Another Kind of Justice: Transitional Justice as Recognition

What criteria of justice should guide societies emerging from mass atrocity? This question lies at the heart of the ongoing debate on 'Transitional Justice.' It has become commonplace in mainstream Transitional Justice discourse to speak as though we were presented with an either/or choice: retributive or restorative justice? In arguing that this is a false antithesis, this essay elaborates on the idea of 'justice as recognition' — the kind of justice that is involved in recognizing the victims of massive wrongs, and thereby acknowledging their human and civic worth. This argument is developed through a series of critical engagements with recent works in moral and political theory that are representative of a general shift away from an exclusive concern with a 'politics of distribution,' focused on the just distribution of social goods, toward a 'politics of recognition,' focused on the reduction of humiliation and moral cruelty. Drawing on the ideas of social and political thinkers such as Axel Honneth and Avishai Margalit, this analysis sets out to construe transitional justice as a moral, political and legal project of recognition that puts victims and their negative experiences of injury and humiliation at its center. In formulating this project, it identifies two levels at which recognition may operate. While the first level focuses on an understanding of crime as interpersonal conflict, the second level concerns the inherently political nature of large-scale instances of evil. The strategy pursued here is to argue for an integrative approach that encompasses both aspects of recognition.