Book review: Theorizing Transitional Justice
| Author | Huma Saeed |
| DOI | 10.1177/0269758015610858 |
| Published date | 01 January 2016 |
| Date | 01 January 2016 |
| Subject Matter | Book reviews |
Claudio Corradetti, Nir Eisikovits and Jack Volpe Rotondi (eds.)
Theorizing Transitional Justice
Ashgate: Farnham, 2015; xiiiþ261 pp.: ISBN 9781472418296.
Reviewed by: Huma Saeed, Leuven Institute of Criminology (LINC), Belgium
DOI: 10.1177/0269758015610858
An expanding field, both in academia and practice, transitional justice largely remains an under-
theorized discourse. Theorizing TransitionalJustice, therefore, offers a timelycontribution, in which
a diverse range of normative perspectives and issues are discussed. The book is organized in seven
thematic parts, each containing two or three chapters that examine and challenge the hotly debated
issues of transitional justice,such as political reconciliation, punishmentafter the war, reparation and
the role of the arts (films and architecture). The book ends with two case studies: reconciliation and
amnesty in Athens after the Thirty Tyrants regimen in 403 BCE; and post-genocide Rwanda, in
which the authors examine the relationship between justice and development projects. A number
of chapters, delectably, bring in concepts and theoriesfrom other contexts and historicalperiods and
discuss them in relation to transitional justice and its dilemmas as they are pertinent today, such as
Carl Schmitt’s view on amnesty (Chapter 3), Jean Amery’s critique of forgiveness (Chapter 8) and
the ‘social death’ hypothesis from the historian Orlando Patterson (Chapter 14).
Theorizing Transitional Justice, on the one hand, offers alternative ways and explanations in an
attempt to understand the complex issues that post-conflict and post-dictatorial societies have to
address during their transitions. On the other hand, however, it leaves the reader with further ques-
tions as to how exactly to bridge such theoretical, and at times very abstract, discourses with the
challenging realities on the ground. This, however, is not new and only speaks to the complex
nature and dilemmas that the field inevitably has to confront. Perhaps the merit of the book pre-
cisely lies in the fact that it makes one ponder and reflect beyond our ‘conventional’ mode of think-
ing by offering refreshing perspectives.
In Chapter 5, for example, Thomason presents a theoretical framework for transitional justice as
structural justice. She argues that this perspective allows us to encompass both social and economic
matters by tackling systematic and institutional issues rather than immediate situations of post-
conflict. This view seems to present a concise alternative to the ongoing debates about the divide
between civiland political rights on theone hand and socio-economicand cultural rights on the other.
Likewise, Metz (Chapter 9) discusses a theory of national reconciliation that, unlike the custom-
ary trend in academia, is not grounded in the Western philosophical thinking but rather in the sub-
Saharan ethic with its focus on ‘communal approaches to morality’ (p. 120). The author grounds
this framework on the notion of ‘Ubuntu’, a prevalent concept of morality that means ‘realizing
one’s humanness’, which individuals can only achieve if they enter a communal relationship with
others based on affiliation of identity and solidarity. A theory of national reconciliation offered
here thus argues that reconciliation should be a step towards ‘realizing a society that fully respects
communal relationship’ (p. 124). This view on reconciliation moves us from the customary think-
ing on the subject as a process happening primarily between individuals, namely victim and per-
petrator, to one of a more organic approach with the focus on community as a whole. One of the
strengths of this chapter is that it relies on the writings of African philosophers and thinkers, an
approach – in general with scholars from the South – that thus far has found little place in the tran-
sitional justice discourse and one from which the field can, arguably, benefit to address some of the
critiques of its Western dominated, top down patterns.
Book reviews 77
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