The Impossible Machine: A Genealogy of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission

The Impossible Machine: A Genealogy of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission
ISBN-10
047202910X
ISBN-13
9780472029105
Category
History
Pages
380
Language
English
Published
2013-07-30
Publisher
University of Michigan Press
Author
Adam Sitze

Description

Adam Sitze meticulously traces the origins of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission back to two well-established instruments of colonial and imperial governance: the jurisprudence of indemnity and the commission of inquiry. This genealogy provides a fresh, though counterintuitive, understanding of the TRC’s legal, political, and cultural importance. The TRC’s genius, Sitze contends, is not the substitution of “forgiving” restorative justice for “strict” legal justice but rather the innovative adaptation of colonial law, sovereignty, and government. However, this approach also contains a potential liability: if the TRC’s origins are forgotten, the very enterprise intended to overturn the jurisprudence of colonial rule may perpetuate it. In sum, Sitze proposes a provocative new means by which South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission should be understood and evaluated.

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