ABSTRACT
We were haunted by this idea of disappearing forever, vanishing into thin air, reduced to a mound of earth without being offi cially declared dead. Lost and never found. Lost and never buried. (Benjelloun, 2006, p. 49)
The metaphor of transitional justice has emerged only recently but prac-tices and discourses that are implied in this approach to intra-national confl ict have a long tradition. Jon Elster (2004), author of Closing the Books: Transitional Justice in Historical Perspective, notes that neither the idea nor the practice of transitional justice is new, as they go back to at least the Athenians in the early development of deliberative democracy. Interestingly enough, more and more nations are choosing to face their traumatic pasts and address issues of responsibility and accountability primarily through the restorative practices of truth commissions, reparation programs, and memorialization, eschewing retribution, which suggests that justice can also be served in non-legalistic ways even in situations of mass atrocity. At the heart of these approaches are public discourses and rhetorical practices that seek to do justice to victims through variously open negotiations of the legacy of a horrifi c past, with the hope than in so doing a new national ethos will emerge and prevent these atrocities from repetition.
