Sandrine Lefranc

Aquello que no se conmemora: ¿Democracias sin un pasado compartido?

Democratic societies, both the “old” and the “new” ones, that were confronted to a violent past, today don’t seem to share but a fragmented and conflictive memory of this past. The measures of transitional justice that democratic governments took in the Southern Cone and in South Africa (amnesties, “truth” and reparations) didn’t allow the invention of a united memory. This article tries to take stock of these experiences, from the point of view of four different goals targeted by the governments. Transitional justice contributed to the stabilization of the democratic regime, but did not put an end to the misunderstanding.

The Emergence of Transitional Justice as a Professional International Practice

Transitional justice has recently become among the most recommended means of building peace in a country having experienced a civil war or violent state repression. However, diverse may be its components, it provides a new definition of justice: the rehabilitation of victims, partly through reparations, is generally favored upon judgment of the perpetrators. Transitional justice implies a premise of exceptionality: for its promoters it is not a standard form of justice. We demonstrate that transitional justice is the product of a specific composite international milieu rather than the consequence of a process, be it moral one or political. More than a collection of practices or a (not entirely stable) base of knowledge, transitional justice looks like a space of professional and activist activity for various actors, from both the north and south.

Convertir le grand nombre à la paix : Une ingénierie internationale de pacification

La construction de la paix fait depuis le milieu des annees 1980 l’objet d’une intervention croissante des organisations agissant a l’echelle internationale. Parmi les dispositifs « post-conflit » proposes par les agents des gouvernements, organisations inter-gouvernementales et ONG, figurent des programmes qui ciblent la reconciliation du grand nombre plutot que la reforme des structures sociales et politiques. Ces programmes sont en general presentes comme une modalite de pacification alternative par rapport aux negociations d’accords de paix, operations de maintien de la paix et autres formes d’intervention qui visent une « paix liberale » par l’intermediaire des elites. Une analyse prosopographique des acteurs de la paix « par le bas » et la reconstitution de la genese historique des organisations specialisees amenent a nuancer cette portee d’alternative, en montrant comment les programmes internationaux sont des ressources pour des jeux sociaux dans les pays du « Nord » qui exportent ces recettes, en meme temps que les vecteurs de la diffusion de mecanismes de resolution des litiges et de conceptions du fonctionnement social particuliers.

The “right distance” when dealing with violence

The issue of the researchers relationship with the subject of ‘extreme violence’ is approached here from the point of view not of subjective motivations, but of the scientific rule of distanc-ing which, in the absence of specific epistemo-logical recommendations, seems to apply in this case as in others. At times of ‘exit’ from violence, when a repressive authoritarian regime is replaced by a democratic government, the ‘right Distance’ of the researcher has particular consequences: it may coincide with the tenets of governmental ‘reconciliation’ policies, in particular the injunction to victims to weigh their demands against the need for pacification in the general interest. This convergence - which does not necessarily involve collusion - shows how difficult it is to find the right stance towards the subject of ‘violence’: epistemological rules cannot be dissociated from a particular political context and from a social relationship with violence, and may thus have normative implications.