In this week’s reading, I felt the reoccurring theme from last week of the inability for the experience of trauma to fit within available frameworks, be they bureaucratic or legal. They become incomprehensive within these systems, which revert back to our class discussions on sexual assault cases and their inability to fit within court systems. In Riano-Alcala and Uribe’s article, they cite Caruth who “considers that as traumatic events imply a fundamental breach in experience, they are in and of themselves a challenge to the idea of history as a register of comprehensible and linear events.” (12). In addition to this breach in experience, there seems also to be a break in one’s sense of existence and identity. Where the GMH in Colombia attempted to individualize the victims by identifying them “as a visual and textual strategy to recognize them as people…” (16). I wonder if perhaps the whole notion of testimony, bearing witness and, I would go as far as saying, commemoration is founded upon this recognition where through violence their existence is denied, in this way, through memory, their identities are resurrected. Maybe that is why it was so important to take the full names of the victims in the Antigonas play; identifying those that lost their lives and their livelihoods, their names in history are preserved, reviving their existence through memory. Maybe that connects to the notion of dying from pena moral, as mentioned in “Emplaced Memory”, where the mother who had seen her daughter killed, died too. Could this be because she lost her identity as a mother?
The tension for GMH between “a focus on victims as a plural and heterogeneous group and ‘politically correct’ position that tended to work from a homogenous and idealized notion of ‘victim’” brings back the paradox we talked of in the beginning of human rights as universal and local. It also brings the idea of the listener contributing in the journey of bearing witness as testimony creates the story “de novo” as per Laub.
Question #1: What is the difference between identifying as a victim of a massacre versus that of “a historical trajectory or an oppressive regime (eg., colonialization or slavery).” (Riano-Alcala and Uribe).
Question #2: The challenge of having to silence some voices over others, whether it be for their safety or for documentation process constraints in the GMH report, is that not reflective in the way the Wayuu Society commemorate? If there are so many voices and contested truths of memory of traumatic events, then who is being silenced in this narrative? Or is it that silence and actions through activities, interactions symbolically and temporarily returning to their ancestral land are their way of including the multiplicity of voices in testimony and bearing witness?
Considering this week, we have in class two of the three authors whose work we have read, my blog post is predominantly questions!
Logistics of the group: “The GMH compromised lawyers, historians, political scientists, sociologists, anthropologists, social workers and photo journalists without executive or judicial power.” I am interested in hearing how people were chosen for this project and what can we learn from it in replicating to other places? When going to do different interviews in communities how would sub-groups be decided? How long would you spend at a time within Columbia and did everyone speak Spanish?
If you could start from all over again what would you do differently? Both for the GMH project as well as the exchange between members of Uganda and Columbia. In the exchange example, the Columbians are often asked how they are victims. Were the authors asked why it was appropriate for them to be documenting/participating in emplaced witnessing?
Is emplaced witnessing a tool best utilised when displaced people return ‘home’ or can it be used within groups who are displaced for long periods example, refugees?
During the exchange did you witness any stories from people marginalised, stigmatised or unable to participate due to crippling physical disabilities? Is their fate worse than the dead? Did women speak about caregiver fatigue? During the play by Columbian women we heard of mothers who died of heartbreak, unable to care for themselves due to the emotional anguish of losing a child. How much of this was spoken about in group settings the Ugandan context? What empowerment opportunities if even did the public community testimony present for those marginalised even within that group (e.g. mother of children of rape)?
Alcalá and Uribe discuss dilemmas of the GMH, which include the challenges of security risks incurred by victims who tell their story during war (18), uneven distribution of authority with regard to stories (7), and institutionalization of narratives that gave power to the state and societal institutions that risked depoliticizing the memories (19).
Alcalá, describes emplaced witnessing as “bearing witness, sensing place, making territorial claims and social interaction” (284) The Wayuu return to Portete to share daily activities and preform rituals (289). Not only are they remembering the ones they lost, they are also collectively reclaiming the everyday by returning to their territory (290-292). These acts “provide testimony and demand response-ability and accountability” (293).
Alcalá and Baines argue to look for testimony through situated performances in the everyday because it is through place that memory is preserved. Baines and Alcalá demonstrate emplaced practices as living archives that are adaptive, more culturally appropriate, and oftentimes safer (417). Participants expressed their memories through embodied reminders. Baines and Alcalá point to the importance of “listening to them in the place where the events occurred [since it]… demanded a deeper affective listening and consciousness” (427).
Hollander and Gill discuss the importance of recognizing bodies marked by violent conflict when thinking about the peace process (219). Marked bodies cannot escape into peace because their disability “is a constant reminder of the legacy of their own past” (223). Marked bodies face many challenges, such as the inability to earn a livelihood (224), the inability to fulfill gender expectations (226), dwindling social capital due to their lessened ability to contribute to networks for reciprocity (228). If transitional justice wants to serve it must take into account marked bodies and thus peace must be conceptualized as embodied too (231-232).
1) Do you think there is a way to have international participation in testimonials without depoliticizing the narratives?
2) Hollander and Gill call for a disability mainstreaming in transitional justice (234). While I understand the reason with regard to rendering these bodies visible in the hopes that they will be afforded more services, could this disability mainstreaming normalize modern warfare’s embodied form of violence?
What was most outstanding for me in this week’s readings was the concept of emplaced witnessing or emplaced memory. This is enacted through commemoration events in places where human rights violations occurred such as the massacre and displacement of the Indigenous Wayuu community in Colombia. Dr. Pilar Riano notes that ‘commemorations craft a space for social encounter, mourning and political activism in the daily life. It also attest to legitimacy of community’s claims to their ancestral and political right to their territory in the midst of ongoing threats and community displacement.’ In this sense the Wayuu community that had been subjected to displacement and massacres exercise their demands for justice, a return to their territories that had been ripped away from them, and memorializing the murdered community members. The location of the memory events is significant to the community because it presents their political demands for territorial rights and a connection to the land that was once their home.
Further, the author notes ‘commemorations also seek to remember and dignify the memory of the dead and disappeared, and to use historical narratives and storytelling as expressive vehicles to place pain, loss and resistance to violence in the public space.’ This is crucial as the public bears witness to the violence and develop responsibility to do something about it.
Qn. How successful can this strategy of claiming human rights through emplaced memory be when violence is still ongoing?
Qn. I am curious to learn any challenges the Wayuu community faced in keeping these annual commemorations alive?
This week’s readings speak for the ways memory and witnessing is emplaced within social worlds, the body and landscapes. Through this memory that has been emphasized throughout each reading, one can say that memory becomes a political tool that drives societies who have faced tragic experiences towards the kind of transitional justice that constitutes reconciliation, truth-telling and reclaiming territories. While some of the mechanisms revolve around the symbolic meaning of landscapes that are associated with tragedy and the marked bodies that demonstrate a continuous embodiment of war in everyday lives, others focus on narratives especially those that are put forward by communities. From these mechanisms, one can say that the main mechanism that I found most fascinating is the one with regards to the use of memory in the bottom-up approach that communities can bring about into their everyday lives. Moreover, in scheduled meetings between survivor groups and civil society and community-based organizations, participants have not only sang songs of loss, sorrow, resistance and reprieve, but also echoed silence or poems and other varieties of oral verse with great enthusiasm and cheer. In this way they document the violence in nonconventional ways that we place under the category that we call emplaced witnessing. I believe that with the safer social space that is created to give testimony and re-story past events of violence or resistance could possibly bring about the most important matter that comes to mind, reconciliation and truth telling. Some of the questions that come to mind for this week’s readings are the following,
1) How can the non-conventional way that emplaced witnessing introduces lead a path towards proper justice in the coming future? Is it introducing resistance?
2) What do we mean by the term, “Transitional Justice”? How can justice be transitional?
How to define a victim was approached by Alcala in “Constructing Memory amidst war.” She states that “victimization required a conceptualization of victims in which they are understood as subjects with rights, as citizens and political agents that respond and resist violence.” Though we have discussed victims and survivors in class, I have not before thought about how these terms are constructed and defined and what the definition can imply for the treatment of the witness. The above quote implies that a victim is someone who is not defined by past experiences, but as someone who is in the act of responding to and resisting violence. This provides a much more empowering view of the witness and gives them more agency in the act of testimony. I would like to relate this empowered construction of a witness to Mrs. Konile’s testimony which professor Baines suggested was a total act of defiance, and suggest that in exploring different definitions of victims you can question and understand testimony in different ways. By creating flexible definitions of victims and survivors, you can divulge different meaning and give more agency to a victim than you can in defining a victim solely in accordance to their relationship with a crime.
Is there a definition of victim/ survivor that victimizes less and empowers more? Is being a victim/ survivor a permanent state?
The first article showed how Grupo de Memoria Historica can been seen as an agent of knowledge production that was able to produce plural narratives about the histories of violence of in Colombia. Here the article showed how the state and its institutions tried to take control and instrumentalize the voices those who had been systematically silenced.
In the TJ process the state institutions has a significant role to play and an innate potential of doing harm when it tries do justice. The article show the case of Colombia, where the discoruse turned into a narrative that was trying to justify and legitimize institutionally led interventions and programmes. Here that article pointed out that victims might interpret this as the state foretting is duty and its responsibility. Moreover the article illuminated how the state tend to homogenize the notion of victim and thereby rejecting plural narratives and the article concludes:
As the former article, the second article emphasizes the local levels in constructing historical memory. It showed community members transforms local pains and memories into meaningful acts of community reconstruction and draw from these implications matters of truth-telling, justice and repair in larger socio-political contexts. The article showed the importance of local level initiatives and the ability to act in plural way and provide testimony and demand for accountability. It is a emplaced standpoint for witnessing, knowledge production and encounter.
The third article points the limitations of courtrooms or truth commissions as we saw in: ‘there was this goat’. The article suggest that the search for memory, listeninger and read of silences not only belong in the conventional settings of justice and truth seeking but also in the everyday spaces where the archive stems from.
The fourth and last article shows how the human body has become a new frontier of both domination and control. Here the article outlines how the people whose bodies were ‘marked’ continued to embody the war in everyday activities in terms of pain, disabilities and loss of mobility. The continuation of the embodied war results in ruptures within social capital networks, leading to widespread stigmatization and discrimination. Therefore the author argues that in order to ensure inclusion of marked bodies and other victim groups, micro-analysis is necessary to distinguish and understand survivor groups in terms of their day-to-day survival concerns, challenges, experiences, needs and aspirations.
Questions:
Are there any ’successful’ stories of TJ with the state as central actor?
What are the relation between social control, social cohesion and the ‘use’ of memories in TJ?
Can a state ever avoid homogenizing?
If testimony is an interaction (with transference and reception) then a central part of this process is about acknowledgement. We have already spoken about this in class with regards to having other people tell you that you’re not crazy that this really did happen to you. However, what about thinking about what an acknowledgment involves: (1) authority/power and (2) trust/faith. There has to be a power dynamic when you give testimony because the giver has to have the power of their experienced acknowledged by the listener. In addition, the listener has to have the power to listen to that testimony. We do not often conceive this relationship, even when it happens outside of places like the ICC, as one steeped in power, but the act of witnessing only works because the power is there. Can there be good power dynamics?
The second issue is about trust. Stories are personal and even more so when they are told by the victims of horrific crimes about their experiences. We tell our stories to people we trust – communities, family members, or people who have experienced similar things. So what is it about any sort of reconciliation program, created by a state, which would encourage people to tell their stories to it? Because as we know not all stories are heard as clearly as others.
Does the GMH’s desire to avoid building one “unified” truth and instead accept the multiplicity of occurrences run into trouble with the reality that people have to trust the process if it is to work. Are you likely to trust a process that has not promised to take what you say about your experiences as the single truth of what happened? That is quite the leap of faith.
Week Seven readings response
The politics of memory
The concept of plurality and plural memories came up often in the Alcala/Uribe reading. Two of the three “critical dilemmas” that the authors bring up struck me as particularly relevant to our field of journalism. How do we go about choosing the stories that are shared in media, thus becoming part of a record of events and a shared memory? The GMH went about choosing events that were “emblematic”. I understand the logistics of attempting to chronicle events that occurred over such a prolonged period and space but found myself wondering what was lost in the stories that were not deemed to be epic enough or emblematic. How do we go about choosing, is it merit based, need based, spectacle based?
The last dilemma in regards to avoiding narratives that serve the uses of institutional power, do we then filter valid stories out of the public knowledge if they are guilty of this, possibly unknowingly or unwittingly?
Also, how do we go about presenting these plural truths in an accessible way that can be consumed by the general public in hopes of transferring important narratives that might be lost in a convoluted system?
Question – Does choosing specific events/stories serve to be victim-centered versus the previous pursuit of prosecution?
Quote – “…the preservation of historical memory is one of the central components of symbolic reparations owed to the victims of the armed conflict.” (Alcala/Uribe 13)
The readings of this week leave me with similar questions as the ones we encountered last week in discussing the format of truth and reconciliation tribunals. What is the value of testimonies and how should they be shared (if they are to be shared). Riaño-Alcalá and Uribe talk about their participation in the Historical Memory Group (GMH), a research group reporting on the political violence in Columbia and the reasons for the appearance of armed illegal groups. They look for answers and reasons by focusing on victims’ narratives. These victims’ stories were supposed to lead to truths and a reconstruction of historic events. With this aim of reconstructing historical truth there lies a danger of going beyond the actual story of the victim, beyond reparation for the victim. Alcalá and Uribe address this, and other dilemmas in the work of the GMH. Any institutionalized form of giving testimony or storytelling is inevitably accompanied by using a certain discourse, using certain words and language to refer to and construct the historic events. By institutionalizing this, by having certain requirements for a given testimony, an important element of giving testimony is overlooked. It limits people in their way of expressing themselves and therefore does not do their personal experience justice. As Riaño-Alcalá and Baines talk about giving testimony in settings of chronic insecurity, there are so many ways of sharing a story for example by performances, physical body marks or dance. Also, there are so many different needs and wants of the victim in regards to giving testimony that it seems impossible to design a just framework for finding truth and reconciliation.
Question: How can someone assure that the story they share through for example performances, dances or scars, through ways that don’t need language, are interpreted correctly?
Question: How do you acknowledge the individual story within plural narratives?
Riano-Alcala and Baines’ article shows the importance of diverse ways of expression to share and add meaning to one’s story. We see that apart from formal testimony, it is perhaps therapeutic to connect with others through art or performance to share one’s side of the story, add meaning to one’s experience, gain empathy, and form a community. These alternative expressions are also vital in providing a safe space to the victims to indirectly resist power and add their voice to the conversation. It was also fascinating to read about the interactions between the victims from Uganda and Colombia, and how their behaviour differed in different spaces.
An interesting point in this article is the distinction between ‘truth’ and ‘truthfulness’. While stories may not be truthful in the empirical sense, they are true in describing the experience of the victim. We see this in Riano-Alcala and Uribe’s article as well. GMH tried to create a narrative that unified the voices of diverse social actors, but realized that it was difficult, if not possible.
Riano-Alcala’s article on the annual commemoration of the Wayuu community is fascinating. Not only is it interesting to read about the ways in which the community copes with its violent past, but also the memories and sense of belonging attached to their native territory. The event is also significant in giving the power back to the community – they can decide the terms of engagement and invite who they want to. It is also moving to see how emotions are named and described, e.g. pena moral (moral sorrow) of the mother who witnessed the killing of her daughter. It is explained as “This affectation skilfully framed as moral sorrow in local idioms of illness highlights the manner in which the acts of violence perpetrated against her daughter and relatives were experienced by her as a profound attack to her humanity, to her ways of being and acting in the world.”
Hollander and Gill’s article on ‘marked’ bodies in Uganda raised important points about the reintegration of victims back into the society, particularly those with disabilities and their families who carry an inescapable, constant reminder of the past with them. It was disheartening to read about how these individuals and their families lose their social status and community support. They are now a ‘burden’ or ‘useless’. Not only do they lose their physical abilities, but also their sense of belonging. How can these individuals be assisted in overcoming the effects of violence? And how can we reintegrate them into society? As mentioned, currently the focus is largely one dimensional, on medical assistance – but ‘memories are not sanitized medical procedures’.
The article also brings into question the universalization of the term ‘victims’ who are often seen as homogenous, without regard to the variability of their needs. It calls for the need of micro-level analysis to understand the variety of needs. How can public services be tailored to differentiate and cater to the diverse needs of the victims? How can we broaden the definition of ‘victim’ to be viewed as a subject with hopes and aspirations, rather than a mere object of pity and weakness?
Further questions:
How can initiatives such as the GMH create a larger impact? As the author mentions, it hasn’t had many judicial implications. Despite their exceptional work in bringing the diversity of the stories forward, the state or the powerful forces decide which stories receive attention. Does state involvement delegitimize the work of GMH to some extent? But if not state, which other actors would play a role in bringing justice and stories forward?
How powerful are the measures of reparation without formal justice? How can the justice system be reformed to acknowledge the various forms of emplaced witnessing and bring marginalized voices to the forefront? The question remains – what are the opportunities and challenges in transforming the justice system to incorporate the diverse forms of testimony?
“…Memory acts within the living archive powerfully transmit to the listener meanings that empirical facts cannot, moving the empathetic listener to an emotive space of engagement in the dialogic process of witnessing.”
This week’s reading conceptualized the process of victim trauma through memory. We continue to discuss the key themes: listening, testimony, and memory. This week I especially found myself drawn to the emphasis on community. Pilar Riano-Alcala where the author argues that this movement in particular changes the terms and nature of the witnessing as a “community of suffers” and testimony provides encounter a group of secondary witness to share an embodied and relational experience of place and movement. This is particularly interesting because the act of testimony and memory is intertwined in the local space of community. The cultural, social, and political context of a community plays a role in matters of testimony. The power of a community – as an avenue to share or silence historical memory. Pilar Riano Alcala discussed how silencing of certain memory disputes or stories at the community level was to avoid security problems, violence or stigmatization. The article written by Riano-Alcara and Baines was an interesting perspective to learn the multiple strategies of memory making: performative, embodies and memoryscapes. Understanding how survivors and communities remember and documents opened my thoughts to
I would like to explore more the concept of TRC as an institution and the policies behind transitional justice. As a policy student the readings have caused me to reflect and filled me with a better understanding of individual and collective stories. I find myself researching more on the political context to understand more about the situation these individuals are in. I have been attempting to dissect these readings to get a handle on how to adequately address these faults in our political systems when dealing with violence, victims, trauma etc….
Question:
1) What is the relationship between memory and history? Does memory disrupt or remake history?
2) In the readings community strategies to memory are infused in local culture; what about in a western setting would such strategies work? What are our strategies of memory making?
Alcala and Uribe describe the process of GMH and the dilemmas that were present at the time of the investigations. GMH was structured differently compare to a truth commission. The differences allowed the GMH to create a space for open reflections and autonomous research. This structure allows for the victim’s voices to be at the center. As the article expands on the dilemmas, the concepts of Victims and Victimhood arise. These concepts can add to the strength of the GMH but could also weaken the process. It is interesting for me to draw parallels on the negative effects of Victimhood or the abuse of this concept in various historical events mainly staged by the government officials.
One interesting Quote: “The construction of memory always has a place in political struggles as multiple memories compete for social recognition”
In the Alcala (2015) article, the concept of ‘Emplaced Witnessing” was described.
Returning to the site of conflict and revisiting memories gave strength to the community and gave researchers an insider view of the conflict. This practice proves to be very valuable to all parties involved in the conflict.
Q1. How can the process of “Emplaced Witnessing” (as an act of social repair) become a part of GMH or TRCs? Would this process be beneficial in a truth commission setting?
Alcala and Baines’s article explores “how community-based organizations and groups of survivors take on strategies to collect evidence and document victim’s memories of humans rights abuses”. The exchange between the two community-based groups was a unique aspect of this study. Emplaced Witnessing strategy was used to create a living archive of memories and also decide on “how” to tell the stories of conflict to the next generations and the bigger audience.
Q2. Who leads the process memory selection or the social recognition of memories? How can communities make sure that this process is not being affected by a political agenda?
Finally Hollander and Gill deconstruct the war on (in) human bodies:
“ If transitional justice is to take the challenges, needs and aspirations of survivors with marked bodies and their caretakers and dependents into account, we need to consider how we can mainstream disabilities into transitional justice thinking and practices.” (p.232)
As this article mentioned, bodies have become the center stage in modern warfare and rarely bodies are included in the peace process (or rarely they are the sites of peace). Wars are created to destroy or damage bodies and human objects. Reading this article reminded me of Shirin Neshat’s comment on female bodies as being politicized and controlled. It seems as if bodies are always used or abused in situations where one party wants to control or destroy the other.
Q3. How can GMH and the truth commissions (or TRCs) create a space where human bodies become the sites of peace and peace process? Where else can this space exist?
In this week’s reading, I felt the reoccurring theme from last week of the inability for the experience of trauma to fit within available frameworks, be they bureaucratic or legal. They become incomprehensive within these systems, which revert back to our class discussions on sexual assault cases and their inability to fit within court systems. In Riano-Alcala and Uribe’s article, they cite Caruth who “considers that as traumatic events imply a fundamental breach in experience, they are in and of themselves a challenge to the idea of history as a register of comprehensible and linear events.” (12). In addition to this breach in experience, there seems also to be a break in one’s sense of existence and identity. Where the GMH in Colombia attempted to individualize the victims by identifying them “as a visual and textual strategy to recognize them as people…” (16). I wonder if perhaps the whole notion of testimony, bearing witness and, I would go as far as saying, commemoration is founded upon this recognition where through violence their existence is denied, in this way, through memory, their identities are resurrected. Maybe that is why it was so important to take the full names of the victims in the Antigonas play; identifying those that lost their lives and their livelihoods, their names in history are preserved, reviving their existence through memory. Maybe that connects to the notion of dying from pena moral, as mentioned in “Emplaced Memory”, where the mother who had seen her daughter killed, died too. Could this be because she lost her identity as a mother?
The tension for GMH between “a focus on victims as a plural and heterogeneous group and ‘politically correct’ position that tended to work from a homogenous and idealized notion of ‘victim’” brings back the paradox we talked of in the beginning of human rights as universal and local. It also brings the idea of the listener contributing in the journey of bearing witness as testimony creates the story “de novo” as per Laub.
Question #1: What is the difference between identifying as a victim of a massacre versus that of “a historical trajectory or an oppressive regime (eg., colonialization or slavery).” (Riano-Alcala and Uribe).
Question #2: The challenge of having to silence some voices over others, whether it be for their safety or for documentation process constraints in the GMH report, is that not reflective in the way the Wayuu Society commemorate? If there are so many voices and contested truths of memory of traumatic events, then who is being silenced in this narrative? Or is it that silence and actions through activities, interactions symbolically and temporarily returning to their ancestral land are their way of including the multiplicity of voices in testimony and bearing witness?
Considering this week, we have in class two of the three authors whose work we have read, my blog post is predominantly questions!
Logistics of the group: “The GMH compromised lawyers, historians, political scientists, sociologists, anthropologists, social workers and photo journalists without executive or judicial power.” I am interested in hearing how people were chosen for this project and what can we learn from it in replicating to other places? When going to do different interviews in communities how would sub-groups be decided? How long would you spend at a time within Columbia and did everyone speak Spanish?
If you could start from all over again what would you do differently? Both for the GMH project as well as the exchange between members of Uganda and Columbia. In the exchange example, the Columbians are often asked how they are victims. Were the authors asked why it was appropriate for them to be documenting/participating in emplaced witnessing?
Is emplaced witnessing a tool best utilised when displaced people return ‘home’ or can it be used within groups who are displaced for long periods example, refugees?
During the exchange did you witness any stories from people marginalised, stigmatised or unable to participate due to crippling physical disabilities? Is their fate worse than the dead? Did women speak about caregiver fatigue? During the play by Columbian women we heard of mothers who died of heartbreak, unable to care for themselves due to the emotional anguish of losing a child. How much of this was spoken about in group settings the Ugandan context? What empowerment opportunities if even did the public community testimony present for those marginalised even within that group (e.g. mother of children of rape)?
Alcalá and Uribe discuss dilemmas of the GMH, which include the challenges of security risks incurred by victims who tell their story during war (18), uneven distribution of authority with regard to stories (7), and institutionalization of narratives that gave power to the state and societal institutions that risked depoliticizing the memories (19).
Alcalá, describes emplaced witnessing as “bearing witness, sensing place, making territorial claims and social interaction” (284) The Wayuu return to Portete to share daily activities and preform rituals (289). Not only are they remembering the ones they lost, they are also collectively reclaiming the everyday by returning to their territory (290-292). These acts “provide testimony and demand response-ability and accountability” (293).
Alcalá and Baines argue to look for testimony through situated performances in the everyday because it is through place that memory is preserved. Baines and Alcalá demonstrate emplaced practices as living archives that are adaptive, more culturally appropriate, and oftentimes safer (417). Participants expressed their memories through embodied reminders. Baines and Alcalá point to the importance of “listening to them in the place where the events occurred [since it]… demanded a deeper affective listening and consciousness” (427).
Hollander and Gill discuss the importance of recognizing bodies marked by violent conflict when thinking about the peace process (219). Marked bodies cannot escape into peace because their disability “is a constant reminder of the legacy of their own past” (223). Marked bodies face many challenges, such as the inability to earn a livelihood (224), the inability to fulfill gender expectations (226), dwindling social capital due to their lessened ability to contribute to networks for reciprocity (228). If transitional justice wants to serve it must take into account marked bodies and thus peace must be conceptualized as embodied too (231-232).
1) Do you think there is a way to have international participation in testimonials without depoliticizing the narratives?
2) Hollander and Gill call for a disability mainstreaming in transitional justice (234). While I understand the reason with regard to rendering these bodies visible in the hopes that they will be afforded more services, could this disability mainstreaming normalize modern warfare’s embodied form of violence?
What was most outstanding for me in this week’s readings was the concept of emplaced witnessing or emplaced memory. This is enacted through commemoration events in places where human rights violations occurred such as the massacre and displacement of the Indigenous Wayuu community in Colombia. Dr. Pilar Riano notes that ‘commemorations craft a space for social encounter, mourning and political activism in the daily life. It also attest to legitimacy of community’s claims to their ancestral and political right to their territory in the midst of ongoing threats and community displacement.’ In this sense the Wayuu community that had been subjected to displacement and massacres exercise their demands for justice, a return to their territories that had been ripped away from them, and memorializing the murdered community members. The location of the memory events is significant to the community because it presents their political demands for territorial rights and a connection to the land that was once their home.
Further, the author notes ‘commemorations also seek to remember and dignify the memory of the dead and disappeared, and to use historical narratives and storytelling as expressive vehicles to place pain, loss and resistance to violence in the public space.’ This is crucial as the public bears witness to the violence and develop responsibility to do something about it.
Qn. How successful can this strategy of claiming human rights through emplaced memory be when violence is still ongoing?
Qn. I am curious to learn any challenges the Wayuu community faced in keeping these annual commemorations alive?
This week’s readings speak for the ways memory and witnessing is emplaced within social worlds, the body and landscapes. Through this memory that has been emphasized throughout each reading, one can say that memory becomes a political tool that drives societies who have faced tragic experiences towards the kind of transitional justice that constitutes reconciliation, truth-telling and reclaiming territories. While some of the mechanisms revolve around the symbolic meaning of landscapes that are associated with tragedy and the marked bodies that demonstrate a continuous embodiment of war in everyday lives, others focus on narratives especially those that are put forward by communities. From these mechanisms, one can say that the main mechanism that I found most fascinating is the one with regards to the use of memory in the bottom-up approach that communities can bring about into their everyday lives. Moreover, in scheduled meetings between survivor groups and civil society and community-based organizations, participants have not only sang songs of loss, sorrow, resistance and reprieve, but also echoed silence or poems and other varieties of oral verse with great enthusiasm and cheer. In this way they document the violence in nonconventional ways that we place under the category that we call emplaced witnessing. I believe that with the safer social space that is created to give testimony and re-story past events of violence or resistance could possibly bring about the most important matter that comes to mind, reconciliation and truth telling. Some of the questions that come to mind for this week’s readings are the following,
1) How can the non-conventional way that emplaced witnessing introduces lead a path towards proper justice in the coming future? Is it introducing resistance?
2) What do we mean by the term, “Transitional Justice”? How can justice be transitional?
How to define a victim was approached by Alcala in “Constructing Memory amidst war.” She states that “victimization required a conceptualization of victims in which they are understood as subjects with rights, as citizens and political agents that respond and resist violence.” Though we have discussed victims and survivors in class, I have not before thought about how these terms are constructed and defined and what the definition can imply for the treatment of the witness. The above quote implies that a victim is someone who is not defined by past experiences, but as someone who is in the act of responding to and resisting violence. This provides a much more empowering view of the witness and gives them more agency in the act of testimony. I would like to relate this empowered construction of a witness to Mrs. Konile’s testimony which professor Baines suggested was a total act of defiance, and suggest that in exploring different definitions of victims you can question and understand testimony in different ways. By creating flexible definitions of victims and survivors, you can divulge different meaning and give more agency to a victim than you can in defining a victim solely in accordance to their relationship with a crime.
Is there a definition of victim/ survivor that victimizes less and empowers more? Is being a victim/ survivor a permanent state?
The first article showed how Grupo de Memoria Historica can been seen as an agent of knowledge production that was able to produce plural narratives about the histories of violence of in Colombia. Here the article showed how the state and its institutions tried to take control and instrumentalize the voices those who had been systematically silenced.
In the TJ process the state institutions has a significant role to play and an innate potential of doing harm when it tries do justice. The article show the case of Colombia, where the discoruse turned into a narrative that was trying to justify and legitimize institutionally led interventions and programmes. Here that article pointed out that victims might interpret this as the state foretting is duty and its responsibility. Moreover the article illuminated how the state tend to homogenize the notion of victim and thereby rejecting plural narratives and the article concludes:
As the former article, the second article emphasizes the local levels in constructing historical memory. It showed community members transforms local pains and memories into meaningful acts of community reconstruction and draw from these implications matters of truth-telling, justice and repair in larger socio-political contexts. The article showed the importance of local level initiatives and the ability to act in plural way and provide testimony and demand for accountability. It is a emplaced standpoint for witnessing, knowledge production and encounter.
The third article points the limitations of courtrooms or truth commissions as we saw in: ‘there was this goat’. The article suggest that the search for memory, listeninger and read of silences not only belong in the conventional settings of justice and truth seeking but also in the everyday spaces where the archive stems from.
The fourth and last article shows how the human body has become a new frontier of both domination and control. Here the article outlines how the people whose bodies were ‘marked’ continued to embody the war in everyday activities in terms of pain, disabilities and loss of mobility. The continuation of the embodied war results in ruptures within social capital networks, leading to widespread stigmatization and discrimination. Therefore the author argues that in order to ensure inclusion of marked bodies and other victim groups, micro-analysis is necessary to distinguish and understand survivor groups in terms of their day-to-day survival concerns, challenges, experiences, needs and aspirations.
Questions:
Are there any ’successful’ stories of TJ with the state as central actor?
What are the relation between social control, social cohesion and the ‘use’ of memories in TJ?
Can a state ever avoid homogenizing?
If testimony is an interaction (with transference and reception) then a central part of this process is about acknowledgement. We have already spoken about this in class with regards to having other people tell you that you’re not crazy that this really did happen to you. However, what about thinking about what an acknowledgment involves: (1) authority/power and (2) trust/faith. There has to be a power dynamic when you give testimony because the giver has to have the power of their experienced acknowledged by the listener. In addition, the listener has to have the power to listen to that testimony. We do not often conceive this relationship, even when it happens outside of places like the ICC, as one steeped in power, but the act of witnessing only works because the power is there. Can there be good power dynamics?
The second issue is about trust. Stories are personal and even more so when they are told by the victims of horrific crimes about their experiences. We tell our stories to people we trust – communities, family members, or people who have experienced similar things. So what is it about any sort of reconciliation program, created by a state, which would encourage people to tell their stories to it? Because as we know not all stories are heard as clearly as others.
Does the GMH’s desire to avoid building one “unified” truth and instead accept the multiplicity of occurrences run into trouble with the reality that people have to trust the process if it is to work. Are you likely to trust a process that has not promised to take what you say about your experiences as the single truth of what happened? That is quite the leap of faith.
Week Seven readings response
The politics of memory
The concept of plurality and plural memories came up often in the Alcala/Uribe reading. Two of the three “critical dilemmas” that the authors bring up struck me as particularly relevant to our field of journalism. How do we go about choosing the stories that are shared in media, thus becoming part of a record of events and a shared memory? The GMH went about choosing events that were “emblematic”. I understand the logistics of attempting to chronicle events that occurred over such a prolonged period and space but found myself wondering what was lost in the stories that were not deemed to be epic enough or emblematic. How do we go about choosing, is it merit based, need based, spectacle based?
The last dilemma in regards to avoiding narratives that serve the uses of institutional power, do we then filter valid stories out of the public knowledge if they are guilty of this, possibly unknowingly or unwittingly?
Also, how do we go about presenting these plural truths in an accessible way that can be consumed by the general public in hopes of transferring important narratives that might be lost in a convoluted system?
Question – Does choosing specific events/stories serve to be victim-centered versus the previous pursuit of prosecution?
Quote – “…the preservation of historical memory is one of the central components of symbolic reparations owed to the victims of the armed conflict.” (Alcala/Uribe 13)
The readings of this week leave me with similar questions as the ones we encountered last week in discussing the format of truth and reconciliation tribunals. What is the value of testimonies and how should they be shared (if they are to be shared). Riaño-Alcalá and Uribe talk about their participation in the Historical Memory Group (GMH), a research group reporting on the political violence in Columbia and the reasons for the appearance of armed illegal groups. They look for answers and reasons by focusing on victims’ narratives. These victims’ stories were supposed to lead to truths and a reconstruction of historic events. With this aim of reconstructing historical truth there lies a danger of going beyond the actual story of the victim, beyond reparation for the victim. Alcalá and Uribe address this, and other dilemmas in the work of the GMH. Any institutionalized form of giving testimony or storytelling is inevitably accompanied by using a certain discourse, using certain words and language to refer to and construct the historic events. By institutionalizing this, by having certain requirements for a given testimony, an important element of giving testimony is overlooked. It limits people in their way of expressing themselves and therefore does not do their personal experience justice. As Riaño-Alcalá and Baines talk about giving testimony in settings of chronic insecurity, there are so many ways of sharing a story for example by performances, physical body marks or dance. Also, there are so many different needs and wants of the victim in regards to giving testimony that it seems impossible to design a just framework for finding truth and reconciliation.
Question: How can someone assure that the story they share through for example performances, dances or scars, through ways that don’t need language, are interpreted correctly?
Question: How do you acknowledge the individual story within plural narratives?
Riano-Alcala and Baines’ article shows the importance of diverse ways of expression to share and add meaning to one’s story. We see that apart from formal testimony, it is perhaps therapeutic to connect with others through art or performance to share one’s side of the story, add meaning to one’s experience, gain empathy, and form a community. These alternative expressions are also vital in providing a safe space to the victims to indirectly resist power and add their voice to the conversation. It was also fascinating to read about the interactions between the victims from Uganda and Colombia, and how their behaviour differed in different spaces.
An interesting point in this article is the distinction between ‘truth’ and ‘truthfulness’. While stories may not be truthful in the empirical sense, they are true in describing the experience of the victim. We see this in Riano-Alcala and Uribe’s article as well. GMH tried to create a narrative that unified the voices of diverse social actors, but realized that it was difficult, if not possible.
Riano-Alcala’s article on the annual commemoration of the Wayuu community is fascinating. Not only is it interesting to read about the ways in which the community copes with its violent past, but also the memories and sense of belonging attached to their native territory. The event is also significant in giving the power back to the community – they can decide the terms of engagement and invite who they want to. It is also moving to see how emotions are named and described, e.g. pena moral (moral sorrow) of the mother who witnessed the killing of her daughter. It is explained as “This affectation skilfully framed as moral sorrow in local idioms of illness highlights the manner in which the acts of violence perpetrated against her daughter and relatives were experienced by her as a profound attack to her humanity, to her ways of being and acting in the world.”
Hollander and Gill’s article on ‘marked’ bodies in Uganda raised important points about the reintegration of victims back into the society, particularly those with disabilities and their families who carry an inescapable, constant reminder of the past with them. It was disheartening to read about how these individuals and their families lose their social status and community support. They are now a ‘burden’ or ‘useless’. Not only do they lose their physical abilities, but also their sense of belonging. How can these individuals be assisted in overcoming the effects of violence? And how can we reintegrate them into society? As mentioned, currently the focus is largely one dimensional, on medical assistance – but ‘memories are not sanitized medical procedures’.
The article also brings into question the universalization of the term ‘victims’ who are often seen as homogenous, without regard to the variability of their needs. It calls for the need of micro-level analysis to understand the variety of needs. How can public services be tailored to differentiate and cater to the diverse needs of the victims? How can we broaden the definition of ‘victim’ to be viewed as a subject with hopes and aspirations, rather than a mere object of pity and weakness?
Further questions:
How can initiatives such as the GMH create a larger impact? As the author mentions, it hasn’t had many judicial implications. Despite their exceptional work in bringing the diversity of the stories forward, the state or the powerful forces decide which stories receive attention. Does state involvement delegitimize the work of GMH to some extent? But if not state, which other actors would play a role in bringing justice and stories forward?
How powerful are the measures of reparation without formal justice? How can the justice system be reformed to acknowledge the various forms of emplaced witnessing and bring marginalized voices to the forefront? The question remains – what are the opportunities and challenges in transforming the justice system to incorporate the diverse forms of testimony?
“…Memory acts within the living archive powerfully transmit to the listener meanings that empirical facts cannot, moving the empathetic listener to an emotive space of engagement in the dialogic process of witnessing.”
This week’s reading conceptualized the process of victim trauma through memory. We continue to discuss the key themes: listening, testimony, and memory. This week I especially found myself drawn to the emphasis on community. Pilar Riano-Alcala where the author argues that this movement in particular changes the terms and nature of the witnessing as a “community of suffers” and testimony provides encounter a group of secondary witness to share an embodied and relational experience of place and movement. This is particularly interesting because the act of testimony and memory is intertwined in the local space of community. The cultural, social, and political context of a community plays a role in matters of testimony. The power of a community – as an avenue to share or silence historical memory. Pilar Riano Alcala discussed how silencing of certain memory disputes or stories at the community level was to avoid security problems, violence or stigmatization. The article written by Riano-Alcara and Baines was an interesting perspective to learn the multiple strategies of memory making: performative, embodies and memoryscapes. Understanding how survivors and communities remember and documents opened my thoughts to
I would like to explore more the concept of TRC as an institution and the policies behind transitional justice. As a policy student the readings have caused me to reflect and filled me with a better understanding of individual and collective stories. I find myself researching more on the political context to understand more about the situation these individuals are in. I have been attempting to dissect these readings to get a handle on how to adequately address these faults in our political systems when dealing with violence, victims, trauma etc….
Question:
1) What is the relationship between memory and history? Does memory disrupt or remake history?
2) In the readings community strategies to memory are infused in local culture; what about in a western setting would such strategies work? What are our strategies of memory making?
Alcala and Uribe describe the process of GMH and the dilemmas that were present at the time of the investigations. GMH was structured differently compare to a truth commission. The differences allowed the GMH to create a space for open reflections and autonomous research. This structure allows for the victim’s voices to be at the center. As the article expands on the dilemmas, the concepts of Victims and Victimhood arise. These concepts can add to the strength of the GMH but could also weaken the process. It is interesting for me to draw parallels on the negative effects of Victimhood or the abuse of this concept in various historical events mainly staged by the government officials.
One interesting Quote: “The construction of memory always has a place in political struggles as multiple memories compete for social recognition”
In the Alcala (2015) article, the concept of ‘Emplaced Witnessing” was described.
Returning to the site of conflict and revisiting memories gave strength to the community and gave researchers an insider view of the conflict. This practice proves to be very valuable to all parties involved in the conflict.
Q1. How can the process of “Emplaced Witnessing” (as an act of social repair) become a part of GMH or TRCs? Would this process be beneficial in a truth commission setting?
Alcala and Baines’s article explores “how community-based organizations and groups of survivors take on strategies to collect evidence and document victim’s memories of humans rights abuses”. The exchange between the two community-based groups was a unique aspect of this study. Emplaced Witnessing strategy was used to create a living archive of memories and also decide on “how” to tell the stories of conflict to the next generations and the bigger audience.
Q2. Who leads the process memory selection or the social recognition of memories? How can communities make sure that this process is not being affected by a political agenda?
Finally Hollander and Gill deconstruct the war on (in) human bodies:
“ If transitional justice is to take the challenges, needs and aspirations of survivors with marked bodies and their caretakers and dependents into account, we need to consider how we can mainstream disabilities into transitional justice thinking and practices.” (p.232)
As this article mentioned, bodies have become the center stage in modern warfare and rarely bodies are included in the peace process (or rarely they are the sites of peace). Wars are created to destroy or damage bodies and human objects. Reading this article reminded me of Shirin Neshat’s comment on female bodies as being politicized and controlled. It seems as if bodies are always used or abused in situations where one party wants to control or destroy the other.
Q3. How can GMH and the truth commissions (or TRCs) create a space where human bodies become the sites of peace and peace process? Where else can this space exist?
WEEK 7 – POEM SUBMISSION
Recognize who SHE is
Redefine who SHE can be
Remember where SHE came from
Poem for Ketty’s presentation:
You say you couldn’t find them
Well, start the search with our memories
Where they are and always will be
For 23 years women walk for Missing and Murdered Women in downtown Vancouver.
For 23 years I have failed
to walk withthem.Poem:
The rose on the fence
red like your blood we did not find
where are you Dawn?
For there has been darkness for far too long
Part of a poem by Faiz Ahmed Faiz, romanized Urdu with English translation
Hum dekhe gain
Jab zulm-o-sitam ke koh-e-garaan
Ruii ki tarah urh jain gay
We shall witness
When the (immovable) mountains of oppression and injustice
Will fly away like pieces of cotton
Highway of tears
they’ve gone missing
we fear
that they will be forgotten
we fight
in our memory they are safe
and their stories alive