ABSTRACT
The concluding chapter weighs both the gains and setbacks to transitional justice, and wraps up what the different contributions in the book add to current critical debates on its legacies and practice. It also flags the crucial, but often sidelined, question of collective responsibility, of the “implied subject” and builds an argument for a broader reckoning of slow, attritional forms of violence – the historical and structural harms of racism, economic crimes and a variety of discriminations – that has still to take place on a meaningful scale in the delivery of transitional justice. It foregrounds how the chapters themselves reveal the price of such oversights, but also open under-explored possibilities for building more inclusive pathways for addressing past injustice which confront these historic patterns whose consequences span into the present. In doing so, it marks how the chapters notably bring into consideration options traditionally viewed as impractical, such as working with “spoilers”, or with people’s capacity to connect with the suffering of others, or with new solidarities that emerge during collective upheavals. Finally, engaging with the issue of “principled pragmatism”, it ends with a call for a more democratic and inclusive transitional justice process.
