Description
Transitional justice (TJ), which consists of the various processes through which societies attempt to address past (and ongoing) legacies of conflict and violence, is at once a local, transnational, and global form of governance. Increasingly, TJ scholarship and practice has considered how gender, sexuality, race, colonialism, and other vectors of power and oppression are both addressed in and expressed through TJ mechanisms across country contexts. Encouraged by the small but growing body of scholarship queering transitional justice, I explore and develop a queer perspective to the global governance of transitional justice. I map existing queer contributions to better understand what queer approaches can bring to sites of transitional justice, which importantly includes considering the multiple and contested forms that queer takes. While these scholarly and practitioner interventions predominantly focus on the meaningful inclusion, participation, and protection of LGBTQIA+ persons in TJ practices, here I expand queer’s potential by considering how queer perspectives might expose the (cis-heteronormative, racial, carceral) violence of TJ and its institutionalisation at the global level. Moreover, I also reflect on how queer approaches illuminate both tensions and (im)possibilities, so that future TJ practices might be sites for/of transformation, intersectionality, and queerness. Queering the global governance of TJ offers opportunities to expand the social, political, and conceptual effects of TJ, and critically, seeks less-violent, more equitable and peaceful worlds both within and beyond formal articulations of justice.
