Speaking Justice, Performing Reconciliation: Twin Challenges for a Postcolonial Ethics

Abstract

This article is concerned with problems of injustice that arise from law’s emphasis on the status quo. I contend that a commitment to social justice means that we will (at least sometimes) need to improvise processes and institutions within the broader political community, rather than relying on law to bring about justice. I explore the efficacy and pitfalls of these kinds of improvised justice movements—undertaken within an extra-legal social sphere—with particular attention to the possibilities of truth and reconciliation commissions. In the first part, this exploration takes the form of a comparative analysis of two different national orientations to the question of postcolonial justice. I consider truth and reconciliation commissions more closely in the second part: the sense in which they can coherently be seen as improvised justice, the ways in which they may be inadequate vehicles, or even distortions, of justice, and the possibility that these potential defects can be overcome through behaviours that reveal an ‘ethos of improvisation’. As I think that performativity is a common element of both musical improvisation and truth and reconciliation commissions, I aim to show that this ethos is a common feature of both processes, albeit perhaps with some modifications, and that it addresses concerns about the limitations of extra-legal attempts at justice.