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International Journal of Transitional Justice<\/em><\/a>, Volume 13, Issue 3, November 2019, Pages 570\u2013589<\/p>\n By Dustin N Sharp*<\/p>\n In recent years, a distinct critical turn in transitional justice scholarship has emerged, seeking to question the naturalness and inevitability of mainstream transitional justice theory and practice and to envision a broader and more holistic project. While in many ways a positive development, this newfound critical enthusiasm risks producing an unwarranted sense of pessimism and failure. This points to the need to better manage expectations as to what \u2018success\u2019 looks like even as we try to reimagine what transitional justice could become. To these ends, I draw upon and propose revisions to Robert Cox\u2019s famous distinction between problem-solving and critical theory. To better maintain balance and perspective, I argue for the adoption of an \u2018integrated\u2019 approach to transitional justice critique that does more to engage with the difficult tradeoffs, policy choices and contextual realities that would inevitably be associated with efforts to implement an alternative vision of transitional justice.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/blockquote>\n Just over a decade ago, one could barely speak of a critical theory of transitional justice.<\/span>1<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0While the field was certainly problematized, the bedrock of the literature was largely problem-solving and policy oriented. This has since changed a great deal, and an emerging \u2018fourth generation\u2019 of transitional justice scholarship characterized by a willingness to interrogate some of the foundational blindspots and limitations of the field has gained momentum.<\/span>2<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0The critical turn has not cohered into a distinguishable \u2018school\u2019 or methodology. However, the themes addressed and charges leveled share substantial overlap. Amongst other things, critics have argued that transitional justice does too little to disturb the postconflict status quo, treating symptoms rather than causes; that it remains oblivious to multiple forms of economic, structural, cultural, everyday and gender-based violence; that it marginalizes local or indigenous traditions of peace and justice; that it clumsily applies the same thinking and tools across a range of contexts and transition types as if they were the same thing; and finally, that it constitutes a form of ideological imperialism, cloaking highly political and contestable choices in a depoliticized and technocratic idiom. These mounting critical appraisals come at a time when the field is said to be experiencing a crisis of legitimacy and effectiveness,<\/span>3<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0and in which a more general sense of human rights pessimism pervades.<\/span>4<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n At their best, critical voices have helped to question the naturalness and inevitability of what might be called \u2018mainstream\u2019 or \u2018paradigmatic\u2019 transitional justice theory and practice, and to envision a broader and more holistic project of building peace with justice in the aftermath of repression and mass atrocity.<\/span>5<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0At the same time, at least part of the felt crisis of legitimacy and effectiveness in contemporary transitional justice arises out of critical theory aspirations for the field to be fundamentally transformative of social order. The trouble is, while transformation may be a useful conceptual prism for thinking about the limitations of the mainstream goals and modalities of the field, taken literally it is an improbable outcome in most transitional justice scenarios, and perhaps especially in fragile postconflict states.<\/span>6<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0Given the deeply rooted nature of physical, structural, economic and cultural violence, it is hard to see how even the more holistic and progressive approaches to transitional justice advocated in fourth generation scholarship might result in the kind of institutional reform and redistribution of wealth and power that would be required.<\/p>\n The gap between ambitious critical theory ideals and incremental realities has the potential to produce an unwarranted sense of pessimism, disillusion and failure, even as overall empirical assessments of the field suggest meaningful if modest impacts in many contexts.<\/span>7<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0This points to the need to better manage expectations as to what \u2018success\u2019 looks like even as we try to reimagine what transitional justice could become. As part of this intellectual tightrope act, I draw upon and propose revisions to Robert Cox\u2019s famous distinction between problem-solving theory that \u2018takes the world as it finds it\u2019 and which is largely preservative of the status quo, and critical theory, which points to possible alternative orders.<\/span>8<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0To better maintain balance and perspective, I argue for the adoption of an \u2018integrated\u2019 approach to transitional justice critique that pushes thinking beyond the status quo, but with a greater eye to questions of feasibility and implementation by combining critical theory with what I call \u2018critically motivated problem-solving theory.\u2019 An integrated approach to critique embraces \u2018as well as\u2019 rather than \u2018either\/or\u2019 explanations, emphasizing the ways in which transitional justice simultaneously preserves and challenges the status quo, is both neocolonial and emancipatory, and so on.<\/span>9<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0An integrated approach does not necessarily require the rejection of critical theory aspirations for broader and more holistic approaches to justice-building. However, it does suggest that the holism advocated by critics must become an entry point into the hard \u2018real world\u2019 choices and tradeoffs involved in expanding the field and not a means of eliding them.<\/span>10<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0In this way, the goal is to generate critical insights that are more policy relevant, empirically informed, and engaged with the question of\u00a0how<\/em>\u00a0to proceed with the necessary changemaking, drawing theory and praxis together.<\/p>\n This article proceeds in four additional sections. First, I briefly outline the aspirations and limitations of critical theory, drawing primarily upon the work of Cox. Second, I survey and analyze mounting critical appraisals of transitional justice, outlining the continuum of reimagined transitional justice possibilities they help to bring into vision. Third, I develop my concept of an integrated approach to transitional justice critique, using the question of the embrace of structural violence as a case study. The final section concludes the article.<\/p>\n The overarching task of theory, according to Cox, is nothing less than to \u2018enable the mind to come to grips with the reality it confronts.\u2019<\/span>11<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0While such is arguably the aim of all scientific endeavor, \u2018theory\u2019 here should be understood not in the more traditional, positivist and empiricist scientific sense, but as a highly normative method of analysis and reasoning that never denies its own subjectivity. Theories arise, Cox notes, not out of a neutral and objective awareness of reality, but from historically conditioned, subjective perspectives.<\/span>12<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0The theorist cannot therefore speak as if there is a privileged vantage point from which to examine reality \u2018from the outside.\u2019<\/span>13<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0While sophisticated theory attempts to transcend its own conditioning and perspective through self-awareness, perspective always remains.<\/span>14<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0For Cox then, no theory is ever fully objective or value free, and any such claim must be examined to reveal a concealed ideological perspective. As he famously observed, \u2018theory is always\u00a0for<\/em>\u00a0someone and\u00a0for<\/em>\u00a0some purpose.\u2019<\/span>15<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n One purpose of theory, Cox argues, is to help solve problems from\u00a0within a particular perspective<\/em>. Such problem-solving theory \u2018takes the world as it finds it,\u2019 attempting more to make existing institutions and frameworks work smoothly and efficiently than to ask how a particular paradigm came about, or to point to fundamental alternatives.<\/span>16<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0Because it either accepts or fails to notice its own circumscription within the prevailing order, problem-solving theory is an inherently conservative, status quo enterprise, tending implicitly to serve the interests of those comfortable with a given order.<\/span>17<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0Cox contrasts problem-solving theory with critical theory, an approach that questions the limited parameters of problem-solving theory and seeks to foreground the possibility of social and political orders other than the prevailing one. Importantly, however, Cox attempts to distance critical theory from charges of naivet\u00e9, arguing that its aims are \u2018as practical as those of problem-solving theory,\u2019 but that questions of practice and strategy are themselves also approached from outside of the mainstream of the existing order.<\/span>18<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0Moreover, Cox argues, critical theory is to constrain its potential for utopianism by rejecting unlikely alternatives, focusing instead on possibilities that \u2018are feasible transformations of the existing world\u2019 as informed by \u2018comprehension of historical processes.\u2019<\/span>19<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0In this way, Cox\u2019s famous binary seeks to disturb simple notions of pragmatism and utopianism by suggesting that appeals to seemingly sensible incrementalism can obfuscate a conservative, status quo agenda, even as critical theory that might be dismissed by some as utopian can be fundamentally practical upon more careful consideration.<\/p>\n At its best, Cox therefore argues that critical theory can be \u2018a guide to strategic action for bringing about an alternative order.\u2019<\/span>20<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0But how exactly? What is the theory of change of Coxian critical theory? Cox does not elaborate on this point other than to note that periods of great uncertainty in power relations might create more openings to disruption than periods of stability.<\/span>21<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0In the remainder of this section, I briefly examine two other critical studies traditions \u2013 the Frankfurt School and the Critical Legal Studies (CLS) movement \u2013 both of which were similarly characterized by an ambition to facilitate social change. For reasons of space, I cannot hope to do justice to either of these nuanced and heterogeneous traditions. They are examined here solely in an attempt to elucidate potential linkages between critical theory and the promotion of \u2018alternative orders.\u2019<\/p>\n Max Horkheimer (and other members of the Frankfurt School more generally) championed a methodology \u2013 immanent critique \u2013 that focuses on illustrating the gaps between the ideas and values espoused by a society, on the one hand, and the reality of experience, on the other \u2013 using the very values of the society in question to expose \u2018contradictions.\u2019<\/span>22<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0More than simply understanding social dynamics in a purely academic way, the explicit goal of Horkheimer\u2019s critical theory was social change, and the Frankfurt School was characterized by an overt normative commitment to free humanity from enslaving conditions.<\/span>23<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0The assumption, however, appears to be that seeing contradictions is inherently freeing and that changes in practice and society necessarily follow from changes in consciousness. The goal of the critical theorist is therefore not so much to persuade with programmatic alternatives or by delving into concrete tactics and strategies for change as it is to attempt to liberate with what David Kennedy has called a \u2018methodological karate chop.\u2019<\/span>24<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0In effect, the goal is to \u2018red pill\u2019 the subjects in question and assume that change will follow.<\/span>25<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0In this way, the Frankfurt School sought to elide the distinction between theory and practice \u2018by projecting it into the heads of social agents as the difference between true and false consciousness.\u2019<\/span>26<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0Because it appears to \u2018imagine a world in which people are oppressed because of a consciousness which they would not hold if it were revealed to them,\u2019<\/span>27<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0this conceptualization of critical theory assigns the critical theorist a rather heroic (if potentially condescending) role as catalyst to enlightenment. It also bears a curious resemblance to the \u2018revealing is healing\u2019 premise of many truth commissions,<\/span>28<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0to say nothing of the ways it echoes various religious traditions (\u2018the truth shall make you free\u2019).<\/span>29<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0In this way, critical theory becomes a meaning-making project for the critical theorist, an imagined vehicle for peering deeply into the nature of reality.<\/p>\n Some decades after the mid-century heyday of the Frankfurt School, members of the CLS movement also imagined an important role for critical theorists in fomenting social change, with David Trubek declaring that \u2018legal scholarship can be a kind of transformative political action.\u2019<\/span>30<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0Like the Frankfurt School, the CLS movement\u2019s theory of social change, though far from homogenous, appeared to be largely philosophically idealistic, meaning that explanations of and changes to social reality were sought in the realm of thought or consciousness rather than in material forces or concrete actions.<\/span>31<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0In other words, \u2018changing the world requires primarily that we begin to think about it differently.\u2019<\/span>32<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n There is a sense in which the philosophical idealism of the Frankfurt School and the CLS movement is na\u00efve, assigning an outsized role to reason and intellect. After all, if ideologies run deep, so too do material interests, and the powerful are not so because they give up power easily. Even so, there is little question that as part of the software to the wetware of our brains, narratives and ideas matter, allowing for the cooperation necessary to sustain global projects.<\/span>33<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0Evolutions in practice are part of an iterative process arising at least in part out of our shared mental maps, default rules and imagined realities. Students of critical theorists often go on to become practitioners, constituting an important vector of influence within that iterative process. It is also true that critical theory constructs can and do work their way into the culture in powerful ways, as the popular use of terms like \u2018intersectionality\u2019 and \u2018microaggression\u2019 illustrate. In the realm of transitional justice, the transmission of ideas from the academy to practice may be especially significant given the frequent migration of \u2018pracademics\u2019 between the two worlds.<\/p>\n Like other critical studies traditions, the CLS movement was widely assailed for emphasizing critique and deconstruction while providing comparatively little in the way of concrete, programmatic alternatives.<\/span>34<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0Although there are exceptions, including Roberto Unger\u2019s articulation of a constructive political program and Duncan Kennedy\u2019s detailed work on housing law and policy, others associated with the CLS movement were emphatic that being pushed to articulate an alternative paradigm is itself part of the problem, with \u2018dissent silencing effects\u2019 that serve to stymie the critical imagination.<\/span>35<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0Echoing this sentiment, some critical peacebuilding scholars have declined to suggest prescriptions and policies on the grounds that to do so would be to mirror the very \u2018prescriptive biases of the liberal peace\u2019 that they are critiquing.<\/span>36<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0Following this logic, CLS scholar Michael Fischl suggests that it is sufficient for scholarship to be \u2018relentlessly critical,\u2019 cultivating greater self-awareness in pursuit of \u2018liberalism\u2019s contradictions.\u2019<\/span>37<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n When assessed against this backdrop, Cox\u2019s argument that a \u2018principle objective\u2019 of critical theory is to \u2018clarify [the] range of possible alternatives\u2019 and that it \u2018must reject improbable alternatives\u2019 if it is to serve as \u2018a guide to strategic action for bringing about an alternative order\u2019 represents an important if contested position within the larger constellation of critical studies traditions.<\/span>38<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0It is no doubt correct that the intellectual understanding that relentless critique can help cultivate is preferable to error.<\/span>39<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0It is also true that knowing that something is broken is not the same thing as knowing how to fix it. Even so, while it can deliver important insights, \u2018relentless critique\u2019 alone will often prove insufficient to create a bridge between understanding and actual change in the world. And deconstruction with no seeming possibility of reconstruction can lead to a loss of the hope needed to sustain the struggle for social change.<\/span>40<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0Thus, critique stands a better chance of becoming emancipatory when the identification of contradictions between claim and context points to \u2018the determinate possibilities for overcoming the contradiction.\u2019<\/span>41<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n An open question for critical theorists of transitional justice is therefore whether they will hew to the relentless-critique model espoused by some scholars, or perhaps find new and innovative ways to build bridges between theory, practice and social change, making good on the important if vague promise of Coxian critical theory. As I argue later, an integrated approach that brings problem-solving and critical theory into sustained and close conversation will likely prove useful in this regard, while at the same time helping to fill in some of the gaps in Cox\u2019s theory.<\/p>\n Transitional justice is a relatively young and interdisciplinary area of practice and study, emerging as a distinct field only around the turn of the millennium.<\/span>42<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0Despite its youth, the field has since the 1980s gone from the exception to the norm. What began as a largely domestic effort in Latin America has since become a global phenomenon, embraced by the UN and international donors as an important component of peacebuilding not just in the context of regime change from authoritarianism to democracy, but in the postconflict context more generally.<\/span>43<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0Today, implementation of some kind of transitional justice is increasingly seen as a default expectation in the aftermath of war and mass atrocity.<\/span>44<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0As both a partial consequence and driver of this growth, the field has been internationalized and professionalized, with seasoned transitional justice scholars and experts routinely navigating between the academy, nongovernmental organizations and international organizations.<\/span>45<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n With notable exceptions, the early transitional justice literature was largely policy oriented, lacking deep empirical and theoretical currents.<\/span>46<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0Debates of the 1980s and 1990s were more likely to focus on the sequencing of transitional justice, the appropriateness of amnesties (peace versus justice) and the choice as among different transitional justice modalities (e.g. truth versus justice) than on the blindspots and ideology of the transitional justice enterprise itself. There was a deep-seated assumption that transitional justice was inherently \u2018good,\u2019<\/span>47<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0rather than a political and ideological project that might occasionally be \u2018part of the problem.\u2019<\/span>48<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0However, particularly as the field has been internationalized and institutionalized, there has been a significant growth in academic critique of historically dominant thinking and practice, and a greater willingness to question the nature and suitability of the traditional transitional justice model to the varied challenges facing postconflict societies.<\/span>49<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0Critique has also arisen in part out of the gradual accrual of transitional justice experience in many countries and a sense that the mainstream paradigm has too often yielded disappointing results when measured against our ideals of justice.<\/p>\n To be clear, this growing body of critique is far from monolithic, and the critiques vary greatly in terms of their sophistication and nuance, drawing upon a diverse body of critical studies traditions, including critical legal studies, critical race theory, feminist critical theories, indigenous studies, Marxist theory, postcolonial theory, third-world approaches to international law, and so on. Such traditions are contested from both within and without. Even with that significant caveat, it is possible to discern broad sets of common patterns and concerns within the burgeoning critical literature on transitional justice, and at least two overlapping constellations of critique have emerged.<\/p>\n The first constellation relates to the power dynamics of transitional justice ideology and practice. Typical concerns here relate to the relationship between the modalities of paradigmatic transitional justice and nonwestern, local or indigenous traditions of justice;<\/span>50<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0the processes and locus of agency associated with paradigmatic transitional justice (e.g. top down versus bottom up; locally owned versus imposed from \u2018the outside\u2019);<\/span>51<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0and the technocratic idiom of paradigmatic transitional justice, which tends to depoliticize and obfuscate highly contestable choices, while shifting the balance of power in favor of international preferences.<\/span>52<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n A second constellation of critical concerns relates to the relatively narrow justice horizon of paradigmatic transitional justice as contrasted with the broader horizon of social justice. Typical concerns here relate to whether transitional justice does too little to disturb the postconflict status quo, treating symptoms rather than causes, and whether more should be done to address additional forms of violence beyond the narrow (if egregious) band of violations of international human rights and humanitarian law with which paradigmatic transitional justice has been most preoccupied. Thus, critics have argued that the scope of transitional justice should be expanded to address economic violence, structural violence, cultural violence, everyday violence and a broader array of gender-based harms.<\/span>53<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0A common thread underlying both constellations of critique is a concern that paradigmatic transitional justice is circumscribed by a liberal-legalist ideology and teleology while imagining that it represents a neutral framing of both problems and solutions,<\/span>54<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0and that this ideology is being exported from core to periphery in ways akin to neoimperialism.<\/span>55<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n Drawing these two constellations of critique together, some have advocated for a paradigm shift from transitional justice to \u2018transformative justice,\u2019 an ambitious vision brought to prominence by Wendy Lambourne,<\/span>56<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0and subsequently built upon by a number of scholars. As articulated by Paul Gready and Simon Robins, a transformative justice approach is one that takes a long-term view, and which foregrounds holistic social justice (addressing physical, structural and everyday violence), local agency and participation, and the social and political rather than the legal dimensions of social change.<\/span>57<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0Lambourne and Vivianna Rodriguez Carreon have further highlighted the need for transformative justice to include a robust \u2018gender transformative approach\u2019 that is attentive to the need to address psychosocial, socioeconomic and political power relations that hinder the realization of human rights for women and the prospects for sustainable peace.<\/span>58<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0Taken together, the transformative justice vision tends to emphasize process over outcomes, and places a great deal of faith in the ability of bottom-up, participatory processes to generate holistic and progressive social justice ends.<\/span>59<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0In contrast with paradigmatic transitional justice, it is also very much a \u2018root causes\u2019 approach, seeking to address deep-seated drivers of conflict such as structural violence.<\/p>\n Other critics have proposed a reimagined transitional justice, but one that is slightly less ambitious than the transformative vision. In my own previous work, for example, I have advocated for expanding the scope of transitional justice to include what I call \u2018economic violence,\u2019 including violations of economic and social rights and crimes of corruption, but have not gone so far as to include structural and everyday violence. In contrast with the transformative vision, I have expressed less discomfort with the liberalism and legalism of transitional justice and use a concept called \u2018liberal localism\u2019 in an attempt to strike a better balance between state-led and community-driven modalities, western and \u2018traditional\u2019 approaches to justice, and legal and political frameworks for changemaking \u2013 all depending on the constraints and opportunities of the context in question.<\/span>60<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0This more moderate approach might be called \u2018social democratic\u2019 transitional justice in contrast with the comparative minimalism and neoliberalism of paradigmatic transitional justice, on the one hand, and the heroic ambition of transformative transitional justice, on the other.<\/p>\n Taking these and other critical approaches together, it becomes possible to distill a common vision of a renewed transitional justice that is bottom-up, locally owned, victim-centered, contextually tailored, politically and culturally grounded in ways that foreground an array of options, oriented towards root causes and a broad array of structures of power and domination, and better coordinated with development and peacebuilding work. At a certain level, this vision of a reimagined or reformed transitional justice may seem fairly anodyne. After all, many dimensions of the critical vision (participatory, context-sensitive approaches, and so on) have almost become clich\u00e9s of transitional justice and peacebuilding literature, and most of them were encapsulated and endorsed in a Guidance Note on the UN approach to transitional justice written a decade ago.<\/span>61<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0In this sense, the critical vision of transitional justice literature is far from revolutionary. As Hannah Franzki and Maria Olarte have hypothesized, a truly revolutionary approach to transitional justice might go beyond even the social democratic and transformative visions to include large-scale redistribution of wealth, the democratic control of the economy, and people\u2019s courts that pursue both direct perpetrators and indirect beneficiaries of the previous regime, including bystanders.<\/span>62<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0However, while useful for purposes of contrast, such an approach does not currently draw support from transitional justice scholars and practitioners.<\/p>\n Nevertheless, whether or not truly radical, there are tendencies within the critical turn that have been deemed \u2018hypercritical,\u2019 sparking a critique of the critique. Kazuo Ohgushi, for example, points to the occasional tendency in the literature to paint with an overly broad brush in ascribing the faults of mainstream transitional justice to a hegemonic, monolithic, neoliberal, legalistic and neocolonial West.<\/span>63<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0One might add that some of the frequently deployed tropes of the critical literature are at times pitched at a level of generality that tends to elide the almost impossibly complex dilemmas of realizing these ideals in practice, making an assessment of the tradeoffs and hard questions that would inevitably be involved challenging. Thus, even as one highly sympathetic to the critical vision, I believe that \u2018devil\u2019s advocate\u2019 type questions are both useful and necessary at this stage. Why, for example, is community-level participation and empowerment necessarily and inherently \u2018transformative,\u2019 as some critical scholars suggest?<\/span>64<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0While such approaches are no doubt important to successful social change in many contexts, under what conditions might they fail or even backfire? Might not the role of elites and state-level institutions remain critical to the success of transformative initiatives as well? Along similar lines, one can reasonably ask why \u2018political\u2019 approaches to transitional justice are necessarily and inherently more \u2018transformative\u2019 than \u2018legal\u2019 approaches, as the critical literature suggests. Surely both \u2018legal\u2019 and \u2018political\u2019 approaches come with different tradeoffs that need to be assessed, and yet the critical literature rarely does so.<\/span>65<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0Finally, there are also serious questions I turn to in the next section about whether the gap between the narrow horizon of transitional justice and the broader horizon of social justice can be closed to the degree some critical theorists would hope. These and other questions about the details of the critical vision point to the need for an integrated approach to transitional justice critique.<\/p>\n Consonant with Cox\u2019s conceptualization of the purpose of critical theory, the constellations of critique outlined in the previous section raise important questions about the limited parameters of paradigmatic transitional justice and seek to foreground the possibility of alternative approaches that, critics argue, would do more to challenge the postconflict status quo. These approaches can be illustrated as a continuum of transitional justice possibilities, as represented in\u00a0<\/span>Table\u00a01<\/a>. The continuum runs from thinner and shorter-term projects focused on comparatively gross and crude forms of violence such as murder and torture, to thicker and longer-term projects that also engage with comparatively subtle forms of violence such as cultural and structural violence. To be clear, the goal here is to illustrate but a few points along a spectrum of possibilities as a heuristic aid to facilitate discussion about alternative transitional justice futures. I am not attempting to suggest that the rich diversity of feminist, postcolonial and other voices, critical or otherwise, can be neatly subsumed into the categories presented here, or that there are not additional important categories to consider.<\/p>\n Table 1.<\/span><\/p>\n Continuum of transitional justice possibilities<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n
Abstract\u221e<\/sup><\/span><\/h2>\n
CRITICAL THEORY AND SOCIAL CHANGE<\/h2>\n
THE CRITICAL TURN IN TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE<\/h2>\n
TOWARDS AN INTEGRATED APPROACH TO TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE CRITIQUE<\/h2>\n
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