En(countering) Silence – Some Thoughts on Historical Justice after Memoricide
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Fanie du Toit
Abstract
This essay argues that public historians and transitional justice experts need one another’s input in at least two crucial tasks facing nations after episodes of mass violence. In challenging the silence that typically envelopes post-war situations, the faithful recording of lived experiences of victims after violence is both a necessity and exceedingly complex. Here, oral history initiatives can significantly assist forensic investigations to develop a fuller picture of the suffering and crimes committed, but also to turn truth-telling into a healing experience for victims who often find forensic truth-telling on its own re-traumatizing. Conversely in efforts to memorialize wars, periods of oppression and struggles of liberation, public historians will do well to take seriously the testimonies of Truth and Reconciliation Commissions and other truth-telling fora in order to ensure that any exclusionary narratives which may arise after the conflict are themselves disrupted, even as a social consensus is fostered on the need to realize all the necessary guarantees of non-recurrence to avoid a return to a bad past.
© 2020 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Identity, Memory and the Transitional Landscape: Public History in the Context of Transitional Justice, edited by Radhika Hettiarachchi and Ricardo Santhiago
- Identity, Memory, and the Transitional Landscape: Public History in the Context of Transitional Justice
- En(countering) Silence – Some Thoughts on Historical Justice after Memoricide
- The Historian’s Role, Public History, and the National Truth Commission in Brazil
- Recent History in the Courtroom: Notes on an Experience as an Expert Witness in a Trial for Crimes Against Humanity in Argentina
- Historians, Public History, and Transitional Justice: Baltic Experiences
- Re-imaging an Inclusive People’s History
- Historical Consciousness and Transitional Justice in Post-War Sri Lanka
- It is Young People that Give Me Hope
- PH in
- Brave New Curriculum: Aotearoa New Zealand History and New Zealand’s Schools
- Book Review
- Susan Neiman: Learning from the Germans – Race and the Memory of Evil & Melissa M. Bender and Klara Stephanie Szlezak: Contested Commemoration in U.S. History – Diverging Public Interpretations
Articles in the same Issue
- Identity, Memory and the Transitional Landscape: Public History in the Context of Transitional Justice, edited by Radhika Hettiarachchi and Ricardo Santhiago
- Identity, Memory, and the Transitional Landscape: Public History in the Context of Transitional Justice
- En(countering) Silence – Some Thoughts on Historical Justice after Memoricide
- The Historian’s Role, Public History, and the National Truth Commission in Brazil
- Recent History in the Courtroom: Notes on an Experience as an Expert Witness in a Trial for Crimes Against Humanity in Argentina
- Historians, Public History, and Transitional Justice: Baltic Experiences
- Re-imaging an Inclusive People’s History
- Historical Consciousness and Transitional Justice in Post-War Sri Lanka
- It is Young People that Give Me Hope
- PH in
- Brave New Curriculum: Aotearoa New Zealand History and New Zealand’s Schools
- Book Review
- Susan Neiman: Learning from the Germans – Race and the Memory of Evil & Melissa M. Bender and Klara Stephanie Szlezak: Contested Commemoration in U.S. History – Diverging Public Interpretations
