| In response to those who argue that victim testimony in the context of truth commissions is therapy for victims or solely a means of historical documentation, I argue that it provides valuable information about the goals of justice after mass violence. I draw on the perspectives of Hannah Arendt, Adam Smith, and Friedrich Nietzsche, as well as Martha Nussbaum, in conversation with testimony from the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), to interpret the tone and content of victim testimony. An analysis of the testimonies at the TRC serves as a way to explore tensions between reason and emotion in the history of political thought, and to examine the relationship between the "unsocial emotions" of anger, resentment, and despair and the goals of justice.;As part of an evaluation of the process of victim testimony in the aftermath of mass violence, the dissertation examines the role of testimony in war crimes trials, and the necessary distinctions between such trials and truth commissions. Hannah Arendt's discomfort with the role of victim testimony at the trial of Adolf Eichmann is connected to her larger fears about the role of emotion in the process of judgment, a concern which recapitulates Adam Smith's ethical ideal of the impartial spectator. In contrast to these understandings of judgment and impartiality, a more expansive conception of transitional justice suggests that although anger, resentment, and despair have been seen to be volatile for political life, they carry within them cognitive insights about what citizens need and fear in the period after mass violence. These insights, as they emerge over the course of the testimonies, should be used to inform political practices after the period of transitional justice. Instead of relegating the emotions of anger and despair to private life, victim testimony in public provides a valuable space in which to discover and evaluate the specific conditions necessary for justice and political trust after war. |
