Incommensurable worlds, irreparable wounds: Transitional justice politics and personal violent pasts in postconflict Peru

Abstract

Reparation programmes in transitional justice processes imply that there are ways to repair social bonds, to dignify victims of violence, to reconstitute what is lost. But how does losing a relative translate into the twists and turns of a state social programme? Based on ethnographic research in the Peruvian Andes and the life history of a daughter of a Shining Path leader, this article explores the ways in which transitional justice discourses get translated into specific national reparation policies embedded in a series of mnemonic wars. These mnemonic wars imply different levels of confrontation, and invisibilization of subjects and citizenships.