ABSTRACT
In 1996, the East Timorese Bishop Carlos Belo, together with José Ramos-Horta, “the leading international spokesperson” for Timorese independence, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work “towards a just and peaceful solution to the conflict in East Timor” (Nobel Prize Committee). In his acceptance speech, Belo argued that to “make peace a reality” we must “banish anger and hostility, vengeance and other dark emotions, and transform ourselves into humble instruments of peace”. In doing so, he sought to develop and promote a common reconciliation discourse centred on the idea that post-conflict orders are built on the eradication or suppression of negative moral emotions. This discourse seeks to create a set of feeling rules, which define the parameters of legitimate emotional responses to conflict-related injustices, establish a moral hierarchy in which the emotional demands of victims are subordinate to the need to re-establish social order, and inform the institution of structures designed to address wrongs committed in the past. It also forms the basis on which specific narratives of national reconciliation are constructed in the aftermath of violent conflicts. Referring to the case of post-conflict Timor-Leste, this chapter challenges the set of assumptions about the nature of negative moral emotions and their deleterious effect on post-conflict order that underpins the conventional reconciliation discourse and expression in national reconciliation narratives. Drawing on a moral sentimentalist account of the emotions, it develops an alternative account in which the dark emotions play a role in the establishment of post-conflict orders built on justice.
