ABSTRACT
Studying the politics of memory, arts and transition allows us to look for those threads that exist between understandings of past and present gender-based violence. Transitional justice processes include both judicial and non-judicial mechanisms such as criminal justice, truth-seeking, reparations, lustration and security sector reform. In contexts where transitional justice is pursued, reparations measures are often deemed critical for the nation’s renewal. Beyond formal symbolic reparations, such as commemorative sites, we need to recognise the meaning of cultural interventions that may emerge in the wake of transitional justice processes, either explicitly encouraged by truth-seeking processes or spontaneously emerging from civil society. In such a way, cultural interventions are exceptionally well placed to help change ‘societal attitudes towards victimization and rights and even to modes of relationality’. Artivism seeks to change the narrative and change the future by disrupting existing social relations. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
