Narratives of Mass Atrocity

Victims and Perpetrators in the Aftermath

Sarah Federman, Ronald Niezen

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN:
  9781009100298
• eBook ISBN:
  9781009121163
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: International Law
• Index: Law

Individuals can assume—and be assigned—multiple roles throughout a conflict: perpetrators can be victims, and vice versa; heroes can be reassessed as complicit and compromised. However, accepting this more accurate representation of the narrativized identities of violence presents a conundrum for accountability and justice mechanisms premised on clear roles. This book considers these complex, sometimes overlapping roles, as people respond to mass violence in various contexts, from international tribunals to NGO-based social movements. Bringing the literature on perpetration in conversation with the more recent field of victim studies, it suggests a new, more effective, and reflexive approach to engagement in post-conflict contexts. Long-term positive peace requires understanding the narrative dynamics within and between groups, demonstrating that the blurring of victim-perpetrator boundaries, and acknowledging their overlapping roles, is a crucial part of peacebuilding processes. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title
• Title page
• Copyright information
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Contributors
• Preface
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction: Narrative in the Aftermath of Mass Atrocity
• 1 Guilt, Responsibility, and the Limits of Identity
• 2 Victim, Perpetrator, Hero: The French National Railways' Idealized War Identities
• 3 Deconstructing the Complexities of Violence: Uganda and the Case against Dominic Ongwen
• 4 Rehabilitating Guerillas in Neo-Extractivist Guatemala
• 5 The Road to Recognition: Afro-Uruguayan Activism and the Struggle for Visibility
• 6 Justice in Translation: Uncle Meng and the Trials of the Foreign
• 7 Memory and Victimhood in Post-Genocide Rwanda: Legal, Political, and Social Realities
• 8 Imaging ''Traitors'': The Raped Woman and Sexual Violence during the Bangladesh War of 1971
• 9 Open-Source Justice: Digital Archives and the Criminal State
• 10 Left Unsettled: Confessions of Armed Revolutionaries
• 11 Negotiating the Symbolic: A Systematic Approach to Reconcile Symbolic Divides
• 12 Afterword
• Index