ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses reconciliation in the aftermath of the ethnic cleansings and ethnicizations of the twentieth century. It describes a specific case nor makes detailed historical-cultural comparisons. The chapter focuses on the role of the "third party" and argues for cultivating "practices of listening" after a violent conflict. It suggests that the failure must initially be addressed by something as modest as cultivating the art of listening. A serious limitation of many of the truth commissions of the 1990s is that they explicitly delinked telling the truth from any retribution. Possible alternatives to ethnicization would subscribe to more inclusive forms of affiliation and accord more generally with principles that articulate care—reciprocal but nonegalitarian practices that affirm intersubjectivity. Recuperation is impossible because of the nature of traumatic loss, which is experienced as a temporally delayed and repeated suffering of events that can be experienced and grasped only retrospectively.
