HISTORY SPEAKER SERIES 2022-2023
Confronting Atrocity in the Age of Truth and Reconciliation
Dr. Bonny Ibhawoh
Professor of Legal History and the Senator William McMaster Chair in Global Human Rights, McMaster University
Wednesday, January 18, 2023
2:00 PM
Zoom
If the twentieth century marked the age of human rights, the twenty-first century is shaping up to be the age of truth and reconciliation. From South Africa to Canada, Chile to South Korea, Truth and Reconciliation Commissions (TRCs) have become popular justice mechanisms for societies seeking to address grave human rights violations. Once confined to post-conflict transitional states in the Global South, the TRC model has expanded to Western democracies seeking to address historical atrocities. The growing appeal of TRCs reflects the resurgence of memory politics in an era of increasing challenge of the nation-state’s hegemony over history. As official narratives are challenged by societal demands for inclusive representations of the past, TRCs processes and archives have become public spaces for policing the boundaries of truth and falsehood, and negotiating the difficult past in the uncertain present. This talk explores the politics and polemics of social memory in national truth-seeking and restorative justice processes.