Shaw, Rosalind

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4/3/17 9:33 PMLabors of memory and the post-conflict economy | VölkerrechtsblogPage 1 of 7http://voelkerrechtsblog.org/labors-of-memory-and-the-post-conflict-economy/BLOG  SERVICE  COMMUNITY  ABOUT ROSALIND SHAW —  16 March, 2015  Print    5        ALLEGRA -  TRANSITIONAL JUSTICELabors of memory and the post-conflict economyTransitional Justice is an important emerging theme in legal anthropology.Völkerrechtsblog will explore this theme through a collaboration with the blog ‘Allegra Lab:Anthropology, Law, Art & World’ and re-post their series ‘Transitional Justice under theanthropological microscope’.During my research on Sierra Leone’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) 2003,a group of men in Lunsar invited me to a palm wine bar to hear their views. They wereespecially annoyed about the absence of “benefit” – material compensation – for thosewho testified before the TRC. “How will I go and talk on the radio about what they’vedone to me, when I get no benefit from that?” asked one young man. But despite beingtold that the TRC would not compensate anyone for their “truth telling,” most of thosewho testified before the TRC’s District Hearings still hoped that it would.Again and again, after narrating their memories of violence and ongoing experiences ofloss following Sierra Leone’s devastating eleven-year war, they asked for help from eitherthe government or the TRC itself with food, housing, education, and medical care (TRC,Sierra Leone 2004, Vol. 2: 235, para. 31). After the TRC, broad expectations of materialassistance merged with expectations of compensation for testimony itself (Millar 2010,2011; Shaw 2007, 2014). The absence of such compensation was a common complaintamong those who had testified. For the Commission, these expectations were“misunderstandings” of the TRC’s mandate, and of the reparations process itrecommended. But what if we take these expectations seriously: “What does it mean toclaim that truth telling is a task – a labor – for which the teller should be paid?”These claims translate “the labor of memory” into literal form. For Cole (1998; 2001) andJelin (2003), the labor of memory denotes an active process through which peoplechange their relationship to the past and rework the social world. Legal and human rightsactivists, I suggest, also translate the process of memory work into literal form, but tendto do so by mechanizing and fetishizing it. Activists claim that truth telling transformssocial and political reality by producing a specific set of outcomes. But they typically castthis as a process whereby a specific kind of memory – the act of testimony and itsdissemination through print and electronic media – produces accountability,reconciliation, and peace in the manner of a fetish object (see Comaroff and Comaroff2006), since they represent these causal “outcomes” as inhering within truth telling and4/3/17 9:33 PMLabors of memory and the post-conflict economy | VölkerrechtsblogPage 2 of 7http://voelkerrechtsblog.org/labors-of-memory-and-the-post-conflict-economy/truth commissions themselves (the latter termed, tellingly, a transitional justicemechanism). When Sierra Leone’s TRC began operations in 2002, for instance, posters inFreetown and major provincial towns announced: “Truth Today…Peaceful Sierra LeoneTomorrow.”The expectation that the performance of such memory “work” in a truth commissionshould be compensated may sound startling. Truth commissions are, after all, defined asvictim-centric mechanisms that are assumed to give victims “voice” (Ross 2002) and toaddress their needs. Thus Sierra Leone’s Truth and Reconciliation Act states that theTRC’s function should be “to work to help restore the human dignity of victims andpromote reconciliation by providing an opportunity for victims to give an account of theviolations and abuses suffered and for perpetrators to relate their experiences” (2000:III.6.2b). But whether the thousands of people who have, over the past few decades,recounted their memories before truth commissions benefited from their truth tellinghas been repeatedly called into question (e.g., Kelsall 2005; Laplante and Theidon 2007;Millar 2010 and 2011; Ross 2002; Shaw 2007 and 2014; Theidon 2012; Wilson 2001; Yezer2008). Their memory labor – if not exactly abstracted – has been harnessed, we mightargue, to the fetishized deployment of truth telling in the post-conflict “machinery” ofpeacebuilding.The work of truth telling within the post-conflict economyThis point requires us to situate the work of truth telling within the post-conflicteconomy. Sierra Leone’s civil war (1991-2002) was in large part “about” labor, since it hadits roots in a history of struggle over young people’s labor. War is often viewed as asingular period of rupture, and “post-conflict” as an exceptional period of transition inwhich the body politic is cleansed of the past (Castillejo-Cuéllar 2014; Rojas Pérez 2008;Vigh 2008). But armed conflicts unfold within longer histories of violence, which rarelydisappear at the official end of a war.In Sierra Leone, eleven years of civil war were layered upon a thirty-year legacy of stateviolence, ongoing structural violence, and much deeper memories of colonial rule andslave trades (Ferme 2001; Shaw 2002). In particular, young people’s socialmarginalization, the extraction of their labor by rural gerontocratic elites, their strugglefor education and resources, and their predicament as perennial dependents in a nation-state characterized by a collapse of opportunities all configured the war and itsaftermath (e.g., Peters 2011; Richards 2005).For many young people who became combatants, either as conscripted abductees orvolunteers, the civil war had opened up opportunities, although these were violent anddangerous (e.g., Hoffman 2011a and b; Peters 2011). As Hoffman puts it, ‘[t]o fight was notso much to take on the enemy as to take up a labor, to work’ (2011a:40), through, forexample, agriculture, diamond digging, porterage, domestic labor, and fighting. When“peace” came in 2002, it meant a transition to an unfamiliar and unstable postwareconomy. Internationally funded interventions became the new economy – but one thatwas opaque and unpredictable (Fanthorpe 2003). The impoverished majority, both youngand old, experienced “peacetime” as a continuation of their struggle for viable lives in anew environment that shared many qualities, such as volatility and violence, withwartime. As one of my interlocutors, Adama Koroma, put it at the end of her testimonybefore the TRC, “I cannot be struggling and say that I am living in peace.”Participation in Sierra Leone’s TRC was located in the relationship between these twoeconomies of war and post-war. In a radically uncertain and constantly shifting social4/3/17 9:33 PMLabors of memory and the post-conflict economy | VölkerrechtsblogPage 3 of 7http://voelkerrechtsblog.org/labors-of-memory-and-the-post-conflict-economy/environment, Sierra Leoneans emerging from more than a decade of war explored anyopportunities that presented themselves. For many people, the post-conflict economy ofhumanitarianism and peacebuilding became a potential site of resources for the creationof “post-conflict” lives. In order to enter this economy, they sought to constructrelationships with NGOs and the TRC. This meant, in the case of the TRC, learning tonarrate memories of wartime violence as “truth telling” in written statements and oraltestimony before the Commission.Connecting memory to ideas of humanitarian suffering through a rhetoric ofvictimhoodTruth telling became a new work of memory in Sierra Leone, based on a newconceptualization of what memory could do – namely, open up a route of redress andreconciliation that would unlock a future of national peace. It also integrated memoryinto a neoliberal discourse of responsibilization (e.g., Trnka and Trundle 2014), in whichindividuals were encouraged to assume responsibility for reconciliation and peacethrough the truth telling.In addition, it connected memory to ideas of humanitarian suffering (e.g., Fassin 2011)through a rhetoric of victimhood that is especially pronounced in transitional justice.Narrative memories of suffering, loss, and injury thereby became the vehicle for theTRC’s recommended reparations program. At the end of their testimony before the TRC,people were invited to make recommendations for the government, which, the TRCclaimed, the government would be compelled to fulfill. Yet more than ten years after thewar ended, the very limited reparations program the Commission recommended hasbeen only partially and inadequately implemented (Conteh and Berghs 2014). Thus overtime, people’s continued struggles for lives and livelihoods marked the limits of truthtelling as a failure of memory.But requests for material assistance via truth telling were not always presented in termsof the language of suffering and victimhood. Like Laplante and Theidon’s interlocutors inAyacucho, who viewed reparations after Peru’s TRC in terms of “implicit contracts” andrights (2007), those who had testified before Sierra Leone’s TRC recast the language ofvictimhood. They spoke instead of (failed) reciprocity, re-routing the claimedconnections between truth telling and national peace and reconciliation through a pathof labor and compensation. For them, memory “work” was more than a figurativeconcept. They had enacted a task – and one that was emotionally difficult – which theyhad been asked to perform for the sake of their country. And they wanted to be paid.This re-routing has a significance that extends beyond the clear need for economicjustice and reparations. It reframes transitional justice within the contradictions andintersections of post-conflict economies, revealing the ways in which participants’struggles for post-conflict lives in conditions of structural violence and impoverishmentinflects every aspect of their participation in transitional justice mechanisms. In so doing,these struggles reshape the work of memory and the meanings of “justice” and “peace”long after these mechanisms have been dismantled.Rosalind Shaw, Associate Professor of Anthropology at Tufts University, has publishedextensively on memory, transitional justice, and Sierra Leone. Her recent works includeMemories of the Slave Trade (University of Chicago Press, 2002) and LocalizingTransitional Justice (co-edited; Stanford University Press, 2010).This article appeared first on Allegra Lab.4/3/17 9:33 PMLabors of memory and the post-conflict economy | VölkerrechtsblogPage 4 of 7http://voelkerrechtsblog.org/labors-of-memory-and-the-post-conflict-economy/More contributions of this series can be found here._______________Works CitedCastillejo-Cuéllar, Alejandro. 2014. Historical injuries, temporality and the law:articulations of a violent past in two transitional scenarios. Law Critique 25:47-66John L. Comaroff and Jean Comaroff (eds.). 2006. Law and disorder in the postcolony: anintroduction. In Law and Disorder in the Postcolony, pp. 1-56. Chicago: University ofChicago PressCole, Jennifer. 1998. The work of memory in Madagascar. American Ethnologist 25:610-633Cole, Jennifer. 2001. Forget colonialism? Sacrifice and the art of memory in Madagascar.Berkeley: University of California Press.Conteh, Edward. and Maria Berghs. 2014. ‘Mi at don poil’: a report on reparations in SierraLeone for amputee and war-wounded people. Draft report, Amputee and War-WoundedAssociation, Freetown, Sierra Leone.Fanthorpe, Richard. 2003. Humanitarian aid in post-conflict Sierra Leone: the politics ofmoral economy. In Sarah Collinson (ed.), Power, Livelihood and Conflicts: Case Studies inPolitical Economy Analysis for Humanitarian Action, 53–66. HPG Report 13. London:Overseas Development Institute.Fassin, Didier. 2011. Humanitarian Reason: A Moral History of the Present. Berkeley:University of California PressFerme, Mariane C. 2001. The Underneath of Things: Violence, History, and the Everydayin Sierra Leone. Berkeley: University of California PressHoffman, Daniel. 2011a. Violence, just in time: war and work in contemporary West Africa,Cultural Anthropology 26: 34–57.–2011b. The War Machines: Young Men and Violence in Sierra Leone and Liberia. Durham,NC: Duke University Press.Jelin, Elizabeth. 2003. State Repression and the Labors of Memory. Minneapolis:University of Minnesota PressKelsall, Tim. 2005. Truth, lies, ritual: preliminary reflections on the Truth andReconciliation Commission in Sierra Leone. Human Rights Quarterly 27:361-391Laplante, Lisa J., and Kimberly Susan Theidon 2007. ‘Truth with consequences: justiceand reparations in post-truth commission Peru’, Human Rights Quarterly 29: 228–50.Millar, Gearoid. 2010. Assessing local evaluations of truth telling: getting to ‘why’ througha qualitative case analysis. International Journal of Transitional Justice 4:477-496–2011. Local evaluations of justice through truth telling in Sierra Leone: postwar needsand transitional justice. Human Rights Review4/3/17 9:33 PMLabors of memory and the post-conflict economy | VölkerrechtsblogPage 5 of 7http://voelkerrechtsblog.org/labors-of-memory-and-the-post-conflict-economy/Peters, Krijn. 2011. War and the Crisis of Youth in Sierra Leone. Cambridge and New York:Cambridge University PressRichards, Paul. 2005. To fight or to farm? Agrarian dimensions of the Mano River conflicts(Liberia and Sierra Leone). African Affairs 104:571-590Rojas Pérez, Isaias. 2008. Writing the aftermath: anthropology and ‘post-conflict.’ InDeborah Poole (ed.), A Companion to Latin American Anthropology, pp. 254-275. Oxford:BlackwellRoss, Fiona C. 2002. Bearing Witness: Women and the Truth and ReconciliationCommission in South Africa. London: Pluto PressShaw, Rosalind. 2002. Memories of the Slave Trade: Ritual and the Historical Imaginationin Sierra Leone. Chicago: University of Chicago Press–2007. Memory frictions: localizing the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in SierraLeone. International Journal of Transitional Justice 1:183–207.–2014. The TRC, the NGO and the child: young people and post-conflict futures in SierraLeone. Social Anthropology 22:306-325.Theidon, Kimberly. 2012. Intimate Enemies: Violence and Reconciliation in Peru.Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Trnka, Susanna, and Catherine Trundle. 2014. Competing responsibilities: beyondneoliberal responsibilisation. Anthropological Forum 24:1-18.Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Sierra Leone 2004. Witness to Truth: Report of theSierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Accessed 12 July 2014.Vigh, Henrik. 2006. Navigating Terrains of War: Youth and Soldiering in Guinea-Bissau.Oxford: Berghahn Books.Wilson, Richard A. 2001. The Politics of Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa:Legitimizing the Post-Apartheid State. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge UniversityPress.Yezer, Caroline. 2008. Who wants to know? Rumors, suspicions, and opposition to truth-telling in Ayacucho. Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies 3:271-289.ISSN 2510-2567Tags: Africa , Sierra Leone , Truth CommissionPrint Facebook Twitter Email   RelatedReimagining Transitional Justicein BaliThe limits of truth telling Judicial means and political ends:transitional justice and politicaltrials23 March, 2015In "Allegra - Transitional Justice"1 April, 2015In "Allegra - Transitional Justice"30 March, 2015In "Allegra - Transitional Justice"4/3/17 9:33 PMLabors of memory and the post-conflict economy | VölkerrechtsblogPage 6 of 7http://voelkerrechtsblog.org/labors-of-memory-and-the-post-conflict-economy/5 CommentsRESCUING (COSMOPOLITAN) LOCALS AT THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINALTRIBUNAL FOR RWANDA | VÖLKERRECHTSBLOG18 March, 2015 at 09:51 — Reply[…] More contributions of this series can be found here. 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[…]THE LIMITS OF TRUTH TELLING | VÖLKERRECHTSBLOG1 April, 2015 at 11:19 — Reply[…] Gerhard Anders: Judicial means and political ends // Katrin Seidel: In the name of ‘rule of law’// Leslie Dwyer: Reimagining Transitional Justice in Bali. // Nigel Eltringham: Rescuing(cosmopolitan) at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. // Rosalind Shaw: Labors ofmemory and the post-conflict economy. […]Leave a replyYour email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *PREVIOUS POSTMay it please the Court – A dancedpleadingNEXT POSTRescuing (cosmopolitan) locals atthe International Criminal Tribunalfor Rwanda4/3/17 9:33 PMLabors of memory and the post-conflict economy | VölkerrechtsblogPage 7 of 7http://voelkerrechtsblog.org/labors-of-memory-and-the-post-conflict-economy/Name (required)E-Mail (required)WebsiteSUBMIT COMMENT Notify me of follow-up comments by email. Notify me of new posts by email.Copyright © 2016 · | ISSN 2510-2567 | Impressum & Legal   

Labors of memory and the post-conflict economy

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Labors of memory and the post-conflict economy

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