Repair through empathy: narratives of reconciliation in two white terror memorial parks in Taiwan

ABSTRACT Taiwan has emerged from its authoritarian past into a democratic present, bearing the scars of traumatic and violent historic events. As symbols of repressive histories, penal museums in Taiwan stand at the center of questions about how traumatic pasts can be reconciled and justice sought for victims of previous regimes. By close semiotic examination of two museums that served as sites of incarceration during the White Terror period (1949–1987), this study uses multimodal discourse analysis to understand how these places are used to construct narratives about transitional justice. Hardship, control and human rights narratives are used to construct empathy, conducive to the acceptance and deepening of transitional justice efforts in post-authoritarian Taiwan. These museums help to recover the truth of the authoritarian past and place the experience of Taiwanese political prisoners in the larger context of global human rights and transitional justice narratives.