Staging Violence, Staging Identities: Identity Politics in Domestic Prosecutions
TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE IN DIVIDED SOCIETIES: ADDRESSING THE CHALLENGES OF IDENTITIES, Paige Arthur, ed., Cambridge University Press, 2010
57 Pages Posted: 21 Aug 2010 Last revised: 25 Aug 2010
Date Written: May 21, 2010
Abstract
Political violence is closely connected to identities. When perpetrators of such violence are put on trial, how are the identities that underpinned or resisted the violence discussed? This chapter uses three case studies - the Auschwitz Trial in Germany (1963-1965), the Argentine Trial of the Juntas (1985) and the German Politburo Trial (1995-1997) to show how identities shape trials, and are shaped by trials. How are perpetrators, their sense of belonging, and their ideologies represented? Which spaces are given to victims, and which parts of their stigmatized identities are discussed? And how is the nation - apparent spectator to both the violence and the trial - addressed, represented, and reconfigured?
Keywords: Transitional Justice, Identities, Human Rights, Argentina, Germany
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