"Let me Tell you": Transitional Justice, Victimhood and Dealing with a Contested Past

Cheryl Lawther

doi:10.1177/0964663920974072

"Let me Tell you": Transitional Justice, Victimhood and Dealing with a Contested Past

Cheryl Lawther

School of Law

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

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Abstract

This article explores the intersection between the politics and construction of victimhood in transitional societies and the use of truth recovery as a platform for the creation of hierarchies of truth. It explores how, in a context of contested victimhood and an unresolved past, the ‘political currency’ of victimhood may lead to the domination and embellishment of certain voices and narratives and the concurrent silencing of others. As this article will then demonstrate, when applied to the debate on truth recovery, the capturing of victims’ voice and agency can manifest in a damaging ‘truth as trumps’ dynamic and recourse to ‘whataboutery’ in which one call for truth or the recovery of truth as significant to one side of the community is countered by that of a more ‘significant’ or more ‘important’ truth on the part of the other. The paper argues for the inculcation of a culture political generosity in transitional contexts as a way to begin to ameliorate these challenges.

Original language	English
Number of pages	23
Journal	Social and Legal Studies
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1177/0964663920974072
Publication status	Published - 23 Nov 2020

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10.1177/0964663920974072Licence: CC BY

‘Let Me Tell You’: Transitional Justice, Victimhood and Dealing with a Contested Past
© 2020 The Authors. This is an open access article published under a Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the author and source are cited.
Final published version, 242 KBLicence: CC BY

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