Embedded ambivalence: ungoverning global justice

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article argues that fundamental critiques of the transitional justice enterprise paradoxically ended up stabilising it through a mode, style, and experience of (un)governing that I call ‘embedded ambivalence’. Transitional justice has come to be characterised by certainty about its objectives (justice, peace, truth, reconciliation), but also by increasing uneasiness about the efficacy or benefits of its forms (transnational solutions, criminal law, state-based truth inquiries). The enterprise was built on the foundation of transnational and experiential comparison and commensurability, making it possible to incrementally expand the scope, institutions, and modes of regulation as a response to important critiques. Challenges remain, however. While self-critical expansion can improve the enterprise, it can also facilitate the evasion of foundational challenges. Repeated expansion raises questions about how and where to delimit the enterprise. Recent debates over the capacity of transitional justice to incorporate decolonial approaches or a praxis of solidarity highlight these tensions.