors feel a sense of vindication or whether it frustrates the justice processes. We have already talked about amnesty while dealing with the question of memory, where it was seen as a public forgetting. Now, as a transitional mechanism, amnesty intervenes to end social conflicts through negotiations, and there are three models. It can be temporal when it covers a certain period. For instance, as it happens that some of the protagonists do not trust the existing politico-juridical institutions, the negotiators can agree on a period of setting up new institutions, more less

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impartial that would deal with the committed crimes. Another kind of amnesty is the blanket amnesty, which wipes all the crimes and exempts everybody who was involved in crimes, from any judicial trial. Still another model, developed by the South African TRC, was to grant amnesty in exchange of testimony before the commission. As one can expect, the three models represent three different ways survivors relate to amnesty. In the first model, there is a hope that one day perpetrators will be brought to a court of justice. It might not come as soon as survivors would have wished, but the door to justice remains open. The second case is the most challenging, because for those desiring justice through courts, this possibility is denied. Crimes are considered as not having happened, as with the Edict of Nantes, and survivors are asked to behave as if they do not remember them. The question arising from this thorny issue is about the kind of social good that could trump justice for a post-conflict society. Before answering that question, however, it can already be noted that it is obvious that it cannot feel alright for survivors, to be imposed the impossibility of appealing to justice for what she/he suffered. But in all these three models, the ordinary survivors and victims are not involved; their voices are not heard. Only politicians negotiate. It is true that there may be survivors and victims among the political negotiators. However, the majority of survivors are not consulted when negotiations about amnesty happens. One can object about not having a voice, because not all victims and survivors are neutral in conflicts. Some support a party in the conflict. From this perspective, their voice is heard through those they support, the objection goes. While the objection is taken, even if survivors may support the different protagonists involved in the conflict, the negotiators are not democratically chosen in order to claim legitimacy to represent their supporters. Moreover, usually the leaders of fighting parties are not so democratic to consult their supporters when they are negotiating amnesty. Rather, often when negotiating, those taken into consideration are mostly the leaders and not the ordinary victims. Hence, one could still maintain that their voices are not heard. If the latter is true, the consequence is that the process that leads to amnesty does not respect the moral agency of the victims and survivors, whereas they were at the receiving end of those crimes and the effects of the amnesty itself. To be morally justifiable, survivors should be the ones granting amnesty. By failing to take into account survivors’ opinion, amnesty proves not to be just to the survivors. This non-consideration of survivors is linked to the nature of the amnesty itself. It is first a political compromise between the fighting parties before becoming eventually legalized. As a political act, even if it can have moral reasons, it is mostly a calculative endeavor which tries to balance the interests of the stakeholders who threaten to pursue hostilities if their claims are not secured. It is true that in most sociopolitical conflicts, the conflicting parties legitimize their fights by alleging to fight for the people or a certain category of the people. However, usually amnesty concerns particular crimes committed by particular individuals. Thus, for survivors who know the perpetrators and can name them, it is unlikely that they will perceive this process of letting them walk free as a just decision, particularly when that decision and its consequences fall on them without any consultation. They are

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ignored in the process, and their needs are not taken into account. For example, Christopher Colvin writes that no reparation program was mentioned during the negotiations that brought an end to the apartheid regime (2006: 178). Once more, it will have to be addressed whether, in such circumstances, there can be other sociopolitical goods that override the survivors’ desire for justice. One can also evaluate amnesty from its beneficiaries, that is, the perpetrators of those crimes of war, crimes against humanity, and genocides. Amnesty intervenes because those who were involved in the conflicts recognize to have committed those crimes. In a way, they acknowledge their guilt, but they decide to pardon themselves. While those crimes are imprescriptible in international law, once covered by amnesty, the perpetrators are safe under the domestic law. But this is where the amnesty mechanism becomes shaky in the transitional process. Because it is a political act, the perpetrators who feel guilty of such crimes are never sure to be out the hook of justice. The political compromise can scramble any time when the interests of different political parties are no longer secured. For these reasons, the beneficiaries of amnesty will always want to stay in power to ensure that the deal is not challenged and/or changed. In that sense, amnesty does not promote the emergence of a decent society that guarantees the non-repetition of abuse and massive violation of human rights. Moreover, knowing that they might be tried outside their countries, the perpetrators remain fearful of being eventually arrested. And as many survivors keep asking for justice, they put pressure on the new political institutions built on the amnesty. Consequently, those in power and guilty of crimes can start harassing survivors and even threatening them physically. They can even resort to manipulating the narrative about the facts, and try to destroy traces and material elements that might be used against them in case they are tried, since that possibility is not completely dead. All these elements corroborate, once more, that amnesty can be hardly considered as bringing justice for survivors who suffered egregious human rights violations. From all these queries, how does amnesty fit within the sphere of transitional justice, for a society trying to rebuild itself after conflicts, whose basic structures have been destroyed? How can the desire for justice—for there cannot be a political society without a minimum of justice—be reconciled with impunity for the most egregious crimes under the cover of amnesty? To attempt an elucidation of these question leads to examining the relationship between justice and amnesty, which is the core of this section. As already observed, justice in the transition process embodies three branches: criminal, restorative, and reparative justice (i).Talking about criminal justice and amnesty, the temporary amnesty can easily be accommodated by criminal justice, since it is meant to allow the setting up of decent institutions so that the judicial system may be put into place. Concerning the South African model, while some survivors were unhappy with it, it is a middle way between amnesty as no justice at all and amnesty with some justice. Indeed, in that model, amnesty was conditioned by appearing before the Commission and telling the truth about what had happened, and one had to apply for it. Those who did not apply or whose applications were rejected remained reliable to criminal justice. And those who were granted amnesty,

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as Desmond Tutu notes, they paid a social price of exposing themselves, as some lost their families and social groups when they discovered them in their role under apartheid regime. Although Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson do not believe that there is justice when there is no further punishment added to the public acknowledgement (2000: 25), it is not sure whether all perpetrators would plead guilty or be convicted in the court room. In such cases, the onus lays on the prosecution to bring convincing materials. This is not an easy task in a post-conflict society whose judicial system was shattered and which lucks basic resources for a due process. In such context, since the judicial system has to be fair to both the victim and the perpetrator, it is likely that many perpetrators will walk free from the court room, for lack of convincing charges. Hence, perhaps one can partially agree with Robert Rotberg that public shaming and exposure are “powerful components of accountability” (2000: 16). This fact, nevertheless, should not be a reason not to accept and respect survivors’ feeling that they do not feel vindicated through this exchange of justice with amnesty through appearance before TRC. As Elizabeth Kiss notes, for some victims, their dignity is only restored through retributive justice (2000: 83); they doubt the capacity of other programs to satisfy them. The most challenging model, however, is the encompassing and definitive amnesty in which, not only are all trials suspended sine die, but there is no other possibility offered to survivors to be vindicated. On the top of that, perpetrators are not asked to do or pay anything. For the sake of peace and cessation of hostilities, they are granted blanket amnesty for all the egregious crimes they committed. Despite the prospects that international justice might be appealed to, since such crimes are imprescriptible, domestic justice is curtained. In such conditions, one supports Ronald Slye when he remarks that “the granting of amnesty to individuals for acts constituting gross violations of human rights is one of the most controversial mechanisms contemporary societies have used to address violent past” (2000: 170). For indeed, how could it feel right for survivors to hear that all the perpetrators accused of such horrendous crimes will go free in order to have peace? Is there peace actually when a section of the population feel frustrated because it is denied access to justice because of a political compromise? While no justice measure can restore things as they were or make them even, such gestures are necessary to socially rehabilitate the survivors as full citizens, enjoying the same basic human rights. Granting encompassing amnesty is telling them that what they suffered does not count in the post-conflict society. Although Kent Greenawalt tries to make the case for such a kind of amnesty, it is a general feeling that “those who murder and torture for oppressive regimes do not deserve amnesty; they deserve prosecution” (2000: 196). Greenawalt himself acknowledges that such amnesty is unjust, an injustice that “goes beyond failing to prosecute and convict” (ibid. 197–8). It actually does not go beyond prosecution and conviction, because it simply does not allow the possibility of prosecution and conviction. What is said of criminal justice and amnesty is also valid with the restorative and reparative justice. Indeed, the temporary amnesty is open to the possibilities of restorative and reparative justice, while the amnesty in exchange for cooperation with the TRC shows that it is inscribed in the process of restorative justice itself.

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Amnesty is granted as long as the perpetrator reveals what he/she knows. If there are reparative dispositions, such kind of amnesty process would not be an obstacle. The problem remains with the blanket amnesty, because it does not contribute to the knowledge of truth, nor does it contribute to any reparation program. From this vantage, it would be too much to ask the survivors to take it as a just measure or to expect them to feel vindicated through it. Questions also arise as to whether such kind of mechanisms would contribute to the reconstruction and reconciliation of the post-conflict society, in which survivors still feel marginalized and not fully recognized in their social and political status. In other words, blanket amnesty seems unfair from all the three pillars of justice in a post-conflict society. Now, having shown that a blanket amnesty would be rather unjust, it is time to examine whether there are some social goods that might overrun the imperative of justice for the survivors. Answering Greenawalt’s question whether granting amnesty is injustice, Robert Rotberg writes that “one answer is that there are gains in justice from identifying offenders, even if some go free” (2000: 15). As for Sascha-Dominik Bachmann, amnesty can be necessary for peace in post-transitional societies. These authors seem to contend that there are some gains in justice and some sociopolitical goods such as peace that militate for amnesty. But are they morally justifiable to be imposed on the survivors as a burden in exchange of justice whatsoever? Reflecting on the moral foundations of Truth Commissions, Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson observe that “by the terms of their charters, these commissions sacrifice the pursuit of justice as usually understood for the sake of promoting other social purposes, such as historical truth and social reconciliation” (2000: 22). Such a trade-off is quite expensive for the survivors and victims. That is why the authors contend that “in a democratic society, and especially in a society that is trying to overcome injustice of the past, trading criminal justice for a general social benefit such as social reconciliation requires a moral defense if it is to be acceptable” (ibid.). I concur with them on this necessity of moral justification when justice is denied for a certain social good. This necessity is more pressing for the blanket amnesty, which blocks all possible forms of transitional justice, be it criminal, restorative, or reparative. The social goods exchanged for it are social peace and cessation of hostilities. But can there be peace when there is cover-up of crimes and injustices? Morally speaking, is social peace more important than fostering justice? Or can there actually be peace without justice? Arguments for peace over justice can easily be construed. For instance, the continuation of fighting increases the victimization of the targeted persons and the occasions of committing more violations of human rights. In this sense, putting an end to such a situation sounds urgent by all means, before one can think of justice. Moreover, without the end of hostilities, there cannot be prospective of a post-conflict society in which all these desires for justice can be fulfilled. If then a blanket amnesty is what it takes to get to that end, it might sound to be the best means available. The argument is convincing but it is from the viewpoint of the negotiators and policy-makers. It does not take into account the perspective of the victims and survivors. Sure enough, even they want the cessation of hostilities. After all, they

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are the first casualties. At the same time, however, they carry with them the scars of those hostilities, which cannot be soothed by the blanket amnesty. They want justice even though they know there cannot be justice that repairs or restores all they have suffered. Thus, such a blanket amnesty for perpetrators in exchange for social peace is an act of injustice for victims and survivors, added to the crimes they have already suffered. That is why, when they have a chance, they denounce it and ask for justice, as it happened for instance in Chile with General Agostino Pinochet. Blanket amnesty is also unjust from the viewpoint of building a transitional society. How can it be secured when it is built on injustices? As John Rawls says, injustices are the ingredients for social and political unrest. A post-conflict society can hope to rebuild itself if it is committed to a minimum level of justice and respect of basic human rights for all. Any transitional mechanism which is opposed to those minimum requirements is counterproductive and unjust against survivors and victims. Thus, a temporal amnesty can serve in that regard as a moment of transition of putting up judicial institution and other transitional mechanisms that open the door to justice. The model of South African amnesty can also be justified, as it is open to at least restorative justice, although, as Gutmann and Thompson note, this might need a moral justification. But a blanket amnesty would be hard to be morally justified as morally just for the survivors. This exploration of justice in relation to amnesty triggers a question about the relationship between justice and forgiveness. Are they compatible in a society in the process of getting out of social and political unrest, without being unjust toward survivors? This is the subject of the following lines.

6.6

Forgiveness and Justice

The previous chapter looked at forgiveness and its place in this search for virtues from the hell of gross violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law. The general outcome was that forgiveness is a personal journey of the victim and survivor, which cannot be ordered by an external authority. It happens as a miracle in human affairs, because neither the victim disposes it as his/her own, nor the perpetrator can claim it as a right, no matter how remorseful he/she can be. When it occurs, however, it liberates both the wronged party and the offender. That is why it foreswears resentment and anger, preventing revenge. All these benefits, however, are at a personal level, with possible social and political benefits. It is in that regard that certain questions arise about the relationship between justice and forgiveness. How are they connected, since they are both beneficial to the process of reconstruction and reconciliation of a transitional society? Does forgiveness prevent or foster the judicial process to proceed? Should the granting of forgiveness be taken as justice done and forgo the other judicial mechanisms for a post-conflict society? Can/should granting forgiveness be considered as another kind of justice satisfying the moral feeling that justice is done? While attending to these

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questions, one has to keep in mind the observation of Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson that “justice is not served when a murderer or rapist publicly acknowledges his crimes but is not brought to trial and suffered no further punishment” (2000: 25). Now, following the results of the chapter on forgiveness, the latter happens when the victim does no longer feel anger to see the offender walking free from his/her burden. Whereas the victim does not forget the injury he/she suffered, he/she does no longer suffer from that memory. Would it then be contradictory to forgive and be happy to liberate the offender, and yet desire that the process of criminal justice against him/her takes its course? The attempt at answering these questions can come from two angles. First, there is a quest for a decent post-conflict society, where there is a minimum rule of law. Looked at from this perspective, the survivor surely wishes and strives for such a society. Therefore, the process of forgiveness that he/she goes through cannot be in contradiction with the judicial process in criminal justice, as the latter is contributing to building a judicial system badly needed. Moreover, while the offender is responsible for the injury toward the victim, he/she also has liability toward the society as a whole, especially for the crimes under consideration. Gross human violations of human rights affect more than just the direct victim. Their impacts reach different generations. To forgive the offender cannot remove his/her liability toward the society as whole, and the third parties that will suffer the consequences of his/her actions. In that sense, although criminal justice cannot claim to make things even, it remains the least we, as humanity, can strive for in trying to guarantee the non-repetition of such egregious crimes and abuses of human rights. The second angle from which we can look at the relationship between forgiveness and the desire for justice is the fact that forgiveness does not remove the criminal dimension of the injury. What the victim does in forgiving is to forswear vengeance against the offender, but he/she does not blow off the criminal culpability of the offender. Without forgiveness, the victim/survivor can carry the burden and search for revenge, even after the offender has been criminally punished, especially when the victim did not feel vindicated through the criminal justice process. That is why forgiveness removes this enmity between the victim and the offender, without being a hinder to criminal process. An objection can, however, be raised by the opponents of criminal justice, based on the understanding of forgiveness as forswearing revenge and resentment. For indeed, criminal justice has been seen as taking up what was a private revenge. Paul Roberts even observes that public execution is illustration that retributive justice is “depraved revenge” (2003: 126). Is not then a contradiction if someone claims to have forgiven as a way of giving up revenge, and yet desires the pursuit of criminal procedure that is a “depraved revenge”? To respond to this objection, it is not enough to claim that criminal justice is not retributive only, because what is at stake is the good faith of the forgiver. What the objection highlights is the apparent consequence that, once one has forgiven his/her offender, he/she should also abandon any possibility of criminal procedure, since the latter, no matter how one tries to justify it, it still is an institutionalized revenge—to use Nozick’s vocabulary.

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In trying to respond to the objection, therefore, one has to recall that justice is not only for the victim but also an effort to rebuild a decent society after a social and political conflict, which destroyed the most basic institutions. There cannot be a possible stable political society without a minimum functional system of justice. Thus, beyond his/her own interest, the victim can forgive and still desires the pursuit of criminal procedure as a step toward establishing a working judiciary system. His/her role in this process should be to ensure that the offender gets a fair and just judicial process. But another objection may arise because it has been underscored that “posttransition justice in the national courts is not easy and is not common” (Hayner 2011: 8). Hence, in post-conflicts contexts, delivering offenders to the criminal system will not necessary be fair to the offender and vendetta risks to be the rule. Therefore, the objection would continue, someone who has forgiven would not wish the offender to be submitted to such a judicial system lacking the minimum of fairness. To address this objection, one needs to underline that a reconciled victim through forgiveness would not wish for anybody, not even for the offender, to suffer an injustice. He/she does no longer find the emotional and psychological pleasure that revenge is supposed to provide. Hence, while desiring the criminal procedure to take place for the perpetrator, the survivor would want a procedure that is fair to the offender, because the goal is to establish a working judicial system. Therefore, if the conditions for a fair trial are not yet available, a victim who has forgiven would not want or wish for the offender to go through an unjust process. Hence, there is no contradiction between having forgiven and the desire for a fair and just criminal procedure for the offender. But is it the same with the restorative justice? As a recall, restorative justice aims at bringing together as many stakeholders in the conflicts as possible, such as victims, offender, and community, in order to mend their relationships that have been disrupted by the crime. In the context of crimes against humanity, crimes of war, and genocides, TRCs have been used as restorative mechanisms. Would then forgiveness be antithetic to the goals of restorative justice? Clearly, this is a truism because restorative justice furthers forgiveness as one of the transitional mechanisms to heal and reconcile the post-conflict society. Forgiveness is even sometimes presented as the better option for repairing the shattered relationships. In that sense, forgiveness is the core value of the restorative justice. However, forgiveness is a personal journey that “should not be the direct objective of a government procedure” (Greenawalt 2000: 199). Is forgiveness then not in tension with the TRCs, which are governmental programs? Now, if TRCs coerce victims and survivors to forgive, then tension will appear. But if the TRCs leave survivors the free space for their forgiveness process and respect their pace, there should not be a conflict between forgiveness and restorative processes. For victims and survivors who have already forgiven would rather feel encouraged to participate in the TRCs activities fostering reconstruction and reconciliation. It is the case with the Rwandan survivor of the genocide against the Tutsi mentioned in the previous chapter who, once he had forgiven those who had decimated his family, started

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walking around asking and encouraging those who wanted forgiveness. That is why one can conclude that forgiveness would not be in conflict with the restorative processes in the context of gross human rights violations, provided survivors are not pressured in any way to forgive by an external body. Finally, is forgiveness symbiotic with the reparative dimension of justice in the transitional period of a post-atrocities society? According to the 2005 UN Resolution, reparation is embodied into five components and it is to be victim-centered. Thus, a priori forgiveness as a survivor’s initiative should not be in conflict with reparative justice. For instance, restitution of the survivor into the enjoyment of basic human rights, his/her life and family, property, and employment, is not in conflict with the fact that he/she has forgiven. The same can be said with compensation and rehabilitation, satisfaction, and guarantees of non-repetition, because they all aim at helping the survivor to restart a normal life in a safe environment and more or less stable structures. However, there can be a question whether forgiveness once offered forfeits compensation and reparation by the offender. It is true that, as Greenawalt recalls, “it is arguable whether torturers and murderers deserve forgiveness if they are not willing to compensate those they have wronged terribly” (2000: 200). This observation reminds that, for many scholars, the offender has to show remorse and willingness to repair in order to deserve forgiveness, although one hastes to add that these conditions do not force the victim to forgive. In addition, studies show that for victims, the source of compensation is important, preferring the one from the offender than the state (e.g., Walleyn 2009: 362; Green 2007: 173). Thus, one can take the objection once again from two perspectives. On the one hand, it is a right for the forgiver to require those conditions of remorse and willingness to repair from the offender, in order to forgive him/her. In this sense, forgiveness is not in opposition with reparative justice; it rather requires reparation in order to take place. On the other hand, while the victim might decide to forgive without the fulfillment of these conditions by the offender, the latter has a moral obligation to repair the wrong done, inasmuch as possible. Even in situation of a quasi-impossibility of reparation, a symbolic gesture from the offender toward the forgiver would testify to his/her good faith in demanding forgiveness and would be a sign of appreciation of the granted forgiveness. Such gestures can take different forms, as through them the offender participates in integrating the survivor into the social and political life. In a way, having asked and accepted the gift of forgiveness beyond what can be given, a sincere forgiven offender acquiesces to become an eternal obligé to the humanity of the victim he/she once persecuted. As Ricoeur shows, forgiveness goes beyond the economy of gift to retrieve the “disproportionality between the words of forgiveness and that of avowal which comes back under this unique question: what kind of force makes able to ask, to

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give and to receive the word of forgiveness?” (2000: 630).7 The moral obligation of the perpetrator of gross human rights violations who has been forgiven toward his/her forgiver is rooted in that awe of the possibility of forgiveness, where it is normally not expected and is not even possible. Hence, there is no conflict between forgiveness and reparative justice because the gestures of the forgiven offender are signs of the humanity recovered at work in both the survivor and the perpetrator. To sum up this section, provided some precautions are taken, justice and forgiveness are not antithetical in the process of reconciliation and reconstruction of a transitional society.

*** After looking at certain number of strengths that a survivor might need in order to contribute to the process of the reconstruction and reconciliation of a post-conflict society, this chapter focused on the virtue of justice as a political one that any society, especially the one emerging from social and political upheaval, would need. Taking it into the transitional context, the chapter examined the three branches of criminal, restorative, and reparative justice. The conclusion was that none of these should claim to render justice for what a victim and survivor of gross human rights violation suffer. At the best, it is a human gesture toward them to show that, as a human community, we still care even if we have betrayed them. Such initiatives are what we can do at human level, as what happened is beyond the human practical reasoning and possibilities. As some authors noted, all these efforts are meant to make the lives of survivors “just bearable” (Gualde and Luterstein 2009: 434). After that, the chapter proceeded to examine whether such efforts of justice are not in contradiction with amnesty and forgiveness, which are some of the mechanisms used in transitional period of a post-conflict society. A nuanced analysis of both subjects was developed, always looking at them through the survivor’s lenses. It showed that at on some points, they are in accord, while on others they are in tension. It would be pretentious to claim to have exhausted such wide subject as justice. Our objective being to analyze at what extent it can be claimed for and from the survivor in the process of reconstruction and reconciliation of a society emerging from a civil and political conflict, it is enough if it just did that, if only through questions and worries it raises. If we have not been able to provide satisfying answers, we hope to have formulated enough questions to motivate more debate and discussion.

In its original language, “la disproportion entre la parole de pardon et celle de l’aveu fait retour sous la forme d’une unique question: quelle force rend capable de demander, de donner, de recevoir la parole du pardon?”. 7

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Radzik, Linda. 2007. Offenders, the Making of Amends and the State. In Handbook of Restorative Justice, ed. Gerry Johnston and Daniel Van Ness. Devon: William Publishing. Ricoeur, Paul. 2000. La mémoire, l’histoire, l’oubli. Paris: Editions du Seuil. Robert, Paul. 2003. Restoration and Retribution in International Criminal Justice: An Explanatory Analysis. In Restorative Justice and Criminal Justice: Competing or Reconcilable Paradigms? ed. Andrew Von Hirsch et al. Portland: Hart Publishing. Rotberg, Robert. 2000. Truth Commissions and the Provision of Truth, Justice, and Reconciliation. In Truth and Justice: The Morality of Truth Commissions, ed. Robert Rotberg and Dennis Thompson. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Saris, Anne, and Katherine Lofts. 2009. Reparation Programs: A Gender Perspective. In Reparations for Victims of Genocide, War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity, ed. Carla Ferstman, Mariana Goetz, and Alan Stephens. Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. Segoria, Alexander. 2006. The Reparation Proposals of the Truth Commissions in El Salvador and Haiti: A History of Noncompliance. In The Handbook of Reparation, ed. Pablo de Grieff. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sharpe, Susan. 2007. The Idea of Reparation. In Handbook of Restorative Justice, ed. Gerry Johnston and Daniel Van Ness. Devon: William Publishing. Skelton, Ann, and Makubetse Sekhonyane. 2007. Human Rights and Restorative Justice. In Handbook of Restorative Justice, ed. Gerry Johnston and Daniel Van Ness. Devon: William Publishing. Slye, Ronald. 2000. Amnesty, Truth and Reconciliation: Reflections on the South African Amnesty Process. In Truth and Justice: The Morality of Truth Commissions, ed. Robert Rotberg and Dennis Thompson. Princeton: Princeton University Press. UN Security Council. 1985. Declaration of Basic Principles of Justice for Victims of Crimes and Abuse of Power. New York: UN. ———. 2005. Basic Principles and Guidelines on the Right to Remedy, and Reparation for Victims of Gross Violations of International Human Rights Law and Serious violations of International Humanitarian Law. New York: UN. Von Hirsch, Andrew, Andrew Ashworth, and Clifford Shearing. 2003. Specifying Aims and Limits for Restorative Justice: A ‘Making Amends’ Model? In Restorative Justice and Criminal Justice: Competing or Reconcilable Paradigms? ed. Andrew Von Hirsch et al. Portland: Hart Publishing. Waldron, Ronald, et al. 2009. The Criminal Justice System: An Introduction. 5th ed. Tulsa: K&M Publishers, Inc. Walgrave, Lode. 2007. Integrating Criminal Justice and Restorative Justice. In Handbook of Restorative Justice, ed. Gerry Johnston and Daniel Van Ness. Devon: William Publishing. Walleyn, Luc. 2009. The Prosecution of International Crimes and the Role of Victims’ Lawyers. In Reparations for Victims of Genocide, War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity, ed. Carla Ferstman, Mariana Goetz, and Alan Stephens. Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. Zehr, Howard. 1990. Changing Lenses: A New Focus for Crime and Justice. Scottdale: Herald Press. Zehr, Howard, and Ali Gohar. 2003. The Little Book of Restorative Justice. Intercourse: Good Books.

Chapter 7

General Conclusion

Abstract This is a recapitulative chapter, highlighting the main points developed in the different chapters constituting this book. It comes back to the second chapter which reconstructs the virtue of courage from the survivors’ experience, yielding a totally different outlook from the traditional understanding of courage in the Western philosophical tradition. As to the third chapter, it looks back to the results from the analysis of the tension between forgetting and remembering, whereas the fourth chapter applies the same method to the tensions between the need of silence and apparent necessity to tell the story of what happened. This chapter does the same for the fifth chapter, which confronts the urge to revenge and the call to forgive, while summing up the upshot of the sixth chapter which analyzes the promises and the impossibility of justice. Keywords Courage · Remembering · Forgetting · Memory · Story-telling forgiveness · Justice

As the title suggests, the aim of this book was to examine whether there are some resources remaining to the survivors who have gone through the hell of gross human rights violations, so that they may contribute to the process of reconciliation and reconstruction of their transitional societies. As any intellectual project is rooted into a human experience, this project too was inspired by the experiences of wars and massive human rights violation in the Great Lake Region of Africa. Hence, it has some existential grounding, while it also claims to be a critical analysis of the different transitional practices and mechanisms, an analysis done from the survivors’ lenses. Hence, the second chapter is about courage, a virtue needed but also manifested by and through the whole life of a survivor. The courage in question, however, is not the virtue that has been ordinarily explained; it is rather a virtue arising from the situation of vulnerability of the survivors. That is why the chapter started by looking at the virtue of courage encountered in the Western philosophical tradition. Here, courage is linked to war, implying the capacity to deliberate about the right time to © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 F. Ingiyimbere, Virtues from Hell: Survivors of Conflicts and the Reconstruction-Reconciliation Processes, Philosophy and Politics - Critical Explorations 20, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89173-2_7

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resist and the time to flee. The chapter then argues against such view, because it cannot apply to the survivors’ situation of war and gross human rights violations. Thus, the chapter undertook to elaborate another understanding of courage from the survivor’s situation itself, showing that it takes a lot a courage to hide, and to emerge from the hiding place with the desire to continue living, despite the traumatic experience. The chapter also showed that survivors manifest courage during their ordeal as they struggle to survive against all odds, and when they resist and stand up against the perpetrator. But ultimately, this new understanding of courage is embedded in the will to live, not only for themselves but also with others, in spite of the horrific experience they underwent. This kind of courage does not fit into the usual categories of courage, and that is why the survivors’ courage to live becomes a backdrop for this whole book. For every survivors’ contribution to the process of reconciliation and reconciliation in post-conflict society is a display of this existential-ontological courage. In other words, this chapter served as a foundation for the remaining of the book. The second chapter focused on the tension between forgetting and remembering, as forgetting is part of our human condition, and yet remembrance is believed to help prevent the repetition of the same crimes. Thus, since both forgetting and remembering are related to memory, the chapter started by exploring the intricacies of memory. This exploration revealed that forgetting is inherent to every human person, and yet the experience of life-world of the survivor is a constant reminder of what he/she suffered. Thus, the chapter evaluated the extent to which forgetting can be expected from survivors. The next step led to the examination of public forgetting, that is, a forgetting ordered by public authorities, usually for public good such as peace. The chapter argued that a public forgetting is a contradiction because asking people to forget is already a way of reminding them what they are supposed to forget. And if such an order is non-applicable in normal circumstances, it becomes quasi impossible for survivors whose surrounding environment is a constant reminder of their ordeal. The chapter also discussed the so-called duty to remember, which seems to arise from the famous maxim of Georges Santayana that those who forget are condemned to repeat the past. In other words, remembrance is presented as a preventive measure against the repetition of the same crimes. The chapter presented a nuanced way in which remembrance can be understood as a duty, especially for the survivor, without, however, forgetting the warning of some scholars that some crimes are actually committed because some people have kept the memory of what their forefathers suffered. The discussion of the duty to remember led to the question of public remembrance and its consequences, as it can easily be politically manipulated. Here too, the chapter suggested ways in which, such initiatives can contribute to the process of reconciliation without being, however, a moral burden to the survivor. Finally, the chapter closed by coming back to the tension between forgetting and remembering, since the former is part of human condition while the latter seems to require some moral and political efforts. On this points, instead of presenting a clear cut answer, it offered suggestions on how the tension could be abetted. For instance, the public memory should be open to all narratives and remain open, and the society has the duty to remember in order to avoid the repetition of

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such crimes. However, the survivor should not be under the moral obligation either to forget or to remember, but rather encouraged to do so, depending on his/her pace in healing. The third chapter delved into the moral and ethical implications of story-telling, as it is believed to be a healing tool for both the individual and the community. At the same time, however, gross human rights violations are traumatic experiences which are not easy to tell. Moreover, usually, survivors understand their survival as mission to let the world know what they suffered, whereas the perpetrators’ goal is “to leave none to tell the story,” to use Des Forges’ words. In addition to that, survivors themselves experience the incapacity of words to translate their experiences. Hence, the chapter explored that tension between the silence imposed by those traumatic acts and the imperative to tell what happened felt by the survivors. It discussed how survivors uphold these apparent opposite positions, insisting that survivors should not be obliged to tell their experiences when they do not feel yet ready. Indeed, studies show that, instead of being a healing experience, narrating those traumatic experiences can retraumatize the survivor. That is why silence should also be recognized as another survivors’ way of expressing the pain, as can be gestures and words. Talking about silence, the chapter underscored that it can be imposed by sociocultural contexts or enforced by political authorities. That is the reason why, while recognizing it as another way of expressing the pain, it has to be checked whether it is imposed or is chosen by survivors themselves. These explorations led to the conclusion that there cannot be an imperative to tell, such that it can be imposed from without, or cause the blame of survivor who chooses to keep silence, especially that silence can also be an expression of telling the story. There can only be encouragement to tell and the appreciation of what is told. Now, as the storytelling opens up a space shared by both the survivor and the perpetrator, the chapter suggested modalities of its use, so that it can be advantageous to the reconstruction of the social fabric without hurting the survivor. The last section of the chapter discussed the issue of talking for the Absent, represented by three figures: those who disappeared during gross human rights violations without leaving trace, those who cannot appear in the story-telling space due to social stigmatization, and the future generations. The chapter proposed ways in which speaking for the Absent would be appropriate, and it highlighted its moral and ethical implications, especially from the survivors’ perspective. The fifth chapter focused on the forgiveness, a practice so often invoked in the process of reconciliation, and yet which is in tension with the urge for revenge when someone is hurt. At the outset, forgiveness seems impossible. That is why the chapter started by discussing the meaning of revenge and its probability of being adopted by a society engaged in the process of reconciliation and reconstruction. The conclusion of the discussion was that revenge cannot be a viable means for reconciling a society, as it ushers in a cycle of violence. Its exclusion left the space now to explore the possibility of forgiveness, starting from its meaning whose origin is most of time connected with religious traditions, especially the Abrahamic one. That is why, in addition to exploring that Western understanding of forgiveness, I resorted to the Burundian tradition to see how forgiveness is conceived, in order to expand its

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scope of application. The result was that there are a lot of commonalities between the two, and therefore one cannot dismiss forgiveness on the ground that it is only a religious and a Western concept. These definitional preliminaries allowed to examine whether forgiveness is applicable in every instances of harm and hurt. Following authors such as Hannah Arendt and Vladimir Jankélévitch, the chapter argued that indeed crimes of war and crimes against humanity and genocide are beyond human capacity of the practical reason. As such, they cannot be judged, and neither can they be forgiven. Therefore, the possibility of forgiveness, the chapter continued, has to espouse Jacques Derrida’s understanding of forgiveness as unconditional. In this sense, forgiveness is possible through its impossibility, il advient; it surprises both the forgiver and the forgiven. None of them owns it and none can claim it as a right. While only survivors can forgive, reaching that step of forgiveness takes time. Forgiveness is literarily a grace; a gift. That is why when il advient, it deserves and provokes un Merci; a Thank you from both the forgiver and forgiven, because none of them was sure it would happen. That is why also the chapter argued that there cannot be an imperative to forgive. There can only be the call to forgive and an appeal to heed the call. The chapter also considered the relationship between forgiveness and forgetting, as sometimes it seems that forgiveness would imply forgetting. Using the fruit of what had covered so far about the two themes, the chapter contended that forgiveness does not necessarily imply forgetting, nor does forgetting imply forgiveness. The latter is forswearing revenge and resentment, while there can be a nuanced imperative to remember. The chapter concluded by looking at the relationship that forgiveness establishes between the descendants of the perpetrators and those of the victims and survivors, and it raised the question whether there can be the possibility of forgiving in the name of the Absent. Once again, discussing those issues suggested some ways in which descendants can ask forgiveness and forgive on behalf of their parents, and in which community leaders could ask for forgiveness and forgive in the name of the Absent. The sixth chapter dealt with justice. Being a political virtue par excellence, any transitional society needs it. Now, the transitional practices today distinguish three pillars of justice: criminal, restorative, and reparative justice. That is why the chapter built on these three branches to examine whether they satisfy the survivors’ yearning for justice. Having shown with Hannah Arendt that criminal justice can only apply on acts which are in the orbits of practical reason, we argued that there is no possible justice for crimes of war, genocides, and crimes against humanity, if justice is understood as search for re-establishing the equilibrium disturbed by the crime. Despite that impossibility of justice, nevertheless, trials are necessary at least to avoid that an innocent person is condemned or harmed through social vengeance. In other words, even if criminal justice does not make even the situation, it is a sign that the society and the human family care about the victims. Such gestures of criminal justice rehabilitate the victims as worthy members of the society and help prevent personal vengeances, and through them communal criminalization is avoided. The chapter proceeded by looking at the restorative and reparative components. Here also, while both restorative and restorative justice contribute significantly to the process of reconciliation and reconstruction, they have to be modest in their

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ambitions because they cannot repair or restore all that has been destroyed by gross human rights violations. In the same manner for criminal justice, restorative and reparative justice are gestures toward the victims to make their “suffering a bit bearable” as observe some scholars. None of these three pillars can claim to render justice for what a victim and survivor of gross human rights violations suffered. At best, they are gesture to show that, as a human community, we still care even if we have betrayed them. They are what we can do at our human level, since what happened is beyond our human practical possibilities. The chapter also examined whether such gestures of justice are not in contradiction with amnesty and forgiveness. After analysis, the chapter argued that partial and conditional amnesty does not contradict the survivors’ thirst for justice, even if it is an impossible justice. However, the blanket amnesty is morally unjust toward the victims and survivors, because it closes all doors to seeking justice, especially the criminal justice. Concerning forgiveness, the chapter tried to show that it does not contradict the quest for justice, as long as there is no pressure exerted on survivors to forgive. For instance, survivor can forgive and still want the course of criminal justice to be initiated for the sake of building up working institutions for a decent society. As this project reaches its end, it would be pretentious to claim to have exhausted all the possible virtues that survivors display in their contribution to the process of reconciliation and reconstruction. Our goal was to highlight some, especially those usually invoked in the transitional process, such as forgiveness, amnesty, healing through telling, transitional justice, to name a few. However, we confronted them to the existential reality of the survivors. That is why all of those elements were discussed on the backdrop of the virtue of courage understood from the survivors’ vulnerable situation. Such that every effort and action made by the survivor is seen as a display of that virtue. Thus, if the discussion developed here has been able to raise some important questions pertaining to how courageous survivors are in their contributions to the process of reconciliation and reconstruction, then the enterprise was worth a try. But if it failed to do so, then it proved how complex human affairs are, and hence it is an invitation to the reader to push further where this project fell short. And at the end, then, it would have motivated a new discussion, which is not a small achievement.

Name Index

A Agamben, G., 64, 80, 82 Amaratunga, D., 3 Arendt, H., 5, 6, 43, 92, 93, 97, 99, 100, 102, 104, 118, 120–122, 152 Aristotle, 4, 10, 21, 119

B Bachmann, S.-D., 122, 139 Bacon, F., 88 Balakian, G., 1, 14, 16, 17 Benjamin, W., 31, 50, 51, 60, 71 Bennett, C., 126 Bergson, H., 31 Bernecke, S., 31 Bloomfield, D., 3 Blustein, J., 42, 45–47 Braithwaite, J., 126 Bridgman, J., 49 Brounéus, K., 3 Butler, Joseph., 89, 90, 93 Butler, Judith, 50

C Campbell, S., 29–55 Carman, T., 32 Casey, E., 33, 37 Christensen, K., 89, 90 Colvin, C., 134, 137 Corneille, Le Cid, 118, 119 Correa, C., 132

D Dallaire, R., 1, 13 Daly, K., 125 Danieli, Y., 122 Das, V., 67, 69, 77 Dawes, J., 58, 60, 79 Daye, R., 104, 105 de Grieff, P., 132, 133, 135 Derrida, J., 5, 94, 98, 99, 101, 104, 109, 112, 152 Des Forges, A., 4, 58, 151 Dignan, J., 126, 128 Dostoevsky, F., 94, 119, 120, 123–125

E Eliade, M., 42 Elster, J., 30, 91 Ephgrave, N., 71, 72 Eramian, L., 59

F Ferreira, I., 133, 134 Ferstman, C., 132, 134 Foucault, M., 15, 19, 21–23 Frankl, V., 13–19, 24, 27, 61 French, P., 90, 98, 99, 112

G Garrielides, T., 126, 127 Gobodo-Madikizela, P., 66, 78, 102, 103

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 F. Ingiyimbere, Virtues from Hell: Survivors of Conflicts and the Reconstruction-Reconciliation Processes, Philosophy and Politics - Critical Explorations 20, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89173-2

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156 Govier, T., 90, 99, 104 Greenawalt, K., 138, 139, 142, 143 Green, S., 128, 143 Griswold, C., 98, 101 Gualde, A., 6, 132, 144 Guembe, M.J., 133, 135 Guillerot, J., 132 Gutmann, A., 130, 138–141

H Haigh, R., 3 Halbwachs, M., 31, 33, 82 Hamber, B., 71 Hampton, J., 90, 105–107 Hayes, H., 126 Hayner, P., 122, 127, 128, 130, 142 Heinrich, S., 127 Henry, M., 20, 37, 38 Herrera, J., 81 Hirvonen, A., 58, 60 Hudson, B., 130 Huyse, L., 3 Hyvärinen, M., 60

I Ilibagiza, I., 4, 11, 24, 58, 71

J Jabareen, Y., 3 Jaspers, K., 94, 97, 99, 109, 113, 124 Johnston, G., 125, 126

K Katz, F.E., 43, 48 Kearney, R., 72 Kelman, H., 3 Kidder, T., 27 Kiss, E., 138 Knafo, D., 33 Kristjánsdóttir, E., 124, 131 Kumar, K., 3

L Laub, D., 58–84 Levi, P., 14, 16, 21, 64, 80, 82 Levy, D., 31 Lira, E., 133, 134 Llewellyn, J., 129 Lofts, K., 134 Luterstein, N., 6, 132, 144

Name Index M Magarell, L., 132 Makhalemele, O., 135 Mannheim, K., 38, 41 Margalit, A., 40, 43, 45, 93–98, 105 McAdams, D., 76 McIntyre, A., 60 McLean, K., 76 Meretoja, H., 60 Merleau-Ponty, M., 2, 25, 31, 66 Michaelian, K., 31 Minow, M., 106 Murphy, J., 3, 88, 89, 105, 106, 111, 123

N Nathan, C., 118–144 Niebergall. H., 129 Nietzsche, F., 16, 32, 33, 35 Nikulin, D., 38 Nora, P., 48 Nozick, R., 88–90, 141

O O’Connell, J., 130 O’Driscoll, D., 3 Oette, L., 129 Okambawa, W., 101 Olick, J.K., 31, 54 Oliver, K., 64

P Pinatto, M., 10 Plato, 4, 9, 10, 21 Power, S., 1 Pranis, K., 125

R Radzik, L., 3, 125 Rawls, J., 50, 98, 106, 140 Renan, E., 37, 38, 46 Ricoeur, P., 37, 39, 40, 45, 46, 49–52, 69, 76, 80, 92–94, 101, 104, 107, 143 Rieff, D., 41, 48, 54 Robert, P., 141 Ross, F., 59, 61–64, 66–69 Rotberg, R., 138, 139

S Sakalasuriya, M.M., 3 Sandel, M., 60, 109

Name Index Saris, A., 134 Schaffer, K., 63 Segoria, A., 133 Seneca, 9, 88 Sennett, R., 38 Sharpe, S., 120 Sidonie Smith, 63 Skelton, A., 126 Slye, R., 138 Sørensen, B., 3 St. Aquinas, T., 4, 10 Stubbs, J., 125 Subotić, J., 73

157 V Van der Merwe, C., 59, 60, 66 Van Ness, D., 125, 126 Vinitzky-Seroussi, V., 31 Von Hirsch, A., 126

W Waldron, R., 118 Walgrave, L., 120 Walleyn, L., 134 Welz, C., 59, 67 Wiesel, E., 58, 61, 62, 70, 72, 80, 81 Worley, L., 49

T Thompson, D., 138–141 Tillich, P., 23–25 Tutu, D., 59, 103, 106, 109, 110, 114, 115, 124, 129, 138

Y Yankélévitch, V., 99–101, 109, 111, 112, 114, 121, 152 Yonezawa, S., 10

U UN Security Council, 30

Z Zehr, H., 124–128

Subject Index

A Absents, 5, 46, 80–84, 109, 110, 133, 151, 152 Amnesia, 37, 39 Amnesty, 6, 39, 40, 71, 94, 119, 129, 135–140, 144, 153 Anger, 5, 71, 88–94, 96, 111, 140, 141

B Beneficiaries, 137 Burden of listening, 75–80

C Call to forgive, 5, 88–115, 152 Collective memory, 31, 37, 81–83 Collective remembering, 37 Commemorations, 31, 38, 50–52, 54, 131 Courage, 3, 9, 29, 149 Courage as part of virtue, 9 Courage in hiding, 11–16, 23 Courage in war, 11 Courage to be, 23–27 Courage to live, 3, 4, 9–28, 49, 150 Courage to say the truth, 19, 21, 23, 24, 27 Crimes against humanity, 2–6, 13, 21, 24, 25, 27, 34, 38, 40, 43, 45, 48, 49, 60, 61, 64, 65, 67–69, 76, 77, 79, 80, 83, 91, 93, 94, 98–104, 106, 107, 109–111, 114, 118–123, 126, 127, 129, 131, 137, 142, 152 Criminal justice, 6, 118, 119, 123–127, 129, 130, 137–139, 141, 152, 153

D Dehumanization, 13, 14 Descendants of the perpetrators, 5, 111, 112, 152 Descendants of the victims, 5, 111, 152 Dignity, 19–23, 68, 106, 123, 125, 131, 134, 138 Disruptive voice, 73, 83 Duty to remember, 4, 29–55, 70, 150

E Écouter, 69 Entendre, 69, 77, 78 Ethical duty, 43, 45–54, 67, 77–79, 91, 105–107

F Fighting for survival, 16–19, 23 Forgetting, 4, 5, 31–33, 36–43, 53–55, 71, 93, 98, 110–114, 150, 152 Forgiveness, 3, 5, 6, 30, 71, 75, 79, 84, 88, 89, 92–115, 119, 140–144, 151–153 Forgiveness as a gift, 98 Future generations, 5, 38, 42, 52, 53, 59, 68, 70, 81–83, 111, 151

G Genocides, 1–4, 6, 9–11, 13, 18–20, 24, 29, 34, 38, 43, 45, 49, 58, 60, 76, 78, 91, 93, 96, 103, 106, 109, 114, 118, 120–122, 126, 131, 137, 142, 152

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 F. Ingiyimbere, Virtues from Hell: Survivors of Conflicts and the Reconstruction-Reconciliation Processes, Philosophy and Politics - Critical Explorations 20, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89173-2

159

160 H Healing, 3, 38, 45, 51, 54, 59, 60, 67, 70, 73, 79, 103, 105–108, 110, 113, 127, 130, 151, 153 Heroes, 11, 18, 27 Heroism, 2, 11, 12, 18, 61 Hiding places, 4, 11, 12, 15–17, 24, 27, 34, 150 Human community, 6, 14, 110, 144, 153 Human family, 6, 43–46, 152 Human rights, 1, 2, 4–6, 13, 29, 30, 33, 34, 42, 43, 47, 49, 52, 58, 60, 61, 63–65, 68, 69, 76, 79, 83, 91, 92, 94, 95, 98, 103, 106, 118–120, 122–130, 132, 133, 135, 137–141, 143, 144, 149–151, 153 Human rights violations, 2, 5, 6, 13, 30, 42, 47, 52, 60, 61, 63–65, 69, 76, 91, 94, 95, 106, 118–120, 122–130, 132, 137, 143, 144, 149–151, 153

I Ikigongwe, 95, 97 Imbabazi, 95 Imperative to tell, 4, 5, 58–84, 151 Impossibility of justice, 6, 117–145, 152 Impuhwe, 95, 97 Incapacity of words, 60–65, 151 Indignation, 89 Injuries, 5, 88–91, 93, 95, 97, 111, 114, 120, 122, 123, 130, 141 International community, 44, 49, 130 International Criminal Court (ICC), 100, 122, 123

J Justice, 3, 5, 6, 26, 27, 30, 39, 48, 67, 71, 83, 88, 90–92, 97, 100, 118–144, 152, 153

K Kubabarira, 95–97 Kurekurira, 95–97, 103

L Legal obligation, 79 Listening, 21, 22, 54, 63–65, 69, 75–79, 129 Lives, 6, 10–25, 32, 33, 35–42, 45, 47, 48, 50, 52, 55, 59–63, 67, 92, 99, 103, 104, 106, 118–120, 123, 127, 132–135, 143, 144, 149

Subject Index M Manipulation, 31, 51, 54, 72, 73, 128 Mass massacres, 4 Meaning, 3, 5, 10–13, 16–19, 23, 34, 44, 53, 60, 64, 66, 73, 76, 80, 89, 93, 95–97, 99, 107, 109, 110, 114, 124, 151 Memorials, 1, 30, 31, 42, 50–52, 71, 111 Memories, 3, 4, 24, 26, 29–34, 36–40, 42–48, 51–55, 58, 61, 66–68, 70, 71, 74, 80, 82, 104, 109–111, 120, 135, 141, 150 Merci, 112, 114, 115, 152 Monuments, 31, 39, 40, 42 Moral duty, 31, 36, 43–48, 51, 54, 58, 65, 67, 78, 79, 105, 106 Muselmann, 80, 81

N Narratives, 11, 18, 39–41, 49–52, 59, 60, 67, 69, 71–75, 78–81, 83, 91, 128, 133, 137, 150 Necessity to forget, 4, 29–55 Negationism, 75 Negative silence, 5, 69 Never again, 43, 44, 100, 121

O Offenders, 30, 98, 100, 106, 108, 109, 111, 113, 120, 124–129, 139–144

P Perpetrators, 2, 4, 5, 11–16, 19–23, 26, 27, 29, 30, 35, 47, 48, 58–60, 71, 73–75, 78, 79, 82, 83, 91, 92, 96, 99, 102–105, 108, 110, 111, 113–115, 118–124, 126, 129–131, 133, 136–140, 142, 144, 150, 151 Positive silence, 5, 70 Post-conflict society, 2, 3, 5, 6, 121, 129, 131, 136, 138–142, 144, 150 Practical reason, 99, 100, 118, 120, 121, 152 Promises of justice, 118–144 Proportional, 99, 118, 121, 123, 131–133 Proportionality, 118, 120, 132 Protecting life, 13 Public amnesty, 39 Public forgetting, 4, 37–42, 50, 53–55, 135, 150 Public memory, 53, 54, 150 Public remembering, 48–53 Public remembrance, 4, 150

Subject Index Punishment, 30, 71, 88, 91–93, 99–101, 104, 118–125, 130, 131, 138, 141

R Reconciliation, 2, 3, 5, 6, 21, 27, 30, 31, 35, 36, 39, 42, 47, 48, 50, 51, 55, 59, 60, 65, 69, 71, 72, 76–79, 84, 92, 95, 101, 103, 105, 119, 126, 128, 131, 134, 135, 139, 140, 142, 144, 149–153 Reconstruction, 2, 3, 5, 6, 21, 27, 29–31, 35, 39, 42, 45, 47, 48, 50, 51, 55, 59, 60, 65, 69, 71, 72, 76–78, 82, 84, 92, 95, 115, 119, 131, 135, 139, 140, 142, 144, 149, 151–153 Remembering, 4, 30–33, 36, 38, 40–55, 58, 63, 111, 150 Remembrance, 31, 32, 37, 41, 47, 49, 51–53, 73, 103, 150 Repairing, 6, 130–135, 142 Reparative justice, 6, 30, 34, 119, 130, 133, 137, 138, 143, 144, 152, 153 Resentments, 5, 63, 71, 88–93, 96, 98, 111, 113, 123, 140, 141, 152 Resistance, 12–14, 89 Restorative justice, 6, 30, 119, 124–130, 138, 140, 142, 152 Retributive justice, 30, 125, 138, 141 Revenge, 5, 36, 38, 83, 88–115, 118, 120, 121, 123–125, 140–142, 151, 152

S Self-care, 15, 68, 107 Self-knowledge, 15 Shame, 59, 62, 63, 65, 68, 69, 78, 112, 113 Silence, 4, 5, 20, 22, 26, 39, 41, 54, 58–84, 107, 110, 134, 151 Social healing, 39, 54 Standing up, 19–23 Storytelling beings, 60, 61, 65, 66, 76 Sufferings, 11, 16–21, 23, 27, 44–47, 49, 63–65, 67, 69, 70, 73, 76, 79, 83, 90, 93, 95, 96, 114, 130, 132, 133, 135, 153 Survival, 4, 14–21, 24, 27, 58, 60, 66–68, 75, 151

161 Survives, 4, 13–18, 24, 27, 45, 46, 62, 74, 80, 82, 83, 103, 150 Survivors, 2–6, 9–11, 13–27, 29–31, 33–39, 41–55, 58–84, 91, 92, 98, 103–111, 113–115, 119, 121–124, 128, 129, 131–144, 149–153

T Testimonies, 4, 16, 20, 24, 35, 64, 65, 68, 79, 80, 124, 136 The disappeared, 5, 47, 131 The innocent, 5, 27, 29, 83, 124 The just, 5, 83 The opened space, 70–75 The unforgivable, 99–104 Traces, 33, 40–42, 53–55, 58, 80, 81, 137, 151 Transitional justice, 3, 6, 27, 30, 39, 119, 137, 139, 153 Trauma, 25, 29, 38, 39, 60, 61, 66, 67 Traumatic experiences, 4, 16, 26, 38, 54, 59, 61, 67, 150, 151 Truth and Reconciliation Commissions (TRCs), 30, 59, 61, 63, 68, 71, 78, 79, 83, 102, 115, 127–130, 136, 138, 142 Truth telling, 3, 128

U Unforgivable, 93, 94, 101, 104

V Vengeance, 88–93, 97, 107, 118, 120, 123, 141, 152 Victimization, 128, 130, 139 Victims, 2, 5, 6, 12–16, 18–23, 25–27, 30, 33–35, 44, 46–51, 66–71, 74, 76, 79–83, 90, 92, 94, 95, 99, 100, 102–104, 106–114, 118–121, 123–136, 138–144, 152, 153

W Witnesses, 4, 40, 58, 59, 64, 65, 67–70, 75, 76, 79–83, 102, 129