The Truth Commission’s reconciliation was etymologically and structurally a religious rite.

Evidence

One abiding occupation – an enduring commitment – of those who have lived through especially the larger traumas of racial colonization, racial derogation, and subjection has recently been bearing witness, giving testimony. Testimony and bearing witness are possible only for those with first-hand, direct experience of and immediate proximity to death and deathly violence. In the past decade or so, formal fora have emerged to facilitate bringing witness, as evidenced by the popularity of various national truth commissions. And yet renewed racial terror and trauma become that much more possible, and the formal fora serve as rationalizations at worst or partial exercises in national reconciliation at best, unless a broader circle of commentators – historians, concerned citizens, political activists – are prepared coalitionally to draw attention to the horrors and cumulative burdens (spectacular or everyday) to the weights of race, elsewhere in but enduring across time or place. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1857 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The Truth and Reconciliation Commission functioned as national purgatory; Truth commissions fail as national reconciliation unless wider coalitions bear across-time witness — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 1857; Religious ritual makes otherwise secular values sacred and conflicts less tractable — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 543 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Truth commissions fail as national reconciliation unless wider coalitions bear across-time witness #complicates (0.72) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1857