ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the original perspective of the book and explains how it is organized. It discusses arguments and examples of the “transformative turn” in transitional justice and of the “pluralistic turn” in memory studies, and propose ways of how the approaches can cross-fertilize each other. The chapter aims to show how the organization of the book – as a counter-current journey, from the spotlight to what is in the shadows of transitional justice – reflects its epistemic goal, namely to apply to transitional justice an analytic lens focusing on significant omissions. Starting with a description of how instructive cases of transitional justice have turned commemoration into celebrations of a certain version of history, the different contributions then progressively explore the issues, actors and resources that are typically forgotten when societies celebrate their past rather than mourn their losses, or get sidelined in the focus on classic pillars of transitional justice.
