Description
This paper investigates the social impact of the multiplicity of narratives drawn from the work of truth commissions in Brazil (2014) and Colombia (2016). The paper seeks to understand how the evaluation of truth-seeking – the definition of whether a truth commission successfully implemented its mandate or not – affect, and is affected by, societal understandings of violence, conflict, and insecurity. The analysis is guided by four central questions: (i) What are the historical conditions that allowed for the convergence of the fields of mediation, development and transitional justice in the two case studies? (ii) What are the main implications of such convergence to the terms with which violence came to be understood as a problem by the field of transitional justice? (iii) How has the regime of justification of what transitional justice is expected to accomplish been rearticulated throughout the trajectory of this field? (iv) How does the convergence of the fields of mediation, development, and transitional justice affect the technical repertoire anchoring the practices of truth-seeking and truth-telling?
