Transitional archives: towards a conceptualisation of archives in transitional justice

Julia Viebach*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

11 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

This paper seeks to trouble and complicate core assumptions about transitional justice and archives and to critically examine the relationship between them. Understanding archives as a mere instrument of human rights obscures the silence of disenfranchised voices and the workings of power and exclusion that foreground the practice and discursive conditions of the transitional justice and human rights paradigms. Records about conflict and dictatorship are like records in general never only a reflection of realities, but they constitute these realities. 1 Following Harris’ plea to find ‘exigencies’ 2 to the transitional justice paradigm it suggests the term transitional archives to highlight the multi-layered afterlife of human rights records. It thereby emphasises the open-ended nature, ‘the in-becoming’, 3 of transitional archives. It argues that by including critical archival studies in our thinking of transitional justice and a violent past, we can push beyond the dominant discourse of healing, closure and reconciliation, and open up space to investigate not only how the past but also transitional justice itself is produced at the intersection of power, memory, narrative and violence.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)403-439
Number of pages37
JournalInternational Journal of Human Rights
Volume25
Issue number3
Early online date23 Sept 2020
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2021
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Keywords

  • Archives
  • human rights
  • silences
  • transitional justice
  • violence

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Sociology and Political Science
  • Law

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