Problematising Symbolic Reparation: ‘Complex Political Victims’, ‘Dead Body Politics’ and the Right to Remember
| Published date | 01 June 2020 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0964663919869050 |
| Date | 01 June 2020 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Social & Legal Studies
2020, Vol. 29(3) 334–354
Problematising Symbolic
ª The Author(s) 2019
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Reparation: ‘Complex
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DOI: 10.1177/0964663919869050
Political Victims’,
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‘Dead Body Politics’ and
the Right to Remember
Kevin Hearty
Queen’s University Belfast, UK
Abstract
In light of the increasing importance of commemoration and memorialisation within the
study of transitional justice, this article attempts to stimulate further critical discussion
on the right to remember in societies transitioning out of prolonged conflict. Located
within a wider exploration of the problematic overlap between the ‘politics of repara-
tions’ and ‘dead body politics’ commonly found in transitioning societies, it argues that
any prospective right to remember creates a tension between competing collective
rights held by various constituencies. On the one hand, there emerges the right of
remembrance owed to certain constituencies, yet at the same time this must be balanced
against the right of acknowledgment owed to other constituencies. Despite this tension,
the article posits that affording a right to remember in the case of ‘complex political
victims’ is necessary for reparative imbalance to be avoided, for a fuller insight into the
causes and consequences of past violence to be gained and for movement towards the
goal of non-recurrence.
Keywords
Collective memory, memorialisation, reparations, transitional justice, victimhood
Corresponding author:
Kevin Hearty, School of Law/Mitchell Institute, Queen’s University Belfast, 18 University Square, BT7 1NN,
Belfast, UK.
Email: k.hearty@qub.ac.uk
Hearty
335
Introduction
The increasing importance afforded to memorialisation and commemoration in societies
transitioning out of conflict raises questions about whether or not a right to remember
now exists (Reading, 2011). Although there is no specific right to remember expressly
laid out in any covenant under international law (Lee, 2010), the importance of remem-
brance in a transitional justice context has been acknowledged in other ways. Memor-
ialisation and commemoration are recognised as valuable forms of non-pecuniary
reparation in major United Nations (UN) policy reports,1 in the recommendations of
truth commissions (Hamber et al., 2010), by the Inter-American Court (Blustein, 2012)
and by some domestic courts.2 The most generous interpretation of these developments,
Jimeno (2018) argues, is that a de facto right to remember has latently emerged within
transitional justice.
This is not unproblematic though, with Jimeno also noting that if remembrance is
recognised as symbolic reparation to which a rights claim can be made it poses the
awkward question of who it should be granted to. Further questions about who should
be remembered, who should have their story told and how different groups and actors
should be portrayed emerge too (Naidu, 2014). In defying any obvious answer, these
questions are intrinsically rooted in what Elster (2004: 118–128) calls the ‘decisions of
transitional justice’ as to who is responsible for past harms, who should be considered a
victim, who as a victim is entitled to reparation and what this reparation should be. One
particularly discomforting question concerning any prospective right to remember is
whether it should be limited to those who died for nothing (i.e. civilians) or if it should
be extended to those who died for something (i.e. combatants and/or political activists).
In other words, should this form of symbolic reparation only be available to those framed
as ‘innocent victims’ who were harmed through the norms violation of their victimiser or
should it also be available to ‘complex political victims’ (Bouris, 2007) who suffered
harms as a consequence of their own agency. More pointedly, should it exist where
‘complex political victims’ themselves committed or contributed to the harms inflicted
on others in the furtherance of the something for which they died?
These questions problematically merge the ‘politics of reparation’ (Torpey, 2006)
with the ‘dead body politics’ (Verdery, 1999: 26) of post-conflict remembrance. Debates
over who should be afforded reparations and what these reparations should be are, just
like debates on commemoration and memorialisation, intrinsically rooted in particular
understandings of the conflict that preceded these debates. Any claim to reparations for
historical injury or injustice can be contested by others who may interpret events dif-
ferently – whether it was in fact an injustice, who is responsible for it and who should
subsequently provide reparations (Torpey, 2006: 3). This is further complicated by the
fact that reparations claims-making can be reduced to narrow self-interest through lever-
aging partisan interpretations of the past for political purposes in the present (Torpey,
2006: 6). ‘Dead body politics’ involves a similarly uneasy interaction between the past
and the present because it entails posthumously framing the life of an individual in
accordance with cultural and political scripts that attempt to give their life and death a
particular positive or negative meaning (Verdery, 1999). Through so manipulating the
dead, ‘dead body politics’ becomes integral to the process of memory-making and
336
Social & Legal Studies 29(3)
(re)writing the past (Verdery, 1999: 3). The common ability of the ‘politics of repara-
tions’ and ‘dead body politics’ to reinforce selective interpretations of the past through
commemoration and memorialisation presents two prevailing issues for transitional
justice scholarship to explore; who should be commemorated as a form of symbolic
reparation and how this should be done.
Through highlighting the issues emerging from such a problematic merger, this
article represents an effort to stimulate further critical discussion on the right to
remember in societies transitioning out of political conflict. It draws on media
coverage of Irish republican commemoration in Northern Ireland to concretise its
theoretical arguments,3 though the insights and perspectives offered herein can
nonetheless ‘travel’ to inform transitional justice theory and best practice on com-
memoration and memorialisation elsewhere (Dempster, 2016; McEvoy, 2018; McE-
voy and Bryson, 2016). Likewise, they may be applied to collective remembrance
undertaken by other constituencies within Northern Ireland, like official state
remembrance and Ulster loyalist remembrance too (Brown and Grant, 2016; McDo-
well and Braniff, 2014). Several factors favour using the North of Ireland as a
geographical lens for this issue. Northern Ireland, as Bell (2003) notes, not only
represents a non-paradigmatic transition that resulted from a negotiated settlement of
conflict rather than a defeat or victory for any side, but also represents a society that
has not yet comprehensively addressed its legacy of conflict. The legacy of tripartite
political violence involving Irish republican and Ulster loyalist non-state groups and
state security forces remains contested through what has been termed a meta-conflict
over the causes and consequences of the conflict itself (Bell et al., 2004; Hearty,
2016; Lawther, 2014; Mallinder, 2019). Because commemoration can provide mean-
ing for the past (Funkenstein, 1989) while simultaneously promoting ‘presentist’
agendas (Schwartz, 1982), it has unsurprisingly been used to promote certain inter-
pretations of the past at the expense of other interpretations (Brown and Viggiani,
2010; McDowell and Braniff, 2014). This is further problematised by the fact that
commemoration in Northern Ireland takes a ‘fragmented’ form (Vinitzky-Seroussi,
2009: 4), whereby there are different mnemonic times and spaces wherein compet-
ing discourses about the past are voiced by, and sometimes even at, different audi-
ences. More significantly, the commemorative culture revolves around
commemorating those who died for something rather than those who died for noth-
ing; combatants are commemorated more than non-combatants, with Irish republi-
cans being the most active political commemorators (Brown and Grant, 2016). This
actuality means that using the labels died for nothing and died for something is not
to be disparaging but simply to offer a neat differentiation between those who died
in furtherance of a particular political cause and the majority of victims who died as
a consequence of political violence in which they were not involved, which in turn
helps to illuminate the commemorative difficulties such a reality poses.
The article begins by briefly outlining the rationale proffered for symbolic reparation
within transitional justice. It then proceeds to outline how ‘dead body politics’ frames the
remembrance of those who died for something, before critically applying these theore-
tical insights to political disagreement over commemoration in Northern Ireland. Build-
ing from there, the article argues that there is polyvalence to Irish republican
Hearty
337
commemoration that fundamentally problematises any right to remember. In recognising
this ‘multilayeredness’ of memory (Rigney, 2012), it posits that recognising a right to
remember those who died for something can paradoxically prove both necessary and
problematic for transitional justice. On the one hand, it raises difficulties relating to
balancing any prospective right to remember those who died for something with the
acknowledgement of their victims, yet on the other hand, it may nonetheless prove
necessary if...
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