Archiving Justice

This chapter interrogates this link between archives and transitional justice, in three parts. First it examines the ways in which the archive reinforces core aspects of transitional justice as practice and a set of normative values. The second section turns to a more critical assessment of the relationship between archives and justice as it explores the role that archives play in the governance—and disciplining—of community. The final section looks at practices that might offer a way in which a more transformative vision of archive and community can emerge through what can be described as a counter-archive. Overall, this chapter argues that the archive is not a passive facilitator of transitional justice, nor an innocent site where the past is recorded as was. It is, rather, a site of governance where particular notions of community are generated. Paying attention to this, and the rules which produce, restrict and constrain community in particular ways, encourages a deeper reflection on what type of community is desired as a result of “transition.”