Symposium on Reframing Transitional Justice: Reflections on Witnessing and the Right to be Known

[María Estrada-Fuentes is a lecturer in socially engaged performance at The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London. Her forthcoming monograph is titled Applied Theatre Colombia: Embodying Transitional Justice (Methuen Drama, 2027).]

In his Theses on the Philosophy of History, Walter Benjamin engages in a series of reflections around the past and ideas of the past. Throughout various passages, he draws attention to the plurality of interpretations as one witnesses or observes the past, the stillness that holds the present moment (XVI) and how it propels the viewer in different directions. Contemplating how the materiality of an extended present derives from a constellation of relationships with previous moments (VII, XVI, A, B), Benjamin draws attention to that which is known, in contrast to the interpretation of a past that lies ahead of us: in other words, the distinction between factual accounts or the materiality of evidence and how these are understood or made sense of. 

It was perhaps the passage referring to Paul Klee’s Angelus Novus (IX) that constituted my first encounter with Benjamin’s writing as an undergraduate student in my home country, Colombia, over twenty years ago. I often find myself revisiting this passage. I was fascinated by his description of the horror of witnessing, the violence of progress and the force that prevented the angel from moving away, from seeking solace, perhaps, in the bliss of not knowing. And I find myself always feeling conflicted as I look at the painting because, contrary to Benjamin, I notice a certain playfulness in Klee’s composition, and I see mischief and movement, not horror and stagnation, in the angel’s expression. I often go back to Benjamin’s powerful reflection on a past that lies in front of the viewer, and the act of witnessing he assigns to the angel, as an opportunity to consider the plurality of voices and interpretations that emerge from a single event or series of events, inevitably shaped by context and personal circumstances, and whether one can allow oneself to invite a possible, however fragile, future. How could this angel, as described by Benjamin, allow himself to imagine something different from what he knows to be true if all he can see is ‘one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls in front of his feet’ (IX)?  Where Benjamin noticed the horror of witnessing I see the lightness that might be experienced from attending to the past, not as a single catastrophe but as the summation of voices of those who carry an embodied awareness of the horror humans can inflict on each other.

It is this attentive witnessing to the pain and suffering of fellow citizens, and the intent to move away from harm and destruction, that occupies transitional societies through the various institutional and grassroots efforts that can potentially shape an extended present built upon past atrocities. Reframing Transitional Justice proposes a shift, a movement of sorts that allows for different perspectives to support and mobilise transitions. Within this adjustment, considerations regarding the scale and ability of the field to address past atrocities centre the discussion. Some chapters provide compelling analyses on how to move away from institutionalised and fixed understandings of ways to engage with the past, that might not be fit for purpose, while remaining mindful of the key contributions, potential shortcomings and harms resulting from technological innovations (chapters 2, 4, and 5 by Colleen Murphy, Christopher Lamont, and Laura Gianna Guntrum et al). Other chapters foreground victims as objects of knowledge who drive transitional processes and methodological innovations (chapters 3, 6 by Juan Espíndola and Daniel Gómez-Uribe). The latter is the focus of the discussion that follows.

My arts-based work with victims of the armed conflict in Colombia, more specifically with former child soldiers, started partly due to a moment of change in the country’s institutional framing of war-related harms. The Ley de Víctimas y Restitución de Tierras (Victims and Land Restitution Law, 2011) marked an important discursive shift in the country. With it, the existence of an armed conflict was acknowledged, there was an initial recognition that the State had also produced victims, and attention was given to the role of land ownership in the protraction of violent armed conflict in the country. As Daniel Gómez-Uribe indicates in his contribution to this edited collection (chapter 6), this law also instructs that victims should participate in the design of transitional justice policies (p. 119). This law shed light on the experiences of victims who were able to give name to the conflict and associated realities; victims and survivors were moreover recognised as social actors and provided legal frameworks that enabled them to interpellate their offenders and claim guarantees of non-recurrence and protection, along with the restoration of their rights and the strengthening of their political activism. With this law, the reparation of harm was conceptualised as a comprehensive process that exceeds pecuniary measures and is aimed at delivering dignifying living conditions for victims (for more on the context and contribution of this law to the development of transitional justice processes and institutions in Colombia see Hay Futuro si Hay Verdad). However, as Daniela Suárez Vargas elsewhere demonstrates, the conceptualisation of victimhood delivered by this law and previous ones explicitly excluded the complex victimhood of guerrilla and paramilitary combatants by prioritising victims who had acted within the rule of law, thus mobilising an exclusionary understanding of victimhood in line with notions of ideal or innocent victims. Writing on how the Jurisdicción Especial para la Paz (JEP) addresses gender based violence within the ranks of armed groups, Suárez Vargas identifies another shift in the narrative of victimhood, one that moves towards a more nuanced and comprehensive approach on the experiences of combatants of all genders, and the recognition of reproductive violence as a distinct category of harm. The JEP’s case investigating the recruitment and use of minors in the armed conflict has also contributed to a more robust engagement with the experiences of victims, in line with Juan Espíndola (chapter 3) and Gómez-Uribe’s discussions in Reframing Transitional Justice around victims’ narrative ownership and right to be known. 

Espíndola and Gómez-Uribe discuss processes of epistemic reparation that emphasise the importance of allowing victims to ‘articulate their grievances in their own terms’ and that recognise them as source and producers of knowledge (Espíndola p. 49). Both authors suggest that for hearing to take place, the right set of conditions and methodological approaches need to be in place, one that recognises the plurality of their voices and interpretations of the past (Gómez-Uribe, pp. 126-129) and the potential need for concealment to allow social transformations to take place (what Espíndola terms the right to be forgotten, p. 62). Through epistemic labour (p. 52) perceptions and stories that are told about individuals and communities might shift, enabling, going back to Benjamin, the emergence of various, contested interpretations of the past based on what is known. Art practice and symbolic work can contribute to creating the right conditions for victims’ recognition, for their voices to be heard. It can also deliver epistemic harm through invisibility, the vilification victims and their reduction to unidimensional stereotypes (p. 52).

Working with former child soldiers I learnt that the legal frameworks shedding light on human experience can facilitate the creation of programmes, allocation of resources, and support to address victims’ harm. This is the case in Colombia where, following the ratification of the UNCRC in 1991, since 1999 there have been government-led programmes and institutions dedicated to supporting the reintegration of former child soldiers and restoring their rights. I also learnt that decoupling legal understandings of children’s victimhood and their experiences in the battlefield was fundamental when working with minors who have waged and survived war, and that addressing the continuum before-during-after recruitment was fundamental, especially to broaden the scope when reflecting what victimisation entails: the social and political conditions that make recruitment possible. In other words, that supporting minors’ social reintegration required a fair amount of epistemic labour (p. 52) that was not always possible. Occasionally, the mandate to care for and protect children from harm and to restore their rights consisted of imposing a suitable or well-known narrative regarding sexuality and gendered performances, hence obstructing the facilitation of spaces where minors could exercise their right to be known. My work was focused on girls’ experiences of gender and sexual violence, but there was little or no scope for us to be able to untangle their own observations, the complexities of intimate partner and reproductive violence as it might have been endured in the ranks, or to allow for experiences of agency to be openly articulated (see Loyce Mrewa’s chapter on Liberia in Reframing Transitional Justice for parallels to the phenomena I experienced). How can individuals and institutions deliver relevant support to former combatants, irrespective of age, if witnessing does not take place? It is there, in the willingness to attend to the past and interpretations that contravene assumptions around human experience, that a shift might take place, this being one that allows for a performative reintegration, one that simultaneously transforms both civilians and former combatants and does not expect the latter solely to conform or fall into place. Witnessing, as Benjamin suggests, can be frightening. However, the failure to do so constitutes an epistemic harm that prevents sustainable, just transitions (p. 19).

To bring this text to a close, I would like to share two examples of cultural products not related to transitional justice institutional efforts, but that illustrate how art practice illuminates instances of complex victimhood, and the potential contributions these can make to epistemic reparations in transitional societies (Doris Salcedo’s monument Fragmentos is an example of how transitional justice initiatives can reproduce epistemic harm related to sexual and reproductive violence by imposing narrow understandings of war-related victimhood and reducing victims to unidimensional stereotypes). The 2015 film Alias Maria  tells the story of a 13 year old female combatant whose life is shaped by normalised forms of reproductive violence, it explores love, sex and consent in guerrilla warfare and carefully depicts how hierarchy informs what combatants are expected to do in terms of sexual rights and associated care practices. It foregrounds Maria’s agency within a coercive and violent environment through a combination of concealment and the disclosure of her pregnancy in her romantic partnership with Mauricio, her commander. Moving beyond the battlefield, the 2016 TV series La Niña (The Girl) depicts the reintegration of Belky, a minor who protected her younger brother from recruitment by taking his place. Drawing on the well-established soap opera genre, La Niña foregrounds Belky’s victimhood upon her forced recruitment to an unidentified guerrilla group, her subsequent rape by members of the Colombian Armed Forces, and focuses on the challenges of reintegration following her capture by the police. It is an extraordinary story of suffering and redemption that addresses what Espíndola terms the right to be forgotten (49), and how this can facilitate transitions. Both characters, Maria and Belky, are based on real life experiences that can be understood as two sides of the same coin: the multiple ways in which minors respond to and skilfully navigate their war-informed contexts, and their layered, shifting experiences within the ranks. On the one hand, Alias Maria carefully depicts how coercive environments thwart the possibility of consent, but also acknowledges personal agency and military skill in the life of a girl combatant. It challenges conceptualisations of child soldiers as hapless victims while emphasising the physical and affective violence that shapes their lives. On the other hand, La Niña illustrates the complexity of recruitment, where a combination of coercion and care transforms the life of a girl from the countryside who had already been assigned adult responsibilities: that of taking care of her epileptic brother. It emphasises the violence experienced in the militarisation of childhood and foregrounds Belky’s unhappiness in the guerrillas, the type of institutional support she receives during her social reintegration for being a minor, and how her past experiences inform her civilian life. Both examples focus on what is known, that minors are actively engaged in warfare, but broaden the interpretation of these factual accounts or evidence of past experiences: they shed light on the complexity of the lives of girls and women in the battlefield, the coexistence of suffering and agency many years before any of this complex harm started to be taken into account in legal proceedings. They offered platforms to the voices of those who carry an embodied awareness of the horror and suffering humans can inflict on each other. 

Photo attribution: Stephen Hickman on Unsplash