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

Description

This book offers a critical examination of certain ideas and values―such as remembering, forgiveness, story-telling through Truth and Reconciliation Commissions, etc.―that under-gird the transitional practices and mechanisms of societies emerging from conflicts. It does so by making the survivors’ experience the supreme and ultimate judge of the legitimacy of such practices. While many scholars have dealt with these topics, this book provides a unique perspective on them by using personal stories, narratives and memoirs of the survivors as a checking point of the theoretical elaboration of these ideas and values. By means of an existential phenomenological analysis of the situation of survivors of gross human rights violations, the book assesses how many resources are still available to them, so that they can contribute to the processes of reconstruction and reconciliation of their societies. This analysis constitutes the background for reading the rest of the book, which challenges some assumptions and presumptions of transitional practices such as healing through truth-telling, or providing justice through reparations. It does so by presenting nuanced suggestions on the ways survivors can participate in the reconstruction-reconciliation processes, without jeopardizing their own well-being. Preface Contents Chapter 1: General Introduction References Chapter 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 Chapter 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 Chapter 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 Chapter 5: The Urge to Revenge and the Call to Forgive 5.1 The Story of a Naked Chicken 5.2 Forgiveness Beyond the Given 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 Chapter 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 Chapter 7: General Conclusion Name Index Subject Index