Finding a Voice: Silence and its Significance for Transitional Justice
| Date | 01 June 2020 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0964663919856685 |
| Published date | 01 June 2020 |
| Author | Janine Natalya Clark |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Finding a Voice: Silence
and its Significance
for Transitional Justice
Janine Natalya Clark
University of Birmingham, UK
Abstract
On the surface at least, silence appears to have no obvious or legitimate place
within transitional justice. The latter is about voice and about truth-telling, about
creating a factual record of what happened. The core aim of the article, however,
is to demonstrate that silence is highly relevant to transitional justice. To develop
this argument, it explores two possible and interrelated functions of silence – as a
form of resistance and as a survival strategy. Conceptualizing silence as a form of
absence, and emphasizing a dialectical relationship between silence as being and
becoming, the article underlines the transformative possibilities of silence and
their significance for transitional justice. In particular, silence can aid in the
development of more agentic and contextually sensitive ways of dealing with the
past. A major challenge for transitional justice, thus, is to find ways of allowing
silence to ‘speak’.
Keywords
Absence, agency, being–becoming, resistance, silence, survival strategy, transitional
justice
‘Speech is civilization itself. The word, even the most contradictious word, preserves
contact – it is silence which isolates’. (Mann, 1967: 518)
‘Silence has many faces ...it is probably the most ambiguous of a ll linguistic forms’.
(Jaworski, 1993: 24)
Corresponding author:
Janine Natalya Clark, School of Law, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT, UK.
Email: j.n.clark@bham.ac.uk
Social & Legal Studies
2020, Vol. 29(3) 355–378
ªThe Author(s) 2019
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/0964663919856685
journals.sagepub.com/home/sls
Introduction
In the story of The Reader, Michael Berg first meets Hanna Schmitz when he is 15 years
old. They begin an intense sexual relationship and Hanna frequently asks Michael to read
to her. One day, she suddenly disappears from his life. When he sees her again, she is in a
courtroom, on trial with four other women for a heinous crime. During the Second World
War, Hanna and her co-defendants had worked as guards in a camp near Cracow.
According to the story, one night a fierce bombing raid took place and a church was
set ablaze. The guards and troops had locked several hundred female prisoners inside this
church, all of whom – with the exception of a mother and daughter – perished in the
flames. Although the defendants could have unlocked the church doors and saved the
women inside, they did nothing. During the trial years later, a report which formed part
of the Schutzstaffel (SS) archives is produced as evidence; ‘The guards who remained
behind, the report indicated, had allowed the fire to rage in the church and had kept the
doors locked. Among the guards who remained behind, the report indicated, were the
defendants’ (Schlink, 2008: 124). After one of the defendants insists that it was Hanna
who wrote the report, a claim which she herself trenchantly denies, the prosecutor
suggests that a handwriting expert should be called. Hanna maintains that this is unne-
cessary and confesses to writing the report. Michael suddenly realizes that she has long
been hiding something – the fact that she cannot read or write.
Hanna’s silence in this regard is central to the story and overall plot in The Reader.
While it thus has a meta functionality, it also has a more personal function; it forms part
of Hanna’s struggle (Schlink, 2008: 133). Her silence is broken only at the end of the
story – and broken by her as part of her success in teaching herself to read and write in
prison. Following Hanna’s suicide, the day before she is due to be granted early release,
the prison governor tells Michael that Hanna had asked for a writing manual: ‘ ...she
didn’t try to hide it any longer. She was also just proud that she had succeeded, and
wanted to share her happiness’ (Schlink, 2008: 204).
There are many other significant silences in The Reader. For example, when Michael
realizes that Hanna is illiterate, he thinks about speaking to the trial judge and telling him
what he knows. The fact that he ultimately does nothing and remains silent implicitly
raises important questions about silence and (in)justice. According to one commentator,
‘Michael is totally unaware that by not helping her [Hanna], he has repeated the conduct
of some ordinary Germans during the Nazi era. Like them he stood idly by while
someone he could have helped suffered an injustice’ (Roth, 2004: 168–169). In this
regard, Michael’s silence ‘speaks’ to a wider set of issues that extend beyond him as
an individual. As the narrator of the story, however, it is his silence on the issue of
Hanna’s guilt that is most pronounced. In the first part of the novel, he readily vocalizes
his sentiments for her. As the reader learns about Hanna’s crimes, however, he provides
few insights into what he is feeling. Does he judge her? Should he? Seemingly at a loss to
know, ‘All he can offer is a silence compounded of horror, shame and guilt – “Should we
only fall silent in revulsion, shame, and guilt?” ...’ (Swales, 2003: 13–14).
Michael’s own silence in this regard allows the author himself to avoid making any
comments on Hanna’s guilt or responsibility. These silences in the novel appear para-
doxical when one recalls that ‘this book is narrated by a fictional jurist and written by a
356 Social & Legal Studies 29(3)
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