Questionable Associations: The Role of Forgiveness in Transitional Justice

Abstract

Forgiveness has gained surprising prominence in transitional justice circles due, in part, to the impact of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, advocacy of forgiveness by educational and social psychologists and critiques of retributive justice in critical legal studies. Drawing on philosophy, psychology, literature, legal theory and records of transitional justice in situ, this article argues that while advocates claim significant personal and social benefits derive from forgiveness, transitional justice should not consider forgiveness an a priori good or as commensurate with either reconciliation or peacebuilding. Before advocating forgiveness as a form of personal healing or social reconciliation, artisans of transitional justice mechanisms should consider that the repression of anger or resentment may be psychologically harmful and that perceived pressure to forgive may cause significant psychic distress. They should carefully consider the ways in which rhetoric or practices of forgiveness may facilitate perpetrators’ ability to do harm, teach victims to make peace with their oppression and reinforce structures of inequality. In Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, the drunkard Marmeladov cavalierly recounts to the novel’s hero, Raskolnikov, how his drunkenness has put his family into abject destitution; how he has grovelled for loans that he fully intends to squander on drink and has no intention of repaying; how he looks on lamely as his consumptive wife, Katerina Ivanovna, beats the children when they cry from hunger and coerces his adolescent daughter, Sonya, into prostitution; how he has stolen back from his wife the money earned through a briefly held job and been to Sonya to beg for more money. As Marmeladov lies on his deathbed, Katerina Ivanovna obstinately refuses to forgive him despite his pathetic pleas, instead confronting him with the devastating effects of his behaviour – the family’s wretched living conditions, his starving and ill-clothed children and a daughter who has prostituted herself – and storms off to ‘find justice.’ 1 Forgiveness, she insists, is not commensurate with justice, does not provide for her material needs or repair the harm done to her and her children and, while expedient for