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"Truth, Denial and Transition addresses the ways in which the process of truth recovery in post-conflict societies is challenged and contested. Transitional justice scholarship and praxis has been a site of ever increasing activity in the past two decades and truth recovery is now considered an axiomatic element of the post conflict transition from political violence. Its purported benefits have been well rehearsed. Truth recovery is, however, one of the most formidable post-conflict challenges, particularly so in the face of efforts made by powerful actors who are keen to conceal their involvement (or silence) with regard to past abuses. In all transitional contexts, the dialectic between truth and denial is a key contest, yet little attention has been paid to those jurisdictions whose transitions from violent conflict have been marked by the rejection of a formal truth process. Questions as to why techniques of denial appear to persist and to what extent recovering truth about the past is essential for political and social reconciliation have, therefore, remain unanswered. This book draws on the case study of Northern Ireland to address these questions: exploring and critically analysing unionist, loyalist and military opposition to and distance from the truth recovery debate in Northern Ireland. Interrogating the resistance to truth in such contexts speaks to larger questions concerning identity formation and national imagination, notions of blamelessness and victimhood, traditions of sacrifice and the fear of betrayal, the othering of political opponents and the importance of timing in peacemaking. Linking these themes to a broad interdisciplinary literature, as well as specific literature on other jurisdictions, Truth, Denial and Transition makes a unique contribution to the international field of transitional justice and conflict transformation."--

This article explores the intersection between the politics and construction of victimhood in transitional societies and the use of truth recovery as a platform for the creation of hierarchies of truth. It explores how, in a context of contested victimhood and an unresolved past, the 'political currency' of victimhood may lead to the domination and embellishment of certain voices and narratives and the concurrent silencing of others. As this article will then demonstrate, when applied to the debate on truth recovery, the capturing of victims' voice and agency can manifest in a damaging 'truth as trumps' dynamic and recourse to 'whataboutery' in which one call for truth or the recovery of truth as significant to one side of the community is countered by that of a more 'significant' or more 'important' truth on the part of the other. The paper argues for the inculcation of a culture political generosity in transitional contexts as a way to begin to ameliorate these challenges.

This article explores the intersection between the politics and construction of victimhood in transitional societies and the use of truth recovery as a platform for the creation of hierarchies of truth. It explores how, in a context of contested victimhood and an unresolved past, the 'political currency' of victimhood may lead to the domination and embellishment of certain voices and narratives and the concurrent silencing of others. As this article will then demonstrate, when applied to the debate on truth recovery, the capturing of victims' voice and agency can manifest in a damaging 'truth as trumps' dynamic and recourse to 'whataboutery' in which one call for truth or the recovery of truth as significant to one side of the community is countered by that of a more 'significant' or more 'important' truth on the part of the other. The paper argues for the inculcation of a culture political generosity in transitional contexts as a way to begin to ameliorate these challenges.

This article explores practices of haunting and ghosting after conflict related loss. This is not to suggest a focus on the occult or the paranormal, but to use these phenomena as a prism through which to understand the intersection between unresolved pasts and the transmission of trauma post-conflict. As Michael Levan notes, trauma lingers 'unexorcisably in the places of its perpetration, in the bodies of those affected, in the eyes of the witnesses, and in the politics of memory'. The ghost, according to Avery Gordon 'is the principle form by which something lost or invisible or seemingly not there makes itself known or apparent to us.' In this article I argue for three conceptualisations of haunting when past traumas remain unaddressed – the haunting of lost lives; the haunting of landscape; and the haunting presence of the unresolved past. The article focuses on Northern Ireland, a post-conflict jurisdiction described as being haunted by a 'conflict calendar in which every day is an anniversary' and extensive fieldwork with victims and survivors of the conflict. The article concludes by arguing that the presence of ghosts and the experience of haunting represent a 'call to action' in the quest to deal with a legacy of violent conflict and human rights abuses.

While truth commissions have become the 'go to' response in the aftermath of violent conflict and human rights abuses, serious critical discussion on the extent to which commissions have tended to shape and reify the identities of victims and perpetrators and obscures the reality of structural culpability is only tentatively emerging in the field. Drawing on literature from the field of transitional justice, this article critically interrogates the relationship between truth commissions and the three key constituencies of victims, perpetrators and structural actors. It suggests that binary oppositions between victims and perpetrators are frequently privileged, resulting in hierarchal conceptions of innocent victims and guilty perpetrators. These polarized categories fail to reflect the complexity of conflict and promote easy and uncritical allocations of blame and responsibility. It also argues that the capacity of truth commissions to engage with structural actors and the structural causes of conflict is limited due to the influence of human rights and criminal justice on transitional justice and an individualized focus on violations of civil and political rights. An impunity gap is thus created, eliding broader patterns of institutional complicity and responsibility for structural violence, while the focus on civil and political rights violations creates further hierarchies of harm and hierarchies of victimisation. The paper concludes that greater recognition of the complexity of identity and involvement in conflict is required to provide a more honest reflection on the past and a more sustainable link between truth telling and peace building.

Despite a rich body of literature on ex-combatants in transitional contexts, the reasons why former armed actors may be reluctant to engage with formal mechanisms of truth recovery have been less well explored. This article argues that ex-combatants' antipathy towards truth recovery cannot be properly understood without a critical interrogation of the emotions vested in the combatant-ex-combatant experience and the intersection between emotions, politics and ideology. In particular, the paper focuses on the emotion of loyalty and its influence on pro-state armed actors. It uses the case of loyalist ex-combatants in Northern Ireland as a prism through which to explore this tension. Four overlapping notions of loyalty are identified - 'Loyalty as Betrayal', 'Loyalty, Blame and Managing Shame', 'Loyalty as Silence' and 'Loyalty as Protection'. The paper concludes by suggesting the need for greater recognition of the role of loyalty in mediating relationships with and willingness to investigate the past.