The politics of trauma Prof Michael Humphrey Department of Sociology & Social Policy SSPS, ARTS...

the politics of traumathe politics of trauma

Prof Michael HumphreyDepartment of Sociology & Social Policy

SSPS, ARTSUniversity of Sydney

Prof Michael HumphreyDepartment of Sociology & Social Policy

SSPS, ARTSUniversity of Sydney

Taxi driver: “Have you found any skeletons from 1959, my cousin disappeared then?”

Nora Morales de Cortinas -Madres de Plaza de Mayo, Línea

Fundadora

age of anxiety

trauma

‘our relationship to history has turned tragic’ (Fassin 2009)

heroes v. victims

Trauma

trace of the tragic event

from bodily weakness

to embodiment of humanity

source of social visibility of victims

clinically - PTSD

publicly - compassion

traumatic event

as shared experience - ‘communion of suffering’

produces a lasting form of collective identity

metaphor of trauma: used to bring everyone together

Trauma

production of victims

make visible to others - professionals

make visible to victims themselves- victimhood

legitimacy of traumaattraction: resilience of humanity against moral destruction

in the name of this humanity

compensation is demanded

testimony is given against oppression

proof of cruelty experienced

from compassion to justice

trauma - source of visibility

rights - translated into claims

role of trauma in framing violence and interpreting its effects is Insufficiently recognised

trauma & human rights lens

victims of past violence

universalising discourses

human rights (humanity)

trauma/suffering (body)

inclusive (formal equality)

human rights lens

human rights

legitimating language for claims

remedies in law

national, international courts

trauma lens

trauma - moral vision

who has rights?

BECOMES

who is deserving?

moral economies circumscribe rights

truth politicsvictim-centred truth commissions

private memory, collective memory

testimony

proof

compensation

mode of governance: inscribing meaning on the suffering of the victim

victim

vulnerability

memory - traumatic event

injustice - rights claims

culpability - individualised v. generalised

governance - produce consensus

truth politics, victimhoodjustice

reconciliation

truth

amnesty

memory

victimhood

recognition

forgiveness

healing

DISAPPEARED - ARGENTINA 1976-1983

Página 1221/1/2005

la noche de los lápcies 30 yrs -

2006

el silencio es salud

world aids day 2005

piquete against corruption 2008

Nunca Más, 1984

CONADEP report

Amnesty 1986

Street Protests

Beware! Beware! neighbours, there’s an assassin living next door to you!

Challenge normalization of living with repressors by shaming

http://www.prensadefrente.org/pdfb2/media/Escrachando_01.jpg

ESCRACHE

weekly march Plaza de MayoMadres: Línea Fundadora

Headscarves embroidered with children’s names

Carry portraits of children in Plaza

Bodies as sites of past memory

custodians of ESMA

Madres: Asociación

Plain headscarves

No portraits

Children remain alive in them: perpetually pregnant

Embody their children’s activism

Public Memorial - ESMA

Outcomes - hierarchy of victimsChile

National Truth and Reconciliation Commission 1990-1:

investigate HRVs resulting in death

families of disappeared - the ‘most innocent’

National Commission on Imprisonment and Torture, 2004-5 :

prisoners - compensated

Victims Law - Colombia

compensated: victims of paramilitary & guerrilla groups

not compensated: victims of the security forces - executions, disappearances

except when perpetrator found guilty (with intent or serious negligence)

future impunity

VICTIMS LAW - COLOMBIA

denies compensation for future violence

ignores restitution of millions of hectares of land (stolen by paramilitary groups)- indigenous pops, peasants

compensates out of solidarity, denies responsibility

Victims who persistPublic support can shift

between victims v. non-victims

between victims v. victims

Why?

demand for redistributive justice

demand for retributive justice reparations - decline

amnesty

reparations

justice

moral economies

closure on truth politics

amnesty laws

Uruguay : recent plebiscite on amnesty laws- between those who demand justice and those who feel the time has passed

politics of grievance

what do you do with grief?

grievance/ resentment (Robert Meister)

continue the struggle against perpetrators and the beneficiaries of previous injustice

politics of resentmentbalance

the fear beneficiaries have of revenge

with

the moral recognition of the victim - the wrong done to them

transitional Justice - if done to the right degree, with correct restraint can secure democracy

Santa Cruz del Valle de los Caídos

ley de memoria histórica de españa

buena memoriadel estado

Democratic transition Spain

Amnesty 1977

‘equitable impunity’ - amnesty of all for all, forgetting of all for all

profound erasure designed to touch everyone, the whole society

Socialist party nervous avoidance of republican or communist symbols in electioneering

thru demonisation and stigmatisation

Amnesty - buena memoria

personal memory of repression remained isolated

subordination of private to public memory (memory of the state)

mourning local not national

recognition limited to financial compensation, not public testimonies - 6 laws between 1979-2007)

impunityprofound:

the negative legacies of the state (dictatorship)

destroyed legal and political vigilance

left undisturbed the decisions of special tribunals against the resistance and its repression

irreparable damage,

‘sorry’ has no effect?

history v. socialisation of knowledge

reparationsley de memoria histórica de españa 2007

desire for moral reparation and reconstruction of personal and family memory of those who suffered the consequences of the war and dictatorship

http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15875987

*Magistrate Baltasar Garzón*On trial for investigating 113,000 disappeared of the dictatorship *Prosecution initIated by ‘Clean hands’ and ‘falange española’. Allege he violated the 1977 Amnesty Law! * career over?

WRONG PROSECUTION?

Argentine courts to investigate crimes of Franco regimef Franquismo!

use principle of universal justice to investigate the crimes of Franco regime

Carlos Slepoy - one of lawyers who initiating claim (exile, Socialist militant, involved in Scilingo trial)

petitioners - major human rights bodies, victims associations, unions and the Association of Historical Memory of Spain

moral economies

trauma obscures

conflicts (before trauma, behind trauma)

trauma chooses its victims

good/bad victim

identification / othering

trauma consensus

trauma - disconnected from subjectivity

ritualised duty of memory

shallowness: feeling the experience of the victim

confirm victimhood as identity

consensus around pity, not causes

Refugees

international rights of asylum

Australian policy circumscribing refugee

rights

compassion

from compassion to rights

AUstralia - boat arrivals

testimony: prevent victims from being heard

proof : narrative, scars, trauma

compensation: conditional visas

victims marginalised:

if their story does not fit or they belong to wrong category

if they can’t prove bodily traces of trauma

denying the trauma of one individual can mean denying the suffering of whole populations

Sri Lanka, Afghanistan now ‘safe’

Universalising discourses

trauma

human rights

inclusive discources

become basis for division between people

trauma event

accessible thru subjectivity, memory, feelings of victim?

victim testimony - enmeshed in forms of governmentality

conceptualisation of event, validity of memory, moral criteria of recognition

Fassin D, Rechtman R. 2009. Empire of Trauma: An Inquiry into the Condition of Victimhood. Princeton, Oxford: Princeton University Press