The institution and maintenance of peace

Judith Butler and non violence

• Key person in the third wave of feminism - gender performativity

  • Gender is not something one is but what one does

• Non violence

• Equality and grievability

• Human beings are equally grievable

• Loved by others

• Deconstructive reading of Hobbes: sovereign , independent male

  • Human beings are interconnected

  • They are afraid of each other, fightin each other

  • War of all agains all

  • Males that want to have their positions fixed well in the world

• Global interdependency: shared vulnerability

• International egoism

• Global obligations

• Inequality of grievability: basis for violence

  • My grief is my grief, more important than yours

• plea for non-violence

Politics and forgiveness: an impossible match

• Different perspectives on sources of violence

• How to live together after:

  • War

  • Civil war

  • Genocide

  • Structural dismcrimination

• Transitional justice

Two paradigmatic cases

After WW1 : vengeance

• It spread through out europe when nobody wanted it

• What is the use of being a soldier of being a soldier and training and fighting for your life

• They got stuck, the whole atmosphere around it was turned around

• Made germany take all the blame

After WW2 ; reconciliation

• Very clear Germany was the evil one, they did terrible things

• We should not humiliate germany to the bottom again

• Germany should be able to take it‘s place again in Europe

After 1980: transitional justice comes up

• Legal and ethical frameworks that address justice issues across national borders

• cooperation between countries to deal with crimes

• Argentina: national commission and disappeared persons

• After 1982, fall of Videla-junta

• Chili: truth and reconciliation after pinochet regime

• South africa : after apartheid – regime (from 1994)

• Broader echo‘s an age of apology, attention for victims

The south african case

• how to live together after huge atrocities and oppression

  • Revenge? trials?

  • Something similar like with Germany and the nazis

  • The truth and reconciliation committe

• Basic ideas:

  • Full disclosure of misdees

  • Confess their mistakes

  • Full amnesty

  • If you openly confess what you have done you get amnesty

  • Without full disclosure still the threat of trial

  • Can we make a clear break with the past and go further

• Inspiration behind it:

  • Pragmatic considiration

  • Can you ever have full trial

  • Christian idea of forgiveness

  • When someone confesses they can make a new start

  • African philosophy of Ubuntu

Motivations and concerns for Tutu

• Strong belief of better future

• Acknowledging truth is essential

• True reconciliation is not cheap

• Forgiving is not forgetting

• The wrongdoer has to acknowledge his deed

• Forgiveness ddoes not preclude reparation

• Can one forgive in behalf of others (like the dead)

Basic idea of the TRC; from past to future

• Truth and reconciliation commission in South africa

• Groundbreaking example of transnational justice

• focuses on uncovering the truth about past human rights abuses and promoting forgiveness

• Tutu emphasises on truth telling, acknowledgement of suffering and the importance of forgiveness

• revealing the truth and allowing victims and wrongdoers to confront the past was essential for healing within south africa

• Some concerns that has been raised in reflection to the TRC-process

  • Forced forgiveness

  • Perpetuating injustice and inequality

  • Compensation

Martha Minow

• Minow article

• Two axes:

  • Truth – justice

  • Vengeance – forgiveness : Facing history after mass genocide

• What are the problems with each

Truth vs. Justice

• Tension here: in formal trials culprits have an interest in hiding the truth, where for victims the truth is perhaps even more important than justice/punishment

• Hide the truth or have it in the open

• Reason to look for other ways

Vengeance vs. Forgiveness

• Also tension

• On the opposite side of a spectrum:

• ‘To forgive is to let go of vengeance; to avenge is to resist forgiving’

• A range of options in between, mainly therapeutic

Strength of vengeance

• Assering self-respect

• Doing justice to the horrible deeds

• Stops bad person from doing it again

• Can pay it back and it feels like justice

Risks of vengeance

• Unending downward spirals of violence (memories and illusions of memories may stimulate violence) - endless back and forth

• No peace of mind is achieved – was this the right way to do

• It may dehumanize the victim who may go too far – out of anger go into blind rage

• It may psychologically imprison the victim – hostage of the perpetrator by psychologically pursuing vengeance, constantly goes around in your head what you would do

Retribution = vengeance curbed by third party and legal principles

• The state interfiers in immidate conflicts between persons

•  Tries to maintain dignity of all persons

• Limitations to vengeance are needed for the sanity of the victims and for the needs of an orderly society

• In the past there was no limit to vengeance

Strengths of forgiveness

• Reconnecting with the other

• Breaking cycles of violence

• Allows for a new, common, future

• May release the victim of the dark spell of the past and enable to move on

• May show that you as victim try to be different

• May have transforming effect on the culprit (but often not!)

Risks of forgiveness

• Exemption from punishment? (i.c. collective pardons or amnesty)

• Forgiveness is not a substitute for justice/punishment

• If the truth is not out there, Ignorance/amnesia of the crimes, the perpetrators may win in the end

• Forgiveness is not a right of the perpetrator nor a duty of the victim

Careful with forgiveness, there should be clear ‘reasons to forgive’ (e.g. repentance of perpetrator; healing for the victim, giving new freedom; ‘therapeutic reasons’)

What are ways ‘in between’ vengeance and forgiveness?

a. Justice/retributive justice

b. Therapeutic goals

c. Changing political culture/structure, climate conducive to human rights, etc.

d. Reconciliation based on restoring dignity of victims, preventing closure

e. Keeping the past alive to learn from (e.g ‘memorials’)

Jean Bethke Elstain

• difference between private forgiveness and public forgiveness

• Private : restoring restoring relations, sincerity of repentance, is hard to establish in public

•  But Public: ‘knowing forgetting’ required?

  • Try to find other ways tot deal with the past

• ‘painful recognition of the limits of forgiveness’

• Key question:

  • for how long are collective agencies (e.g. nations, peoples) responsible and guilty?

  • When does ‘guilt’ stop? Does it ever?

  • Examples: are all males now guilty of patriarchy in the past? Are all Germans today guilty of the Holocaust? All Dutch guilty of slavery? Of colonialism? Etc.

• Politically restorative justice’, different from retributive or punitive justice: aiming for a future that generates no new victims.

Hard Cases

• Northern Ireland

• Lithuania – Poland: visit of John Paul II

• Sudetenland: Germans expelled after WW-2

• South Africa: focus on truth about past misdeeds

• Full restoration is not always possible, but some form of recognition – the exposure of truth - may be a small, but essential step forward

Charles Taylor - building peaceful societies

Politics of recognition

• Peaceful societies require recognition of diverse cultural identities and the peoples differences

• people need to feel their cultures are valued and respected

• then they can participate in society

• honor to dignity

• There should be equal dignity for all citizens

• Threat of humiliation when a society is difference blind

Identidy and recognition

• Individual identities are formed through recognition

• Individuals want to be recognized, their culture'

• recognition is linked to dignity

• when individuals are recognized it affirms their worth in society

Two types of politics

Equal rights (‘politics of universalism’)

• all individuals should be treated equally under rights and principles

• everyone should have the sam legal and political rights regardless of identity

vs. Recognition of identity (‘politics of difference’)

• recognise of distinct cultural identities

• and specific needs and experiences of diverse groups

• celebrates differences among people
  

Key assumption for Taylor:

The claim is that all human cultures that have animated whole societies over some considerable stretch of time have something important to say to all human beings