Nation-making often requires forgetting the very injustices restorative justice remembers.

Evidence

Now if restorative justice hinges on memory, on re-membering or putting the past back together, effective nation-making too often presupposes forgetting, foregoing the memory of past injustice as prelude to living together. National reconciliation in the context of the TRC thus concerned itself with reuniting a country sharply set apart by the divisive violence and human rights violations perpetrated by the pursuits of separate development, resacralizing the body politic by bringing its divided communities into accord and harmony. Some would say at the longer-term cost of justice. The TRC was, in short, a national purification rite, South Africa’s redemption song. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1580

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: Frames a genuine structural tension — restorative justice needs memory while nation-building needs amnesia — an irreducible paradox at the heart of transitional justice.
• SEED: An essay angle: the forgetting/remembering paradox in transitional justice, applied beyond South Africa to any society seeking reconciliation.
• XREF: connects to: National reconciliation via confession can come at the longer-term cost of justice — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 1580