Re-thinking memory and transitional justice: A novel application of ecological memory

Janine Natalya Clark

doi:10.1177/1750698020959813

Abstract

While transitional justice processes call upon individuals and societies to recall and remember, memory practices – and more specifically the frequent politicisation of memory in transitional societies – can undermine transitional justice goals, including peace and reconciliation. This interdisciplinary article seeks to re-think the relationship between transitional justice and memory. It does so by introducing the concept of ecological memory, a supra-political form of memory centred on complex ecosystem responses to disturbance events and the development of resilience to future shocks and stressors. Transposing the concept of ecological memory to the novel context of transitional justice can ultimately foster a new alignment between memory and transitional justice that is more conducive to the realisation of the latter’s core goals. Drawing on empirical data, the article seeks to demonstrate that transitional justice processes can contribute to fostering ecological memory by giving attention to the ecological legacies of war crimes and human rights violations.

Highlights

On 16 April 2019, more than 700 people gathered in Ahmići, in central Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH), for the annual event that takes place to commemorate the 116 Bosniaks who were killed in the village on that day in 1993
Peterson explores how landscape pattern can shape and influence fire spread via ecological memory
It is the existence of ecological memory that ‘produces persistent pattern because it establishes a feedback loop between fire spread and landscape pattern’ (Peterson, 2002: 336)

Summary

Introduction

On 16 April 2019, more than 700 people gathered in Ahmići, in central Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH), for the annual event that takes place to commemorate the 116 Bosniaks who were killed in the village on that day in 1993. More than 50miles way, the community of Trusina, near Konjic, came together to remember the 18 Croat civilians and four members of the HVO who were killed by the BiH army on 16 April 1993. Željko Komšić, the Croat member of BiH’s tripartite presidency, has described the war crimes committed in Ahmići and Trusina as leaving a ‘trajna opomena’ (lasting memory) (Oslobođenje, 2019). In this sense, memory can be understood as the ‘“persistence of something from the past into the present”’ (Berliner, 2005: 78, citing Halbwachs, 1994). Inside a small building next to the mosque in lower Ahmići, for example, a spomen soba

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