On Irreconciliation focuses on the less examined but frequent
ethnographic instances when survivors refuse to forgive in response to
persistent impunity of past injustices, particularly, in the face of
absence-presence of the rule of law and staged processes of justice
which serve the powerful.
- An ethnographically-informed, interdisciplinary theorisation which
makes irreconciliation visible in the contexts of Northern Ireland,
Papua New Guinea, Mozambique, Bangladesh, Canada, Argentina, Sri
Lanka, Colombia, USA and UK
- Triangulates a discussion of the rule of law within processes of
unresolved genocidal injustices, debates relating to statues of slave
owners, racial prejudice and institutional responses
- Contributors demonstrate the relationship of irreconciliation with
law, aesthetics, temporality, resistance and the limits of the concept
- Makes a theoretical and ethnographic case for irreconciliation as both
a social and political phenomenon
- Proposes an understanding of the past based on a positive commitment
to 'irreconciliation' which might interest anthropologists,
historians, philosophers, critical legal and political theorists,
peace, conflict resolution and transitional justice scholars