Memory Politics: Truth, Justice and Redress
Subject to Modification
Professor Kimberly Theidon
Teaching Fellows: Jasmine Samara and Dilan Yildirim
Anthropology 1710
Fall, 2012
T/TH 11:30-1:00
Office hours:
T’/Th 1:15-3:00, or by appointment
“Meditate that this came about:
I commend these words to you.
Carve them in your hearts.”
— Primo Levi, survivor of Auschwitz
Course Description
In the aftermath of political violence and the massive violation of human rights, how
do individuals, communities and societies come to terms with these atrocities and
reconstruct social relationships and sociability? How do people live together again
after suffering and inflicting lethal violence? In the context of state-sponsored terror,
how do successor regimes make a break with the past, establish a new set of social
norms, and work toward the administration of justice, redress and reconciliation?
In this course we analyze the relationship between memory and social reconciliation,
and the role that theories of truth, justice and redress play in this equation. We begin
with WWII, or more precisely its aftermath. WWII was a point of historical
disjuncture: From the Nazi atrocities and the subsequent trials at Nuremberg and
Tokyo emerged a series of conventions and covenants establishing human rights as a
set of international laws, institutions, and norms.
We trace the expansion of, and challenges to, the regime of human rights and
international law by focusing on case studies that allow us to analyze war crimes
tribunals, truth commissions, the burgeoning field of transitional justice, and local level
forms of assessing guilt and administering justice.
Our case studies this year include Rwanda, South Africa, Colombia, Guatemala, and
Peru. We draw upon human rights documents, social scientific analyses, novels and
film in an attempt to understand how atrocities begin and how they may end. We will
consider how genocides continued to occur throughout the 20th century — and into the
21st — during an époque characterized by the call for “Never Again” (Nunca Más).
Finally, once the fighting subsides, what can and should be done with the victims, the
perpetrators, and that sizeable segment of the population that may blur the
dichotomy?
Required/Recommended Texts
This is an upper-division undergraduate course; however, graduate students wishing to
take this course for credit should consult with the instructor regarding supplementary
readings and the final paper. I am open to holding a graduate student section in
addition to the course lectures. For specific details on course requirements and grading,
see the end of this syllabus.
Please use your discretion and buy those books you believe will be useful to you now
and in the future, and read the others on reserve. We will read some of the following
texts in their entirety, and read selections from the others. Please consult the course
syllabus for details.
Survival at Auschwitz: The Nazi Assault on Humanity, Primo Levi
Beautiful Souls: Saying No, Breaking Ranks, and Heeding the Voice of Conscience in
Dark Times, Eyal Press.
Unspeakable Truths: Confronting State Terror and Atrocity, Second edition, Priscilla B.
Hayner
Country of My Skull, Antje Krog
We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families: Stories from
Rwanda, Philip Gourevitch
Between Vengeance and Forgiveness: Facing History after Genocide and Mass Violence,
Martha Minow
Buried Secrets: Truth and Human Rights in Guatemala, Victoria Sanford.
Intimate Enemies: Violence and Reconciliation in Peru, Kimberly Theidon
Additional readings posted as PDF files on the course website
Week One: Introduction to the Course
Tuesday, 9/4: Course introduction
Thursday, 9/6: Survival at Auschwitz, pp. 1-100.
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Week Two: Is this not a man?
Tuesday, 9/11: Survival at Auschwitz, pp. 101-173.
Thursday, 9/13: “Genocide” by Raphael Lemkin and the “Genocide Convention”
(course website); The Banality of Evil, Hannah Arendt and “Modernity and the
Holocaust” by Zymunt Bauman (selections from each on course website)
Film: “Judgment at Nuremberg”
Week Three: Judging Selves and Others
“The principle of international law, which, under certain circumstance, protects
representatives of a state, cannot be applied to acts condemned as criminal by
international law. The author’s of these acts cannot shelter themselves behind
their official position to be freed from punishment.”
— Nuremberg International Military Tribunal, August 8, 1945
Tuesday, 9/18: Discuss “Judgment at Nuremberg.”
Thursday, 9/20: Selections from Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the
Final Solution in Poland, Christopher Browning (selections on course website);
“Nuremberg,” from Stay the Hand of Vengeance: The Politics of War Crimes Tribunals,
Gary Bass (chapter on course website); “The Sovereign Territorial State: The Right to
Genocide,” Leo Kuper (course website)
Recommended:
Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland, Jan Gross.
Week Four: A Question of Conscience?
Tuesday, 9/25: Beautiful Souls: Saying No, Breaking Ranks, and Heeding the Voice of
Conscience in Dark Times
Thursday, 9/27: Discussion with the author Eyal Press
Week Five: Memories and Counter-Memories
Tuesday, 10/2: Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, selections
Thursday, 10/4: Elizabeth Jelin, State Repression and the Labors of Memory, selections;
Representations: Special Issue on Memory and Counter-Memory, Natalie Zemon Davis
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and Randolph Starn, eds. Selections (“Introduction,” Pierre Nora “Between Memory
and History: Les Lieux de la Memoire).
Week Six: Justice in Transition
Tuesday, 10/9: Ruti Teitel, “Transitional Justice Genealogy,” Harvard Human Rights
Journal, Vol. 16, 2003; Jon Elster, Closing the Books: Transitional Justice in Historical
Perspective, Selections; “Memory Frictions: Localizing the Truth and Rec0nciliation
Commission in Sierra Leone,” Rosalind Shaw, International Journal of Transitional
Justice, Vol. 1 2007.
Thursday, 10/11: Priscilla Hayner, Unspeakable Truths, pp. 1-107
FIRST MIDTERM DISTRIBUTED TODAY IN CLASS AND DUE NEXT
TUESDAY, 10/16 IN CLASS
Week Seven: Commissioning Truth?
Tuesday, 10/16: Unspeakable Truths, pp. 108-end
Thrsday, 10/18: Antje Krog, Country of My Skull
Week Eight: Apartheid and the Violence of Law
“Law, which should have been a pillar of justice and social stability and a wall
against violence and chaos, became instead an agent of injustice and social
instability and a catalyst for violence and chaos. Law was systematically
reduced…to a continuation of violence by other means.”
— Kader Asmal, South African Human Rights professor and activist
Tuesday, 10/23: Antje Krog, Country of My Skull
Thursday, 10/25: Film: “Long Night’s Journey into Day”
Recommended:
Annie E. Coombes, History after Apartheid: Visual Culture and Public Memory in a
Democratic South Africa, chapters 1,2,3 and 6.
Week Nine: While the World Watched: Colonial Legacies, Ethical Failures
Tuesday, 10/30: Philip Gourevitch, We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed
with our families: Stories from Rwanda.
Tuesday, 11/1: Films: “In Rwanda we say….the family that does not speak dies”
(2005) and “My Neighbor, My Killer”
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Recommended:
Samantha Powers, “Bystanders to Genocide,” The Atlantic Monthly, September 2001.
Week Ten: Revenge, Remorse, Reconciliation?
Tuesday, 11/6: Martha Minow, Between Vengeance and Forgiveness, Selections.
Thursday, 11/8: “Rwanda — Not So Innocent: When Women Become Killers.”
African Rights (1995). Selections.
SECOND MIDTERM DISTRIBUTED TODAY IN CLASS AND DUE NEXT
THURSDAY, 11/15 IN CLASS.
Week Eleven: And when women are killed: Genocide and Femicide in
Guatemala
Tuesday, 11/13: Buried Secrets: Truth and Human Rights in Guatemala, Victoria
Sanford
Thursday 11/15: American Anthropological Association Meeting, San Francisco
Week Twelve: Impunity
Tuesday, 11/20: Guest lecture, Victoria Sanford
Thursday, 11/22: Thanksgiving Day
Week Thirteen:What the Neighbors Can Do
Tuesday, 11/27: Begin Intimate Enemies: Violence and Reconciliation in Peru, Kimberly
Theidon
Thursday, 11/29: Finish Intimate Enemies: Violence and Reconciliation in Peru
Film, “The Milk of Sorrow”
Week Fourteen: Legacies: Redress and the Irreparable
Tuesday, 12/4: Elazar Barkan, The Guilt of Nations: Restitution and Negotiating
Historical Injustices, selections: Lisa Laplante and Kimberly Theidon, “Truth with
Consequences: Justice and Reparations in Post-Truth Commission Peru,” Human
Rights Quarterly; Ruth Rubbio Marin, Gender and Reparations: Opportunities for
Transitional Democracies? Selections;
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Concluding Comments and Discussion
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Course Requirements and Grading Criteria
This is a reading intensive course. I expect students to arrive in class having completed
the assigned readings; during the heavy reading weeks, I will let you know which
sections of the reading to focus on and will bring chocolate to class to help you keep up
your strength and your spirits. Although this is a lecture course, I strongly encourage
questions and discussion during class. Differences of opinion and respectful
argumentation help all of us sharpen our thinking on these themes.
We will have two take home exams that are designed to help to think your way
through the material in preparation for selecting your final paper topic. The exams can
be, indeed should be, considered collective endeavors in terms of discussion; however,
each student must author their own responses.
Grading will include class participation (20%); two mid-term exams (40%); and a final
research paper (40%). For your final research papers, you are encouraged to select an
issue that compels you, and that will allow you to look in-depth at the issues we are
covering in the course. Please meet with me so that I may assist you in identifying
possible topics as well as the relevant literature. Additionally, please note the following
due dates for preliminary aspects of your final paper:
10/9: One page research paper description due
11/15: Three-page paper outline with bibliography due
Your final paper of 12-15 pages, excluding bibliography, is due on December 15th.
Website Addresses for Selected Truth Commission Reports
Argentina: Comisión Nacional sobre la Desaparición de Personas, 1984
Nunca Más: http://web.archive.org/web/20031009200901/nuncamas.org/
(Engish/Spanish)
Chile:
The National Commission for Truth and Reconciliation Report (Rettig Report), 1991
http://www.usip.org/library/tc/doc/reports/chile/chile_1993_toc.html (English version)
The National Commission on Political Imprisonment and Torture (Valech Report),
2004***
http://www.comisiontortura.cl/
*** Part II of this report, completed in 2005, will not be released until the year 2055.
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El Salvador: United Nations Truth Commission
De la Locura a la Esperanza: la guerra de los Doce Años en El Salvador
From Madness to Hope: The 12-year war in El Salvador, 1993
http://www.derechos.org/nizkor/salvador/informes/truth.html (English version)
Guatemala: Historical Clarification Commission (CEH)
Guatemala: Memory of Silence: Tz’inil Na’ Tab’al,
Report of the Commission for Historical Clarification: Conclusions and
Recommendations, 1999
http://shr.aaas.org/guatemala/ceh/mds/spanish/ (Spanish, in full)
http://shr.aaas.org/guatemala/ceh/report/english/toc.html (Eng, conclusions &
recommendations)
Peru: Comisión de la verdad y reconciliación (CVR)
http://www.cverdad.org.pe/ (Spanish & English)
United States Institute for Peace (USIP)
Truth Comission Digital Collection
http://www.usip.org/library/truth.html
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