Download This PaperCrisis, Faith, and Transformation in Transitional Justice
10 Pages Posted: 8 May 2020
Date Written: April 14, 2020
Abstract
Transitional justice has been said to be in a state of crisis for over a decade now, giving rise to a number of alternative visions for justice-making thought to hold out the possibility of greater legitimacy and effectiveness going forward. One such alternative vision is that of transformative justice. While in many ways a welcome response to the blindspots of mainstream transitional justice, I argue that transformative justice is unlikely to resolve the crises and tensions at the heart of the field for several reasons. At its core, transformative justice does not so much transcend liberalism as it does take sides in a long-running contest between competing and irreconcilable liberal values. There is therefore a danger of simply displacing faith in one set of liberal values and political preferences for another without adequate examination of the tradeoffs involved. At a more operational level, the dilemmas that have stymied mainstream transitional justice arising out of the challenges of the law, of elites, and the global are likely to be re-encountered in another guise. Transformative justice will loosen old knots, only to succeed in tying new ones. Going forward, I call for a “both/and” stance to the complex realities of the post-conflict context, one that embraces the messy, hybrid, and essentially contested nature of peace and justice work.
Keywords: transformative justice, liberalism, critical theory, peacebuilding
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