Narratology, Rhetoric, and Transitional Justice: the Function of Narrative in Redressing the Legacy of Mass Atrocities
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NARRATOLOGY, RHETORIC, AND TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE: THE FUNCTION OF NARRATIVE IN REDRESSING THE LEGACY OF MASS ATROCITIES. STEVEN RITA-PROCTER A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY GRADUATE PROGRAM IN ENGLISH LITERATURE YORK UNIVERSITY, TORONTO, ONTARIO OCTOBER 2018 © STEVEN RITA-PROCTER, 2018 Abstract This doctoral dissertation, Narratology, Rhetoric, and Transitional Justice: the Function of Narrative in Redressing the Legacy of Mass Atrocities, examines the extent to which the success and feasibility of human rights tribunals and truth commissions are dependent upon the ways in which the past is “narrativized”1 in State-sponsored legal reports and subsequently promulgated through the stories we tell. Juxtaposing three historical cases that have constituted transitional justice according to divergent ideological paths, Narratology, Rhetoric, and Transitional Justice compares and cross-references the final reports on three high-profile transitional justice cases: the Nuremberg tribunals (1945-49), the Argentine “Trial of the Juntas” (1985), and the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission (2008-15), to study the ways in which these reports have shaped the collective or national memories of various historical traumas. The dissertation examines how the final reports on truth commissions and war crimes tribunals deploy a highly sophisticated set of rhetorical and narratological techniques in order to fix a single, specific version of historical events in the cultural memories with disparate aims in bringing together a fractured nation. By highlighting the significant degree of artistry that go into preparing these reports, it examines how and why transitional governments are often motivated to frame historical violence in order to elicit collective feelings of outrage, shame, guilt, or forgiveness. Narratology, Rhetoric, and Transitional Justice thereby illustrates how transitional justice practices mobilize blueprints for reconciliation, restoration, or retribution through the recovery and narrativization of traumatic memories, and how these respective sentiments have facilitated the implementation of subsequent political and economic policies by the transitional governments. A key aspect of this analysis centeres on the unique ability of “final reports” to ii contextualize national traumas by designating precisely which crimes were committed, by and against whom, by regulating whose testimony is to be included and/or excluded from the “master narrative,” and by articulating the appropriate measure of justice that ought to be faced by the perpetrators. As the apotheosis of the transitional justice process, my research demonstrates that truth commission reports not only present their mercurial and highly contentious histories as binding, legally-validated, and irrefutably “fixed” versions of a series of often dubious events, but they also effectively situate each citizen within the “victim/perpetrator” and “innocent/guilty” binary ethical paradigms upon which the judicial system is grounded. Negotiating the final reports on truth commissions and human rights tribunals as historical non-fiction texts, these case studies weigh their reports alongside other vehicles of cultural storytelling (including historical novels, films, ballets, etc.). 1 The focus of this slightly awkward but useful word “narrativized” is on the how of the narrative telling. Differentiated from its etymological kin “narrate,” the term “narrativize” is meant to emphasize the performance of (or carrying out of) the narrative-writing endeavor by the author or speaker. “Narrativize,” therefore, foregrounds both the action (narration) and the specific person or persons who perform that action. iii Acknowledgments This dissertation could not have been completed without the generous support that I have received from so many people over the years. I wish to offer my most heartfelt thanks to the following people. Firstly, I would like to thank my supervisor, Julia Creet. Aside from serving as a tirelessly dedicated and accommodating supervisor, Julia has been a tremendous mentor, teacher, and friend. Julia’s support and confidence in this project, in my research, and in me as a person, has been the single most important factor in the completion of this study. The enthusiasm with which she has shared her wisdom, intellect, patience, and spirit of inquisitiveness have inspired me academically, professionally, and personally. I have likewise profited from Tom Loebel’s and Susan Warwick’s infinite patience, guidance, wisdom, and generosity. Their vast expertise have helped to shape the thinker I have become, and I am deeply indebted to both of them for their unfailing leadership and encouragement at every stage of my doctorate. I would like to thank my friends and colleagues Sarah Jensen, Renée Jackson-Harper, and Jon Hunter for sharing their outstanding knowledge with me, for their much-needed support and inspiration, and for helping me to think through the theoretical and practical vicissitudes of this project, in each of its various stages. I would especially like to express my gratitude to my family: my parents Jo-Anne, Sergio, and Keith; and my siblings Michael, David, and Danielle, without whom I surely would not be at this stage today. I sincerely thank each of you, from the bottom of my heart. I would also like to acknowledge the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, as well as Dr. Susan Mann, whose generous financial support have been iv crucial for the completion of this dissertation. Finally, I would like to thank Heather: with ever-increasing ardor, your loving support, patience, motivation, and wisdom have carried me through the many stages of this lonely task. You and Owyn have motivated me and given me a sense of purpose. Without the two of you, I could not have completed it. With infinite gratitude, I dedicate this to all of you. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ……………………………………………………………………….ii Acknowledgments ………………………………………………………….....iv Table of Contents …………………………………………………………….vi Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter I: The Politics of Cultural Remembrance: The Nuremberg Trials and the Calculated Manufacturing of a National Memory ...................................................... 47 - American “Victor’s Justice” at Nuremberg as the establishment of what Maurice Halbwachs calls the “social frameworks of memory”. ………47 - Nuremberg 1945, and the Establishment of the IMT ..................................... 54 - The Final Report on the Nuremberg Trials as History-Making .................... 59 - On Collective Guilt ................................................................................................ 67 - The German Appropriation of the “Guilt Narrative” and the Ascent of Gruppe 47..........................................................................................................88 - The Absorption of Collective Guilt into the Cultural Storytelling Process..98 - Chapter I notes ……………………………………………………......120 Chapter II: Nunca Más: Transitional Justice Reports as Explicit Literary Constructions .................................................................................................................. 129 - Ernesto Sábato and the Invention of the ‘Truth Commission Narrative’ ........................................................................................................... 143 - Sábato’s Literary Impact on the CONADEP Report: Nunca Más as a ‘Novelistic’ Re-Construction of the ‘Proceso’ .......................................... 156 - The “Two-Demons” Narrative of Nunca Más ............................................... 182 - Challenging the “Two Demons” Narrative After 1984: Argentine Literature and Film in the Shadow of Nunca Más……………………190 - Chapter II notes ……………………………………………………...217 Chapter III: The Canadian TRC and the Scopic Drive: The Reader as Voyeur .................................................................................................... 250 - A Brief Timeline, from the Founding of the Indian Residential School System to the Birth of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission……..254 - The Establishment of the Canadian TRC and the Unique Legal Restrictions of the “Section ‘N’ Mandate” .................................................. 263 - The Scopophilic Syntax of the Final Report .................................................... 272 - The Residential School Photographic Archive and the Voyeuristic Gaze .................................................................................................. 287 - Resisting the “Schedule ‘N’ Mandate” .............................................................. 309 - Looking Forward .................................................................................................. 317 - Chapter III notes ……………………………………………………...221 Conclusion: Will We Be “Haunted?” .......................................................................... 329 vi - Works Cited …………………………………………………………..333 vii Introduction: Since the mid nineteen-forties, following a century marked by countless genocides, apartheids, and varying atrocities carried out by a host of autocratic and democratic states alike, nations across the world have increasingly turned to transitional justice practices as a means of addressing their tumultuous and violent histories.