Imagining Political Forgiveness in the Aftermath of Atrocities: Towards a Story of Collective Responsibility

Imagining Political Forgiveness in the Aftermath of Atrocities: Towards a Story of Collective Responsibility by Fiorella Rabuffetti A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Department of Political Science University of Alberta © Fiorella Rabuffetti, 2015 Abstract This thesis is a reconsideration of the phenomena of political apology and forgiveness as they have been framed in recent years in Uruguay but also in a growing social scientific literature. Drawing on the contributions of Hannah Arendt, Vladimir Jankélévitch, and Jacques Derrida, as well as on some insights from Hegel, this work outlines a conceptualization of political forgiveness in the aftermath of atrocities as a collective struggle through the tragic paradoxes of political action, between the conceptual impossibility of the community overcoming the loss and the practical possibility of togetherness after that loss. The acknowledgment of collective responsibility is presented as the pivot between those paradoxes, potentially enabling the community to struggle against political motionlessness while challenging closure. In this regard, political forgiveness, and the acknowledgment of collective responsibility at its core, make way for the community to move beyond the tragic conundrums of political action through political action and thus, through tragedy itself. Political apology appears as a gesture that contributes to the co-creation of a story of collective responsibility by introducing in the public space multiple stories of responsibility, thus setting the stage for political forgiveness. Building upon this conceptualization, the thesis seeks to make sense of the Uruguayan “Ceremony of Forgiveness”, in which the President José Mujica acknowledged the state’s responsibility for human rights violations in the “lead years”, that is, right before and during the civic-military dictatorship (1973-1985). Mujica did ii this in fulfillment of a sentence imposed on the country by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights on February 2011. In order to not fuel antagonisms in the public space, still fractured by the unhealed wounds of the lead years, Mujica chose to deliver a strictly juridical speech focused exclusively on legal responsibility, thus subscribing to a binary narrative of the past that may, paradoxically, fuel those antagonisms. In this regard, I claim that, although Mujica’s acknowledgment of the state’s responsibility at the “Ceremony” was a major achievement for Uruguayan society, he missed a historic opportunity to question both the idea that past wrongdoings are the consequence of a confrontation between two actors, and that there is a choice to be made between forgetting the past and revisiting it. I refer to these ideas as a binary narrative of the past, and posit a narrative of collective responsibility as its alternative. By broadening the circle of sufferers – in Mujica’s case that could have meant stepping out from his institutional role to speak from his personal stories – and by counter-remembering, thus re-evoking the unfinished past suffering in the present, such a narrative provides the grounds to struggle against the irredeemable nature of the grief caused by loss in the aftermath of atrocities, not for the sake of imposing an end on that grief, but for the sake of rekindling political action. Furthermore, the work of counter-remembering evokes a shared sense of loss that founds, paradoxically, a renewed sense of belonging, which nonetheless exists in permanent dialogue with the past. Counter-remembering then becomes a way to re-member the political community, suggesting alternative foundations for the promise of togetherness and inviting the political community to re-imagining itself. iii Acknowledgments Several people made the difference during the journey of writing this dissertation and during my MA. Among them, I would like to sincerely thank Prof. Greg Anderson, for being always ready to provide refreshing insights on academic issues and career goals; Prof. David Kahane, whose teaching was challenging in method and content; and Prof. Robert Nichols, whose classes on Foucault are part of the reason why I would like to become a political theorist. I would like to acknowledge the unconditional support of my Uruguayan family, ancestors and descendants, whose stories and struggles fill me with pride, and my Canadian family, Marco, my home after I left home. To my supervisor and mentor, Prof. Roger Epp, muchas gracias for your exceptional and constant support throughout this journey. Our conversations were a guide in finding a voice of my own and discovering a place of intellectual belonging. They have renewed my desire to teach. iv Contents Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………..iii Acknowledgments……………………………………………………………………….v Introduction – A [Uruguayan] Controversy with respect to Political Apology and Forgiveness .........................................................................................................................2 Chapter 1 – Political Apology as a Story of Responsibility .......................................26 A. On the components of apology, and its co-creation ...................................................... 27 B. On third parties and political apology .............................................................................. 32 C. Apologies by proxy, apologos, and collective responsibility ....................................... 36 D. Apology, forgiveness, and reconciliation ....................................................................... 41 Interlude 1 – On imagination, the Word, and my abuela Maruja .....................................45 Chapter 2 – Conceptualizing Political Forgiveness ....................................................48 A. Forgiveness at the intersection of contingency and unconditionality ........................ 49 B. From tragedy to responsibility: political forgiveness as self-reconciliation ............... 72 Interlude 2 – The Star of Memory (or how the sky was left without stars) ........................92 Chapter 3 – From Mujica’s apologos to the imagined community. Political forgiveness, collective responsibility, and re-membrance .........................................98 A. Behind the scenes of a historic act of acknowledgment ............................................. 100 B. A historic setting for the madness of the possible… and a broken promise ............ 110 C. “Too horrible to remember, too horrible to forget”: counter-remembering sorrow, re-membering the community .............................................................................................. 127 Postlude - The story of the beginning ..............................................................................142 References……………………………………………………………............................147 v “On a spring morning, the carpenter realized that Matryoshka was sad and asked her what was going on. She answered that she would like to have a daughter […] The carpenter removed the wood and he carved a similar but smaller doll, who he named Tryoshka. Some time after that, Tryoshka too felt the need to be a mother. So the carpenter removed the wood from inside her and he carved an even smaller doll, who he named Oshka. Some time after, his small doll also wanted to have a daughter, but Sergei [the carpenter] knew that there was barely any wood left inside Oshka. […] he carved a tiny figure, who he named Ka, he painted a moustache, he put him facing the mirror, and said: ‘you are a boy and you cannot have children inside you’. Then he put Ka inside Oshka. Oshka inside Tryoshka and Tryoshka inside Matryoshka. One day, mysteriously, Matryoshka disappeared with all her family inside and Sergei never found her again . ” “The Legend of Matryosha and her daughters”, Toy Studio Tussilago. This story is based on the book Matryoshka, written by Dimiter Inkiow. vi Introduction A [Uruguayan] Controversy with respect to Political Apology and Forgiveness The “Ceremony of Forgiveness” “The Uruguayan State acknowledges that in the past, actions were committed in the country that violated human rights,” said José Mujica, the current President of Uruguay, in a public act conducted on March 21, 2012.1 A former guerrillero imprisoned for eleven years – two of which he spent confined in the bottom of a well – Mujica is one of the many victims of those “actions that violated human rights” committed under the former Uruguayan dictatorship (1973-1985), which he ended up being mandated, ironically, to acknowledge years later. Mujica pronounced these words during a ceremony where the Uruguayan state, fulfilling a sentence imposed on February 24, 2011 by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights,2 publicly acknowledged its responsibility for the enforced disappearance in 1976 of María Claudia García de Gelman – who remains disappeared – and her 1. 2012. Presidencia República Oriental del Uruguay, “Palabras del Presidente Mujica en acto público del 21 de marzo,” official website of the Uruguayan Presidency. March 21. Accessed December 5, 2014. http://www.presidencia.gub.uy/Comunicacion/comunicacionNoticias/discurso-mujica-21-de-marzo. 2. The Uruguayan state approved the San José de Costa Rica Agreement or American Convention on Human Rights in the Amnesty Law (No. 15.737, March 8, 1985), and it acknowledged the competence of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in all cases related to the interpretation or application

Load more