Forgetting the embodied past: Body memory in transitional justice

Abstract

Memory is the modus in which past events make themselves known in the present and, hence, it plays a crucial role in transitional justice processes. The latter addresses, today, violence experienced in the past, under the conditions of armed conflict or authoritarian rule, in order to facilitate a successful transition towards a more peaceful society. These processes thus act upon the relationship between the past and the present in a post-conflict society – not as the result of some political agenda, but because of the functional logic of memory itself: in the act of remembering, the dimensions of the past and the present are paralleled. Therefore, memory always establishes and (re-)negotiates the relationship between the two dimensions of then and now. From this perspective instruments and mechanisms of transitional justice can be conceived as conscious interventions into the memoryscape of a post-authoritarian or post-war society in an attempt to address injustices and abuses of the violent past. Yet, although memory is a key dimension in the social processes associatedwith the notion of transitional justice, the understanding of the concept is usually not spelled out. Implicitly, research is founded on the acknowledgement of the mentioned intimacy of the past and the present in processes of remembering;1 it is because ‘[r]emembrance is always now’ (Steiner 1975), that memories of violence gain political relevance in a post-conflict or post-authoritarian situation. Yet, beyond this basic conceptualisation, the understanding of memory in transitional justice thinking remains indistinct, echoing rather general ideas on the matter, which are dominant in Western thought. The most salient characteristic of such ideas is a representation of memory as a faculty of the mind, which neglects its attachment to the bodily aspects of human existence. In Plato’s philosophy, for example, the dynamics of memory were compared to a signet ring stamp which is forced into a wax tablet: in the same way the former leaves an imprint on the latter, human experiences leave an imprint on the mind that can be recalled, thus evoking the past in the present (Plato 1997: § 191 c, d). Later, Augustine coined the idea of memory being a storage place in the mind when referring to the ‘fields and vast palaces’ where images of past experiences are kept (Augustine2006: 195). Since then, metaphors of memory as a space in the mind for storage and later retrieval run through memory research in the humanities as well as the cognitive sciences2 with the advent of the computer age further strengthening these analogies. In the last quarter of the twentieth century, however, the constructivistturn in social sciences and the humanities stimulated a radical re-orientation of the field. Rediscovering the notion of collective memory (Halbwachs 1980, first published 1925), scholars took an interest in the social dimension of memory, more precisely its production in society as well as the impact of society on processes of remembering and forgetting on the individual level.3