ABSTRACT

This chapter illustrates how the terms 'justice' and 'reconciliation' can operate as free-floating signifiers that become meaningful in the varying forms of practice that invoke them, through two cases, namely Cambodian case and Documentation Centre of Cambodia (DC-Cam) case. It shows how the landscape of transitional justice efforts and interventions in Cambodia extends beyond – but can complement – the remit and work of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC). The chapter also shows how analyses of the Cambodian case that situate or conceptualise transitional justice in Cambodia, centred at the ECCC in opposition to, against or to transform the Cambodian state and its interests, tend to underestimate the complexity and diversity of practices at work in the name of transitional justice and memory. The chapter discusses both institutional and epistemic assumptions that can allow us to further reflect on the basic conceptual 'grammar' of transitional justice as a field of knowledge and practice.