Lament as transitional justice
Works of human rights literature help to ground the formal rights system in an informal rights ethos. Writers have developed four major modes of human rights literature as follows: protest, testimony, lament, and laughter. Through interpretations of poetry in Carolyn Forché’s anthology, Against Forg...
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2014
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| In: |
Human rights review
Year: 2014, Volume: 15, Issue: 3, Pages: 259-281 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Keywords: |
| Summary: | Works of human rights literature help to ground the formal rights system in an informal rights ethos. Writers have developed four major modes of human rights literature as follows: protest, testimony, lament, and laughter. Through interpretations of poetry in Carolyn Forché’s anthology, Against Forgetting, and novels from Rwanda, the US, and Bosnia, I focus on the mode of lament, the literature of mourning. Lament is a social and ritualized form, the purposes of which are congruent with the aims of transitional justice institutions. Both laments and truth commissions employ grieving narratives to help survivors of human rights trauma bequeath to the ghosts of the past the justice of a monument while renewing the survivors’ capacity for rebuilding civil society in the future. Human rights scholars need a broader, extrajuridical meaning for “transitional justice” if we hope to capture its power. |
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| Item Description: | Literaturverzeichnis: Seite 279-281 |
| ISSN: | 1874-6306 |
| DOI: | 10.1007/s12142-014-0304-8 |
