Book Talk with Maja Davidovi?

You will have to read Maja's book (hot off the Cambridge University Press) to appreciate the full extent of her critique. In this talk, she asked two simple questions which nevertheless generated surprising answers: What is transitional justice? What is it for? The answers were based on in-depth fieldwork in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

TJ is not simply a field or set of judicial and non-judicial tools. It is a structure of legalism and neoliberalism oriented towards building institutions, creating hierarchies and civilising its subjects. TJ is not simply for justice, but for managing uncertainly. It it about controlling the future by governing the past.

By governing the past, however, TJ may create for survivors not a sense of justice but in its place worry, dread, stigma and a sense of ontological insecurity.