Radical Restorative Justice and the Practice of Listening: Lessons from South Africa

Leebaw, Bronwyn

doi:10.1057/978-1-137-52815-5_8

Bronwyn Leebaw³

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Abstract

This chapter proposes that debates on restorative justice and comparative political thought might be usefully brought together and analyzed with attention to the theme of listening as a dimension of justice and political theory. Like contributions by Moore and Baxter, this chapter examines the theme of dialogue and its limits. It suggests that a major contribution of scholarly debates on restorative justice and comparative political thought is their role in exposing the importance, as well as the difficulty, of good listening as a dimension of theoretical dialogue. Drawing on theoretical debates on restorative justice among participants in the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) process, the chapter reflects on why listening is difficult for political theorists and what it would mean to value and cultivate good listening as a dimension of political theory and restorative justice. In so doing, the chapter also reflects on the theme of “theory as politics” that is explored in several contributions to this volume, including chapters by O’Neill, Baxter, Gordy, London, and Thomas. More specifically, this chapter considers how political theorists might pursue important goals associated with restorative justice and comparative political thought by listening to the voices and ideas of political actors.

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Notes

1.
John Braithwaite, Crime, Shame, and Reintegration (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). Jennifer J. Llewellyn and Daniel Philpott, Restorative Justice, Reconciliation, and Peacebuilding (2014).
2.
Cf. Michael Moore, “Buddhism and International Law.”
3.
Amy Gutman and Dennis Thompson, “The Moral Foundations of Truth Commissions,” in Truth V. Justice: The Morality of Truth Commissions, ed. Robert Rotberg and Dennis Thompson (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000).
4.
Sonali Chakravarti, Sing the Rage: Listening to Anger After Mass Violence (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014).
5.
Chakravarti, Sing the Rage; Mihaela Mihai, Negative Emotions and Transitional Justice (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016).
6.
Thomas Brudholm, Resentment’s Virtue: Jean Améry and the Refusal to Forgive (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2008); Alexander Keller Hirsch, Theorizing Post-conflict Reconciliation: Agonism, Restitution and Repair (Milton Park, Abingdon: Routledge, 2012).
7.
Farah Godrej, Cosmopolitan Political Thought: Method, Practice, Discipline (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).
8.
Cf. Jennifer London, “The Abbasid ‘Circle of Justice,’” Megan Thomas, “Proclaiming Sovereignty,” Matthew Moore, “Buddhism and International Law,” and Katherine Gordy, “Strategic Deployments.”
9.
Godrej, Cosmopolitan Political Thought, 19.
10.
Godrej, Cosmopolitan Political Thought, 39.
11.
Godrej, Cosmopolitan Political Thought, 20.
12.
Godrej, Cosmopolitan Political Thought, 93.
13.
Bargu, Gordy, Cicarelli-Maher, Pachirat.
14.
Arendt, The Human Condition, 223.
15.
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16.
Martha Minow, Between Vengeance and Forgiveness: Facing History After Genocide and Mass Violence (Boston: Beacon Press, 1998); Mark A. Drumbl, Atrocity, Punishment, and International Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); John Braithwaite, Restorative Justice & Responsive Regulation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002); Colleen Murphy, A Moral Theory of Political Reconciliation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Kerry Claim, Restorative Justice in Transition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).
17.
Richard Wilson, The Politics of Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa: Legitimizing the Post-Apartheid State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
18.
Adam Sitze, The Impossible Machine A Genealogy of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2013); Lars Waldorf, “Restorative Justice for Mass Violence: Rethinking Local Justice as Transitional Justice,” Temple Law Review 79 (1): 1–88.
19.
Sonali Chakravarti, Sing the Rage: Listening to Anger After Mass Violence (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014); Thomas Brudholm, Resentment’s Virtue: Jean Améry and the Refusal to Forgive (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2008); Alexander Keller Hirsch, Theorizing Post-conflict Reconciliation: Agonism, Restitution and Repair (Milton Park, Abingdon: Routledge, 2012).
20.
Vanessa Pupavac, “Therapeutic Governance: Psychosocial Intervention and Trauma Risk Management,” Disasters, 2001.
21.
Willie Hofmyer, Interview by author, Cape Town, March 9, 1999; George Bizos, Interview by author, Johannesburg, March 30, 1999; Jonnie De Lange, interview by author, Cape Town, March 4, 1999.
22.
Kader Asmal, Louise Asmal, and Ronald Suresh Roberts, Reconciliation Through Truth: A Reckoning of Apartheid’s Criminal Governance (Cape Town: David Philip Publishers, 1997), 40.
23.
TRC Legal Hearing, October 27, 1997. Available: http://www.justice.gov.za/trc/special%5Clegal/legal.htm
24.
Bronwyn Anne Leebaw, Judging State-Sponsored Violence, Imagining Political Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), p. 86.
25.
Interview, Parktown West, South Africa, March 23, 1999.
26.
TRC conscription hearings, Cape Town, July 23, 1997.
27.
TRC conscription hearings, Cape Town, July 23, 1997.
28.
Sally E. Merry, “The Social Organization of Mediation in Nonindustrial Societies,” in The Politics of Informal Justice, ed. Richard Abel (New York: Academic Press, 1982).
29.
Robert Meister, After Evil: A Politics of Human Rights (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011).
30.
Vanessa Pupavac, “Therapeutic Governance: Psychosocial Intervention and Trauma Risk Management,” Disasters, 2001.
31.
Charles Villa-Vicencio, “Restorative Justice: The Provocations and Limits of a Theory,” in The Provocations of Amnesty: Memory, Justice, and Impunity, ed. Charles Villa-Vicecio and Eric Doxtader (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2003), 31; Desmond Tutu, No Future Without Forgiveness (New York: Doubleday, 1999), 57; Mahmood Mamdani, “A Diminished Truth,” in After the TRC: Reflections on Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa, ed. Wilmot Godfrey James and Linda Van de Vijver (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2001).
32.
Mamdani, “Amnesty or Impunity,” 33; Villa-Vicencio, “Restorative Justice,” 42.
33.
Tutu, No Future, 274.
34.
Villa-Vicencio, “Restorative Justice,” 41, 43.
35.
Villa-Vicecio, “Restorative Justice,” 43.
36.
Mamdani, “A Diminished Truth,” 59.
37.
Asmal, Roberts, and Roberts, Reconciliation Through Truth? 12.
38.
Asmal, Roberts, and Roberts, Reconciliation Through Truth? 13.
39.
Asmal, Roberts, and Roberts, Reconciliation Through Truth? 154.
40.
Asmal, Roberts, and Roberts, Reconciliation Through Truth? 165.
41.
TRC Conscription Hearings, Cape Town, July 23, 1997.
42.
Hannah Arendt and Ronald Beiner, Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 98.
43.
Arendt, “Thinking and Moral Considerations,” 436.
44.
Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem; A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York: Viking Press, 1963), 231.
45.
Hannah Arendt, Between Past and Future, Six Exercises in Political Thought (New York: Viking Press, 1961), 4.
46.
Hannah Arendt, “Introduction,” in Illuminations; Edited and with an Introduction by Hannah Arendt. Translated by Harry Zohn (London: Cape, 1970).
47.
Pitkin, Attack of the Blob (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 113.
48.
Adam Sitze, The Impossible Machine: A Genealogy of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2013); Megan Thomas, “Review of Politics,” Orientalism and Comparative Political Theory 72, no. 4 (2010).
49.
Mamdani, “Reconciliation Without Justice.”
50.
TRC Youth Hearings, Athlone, May 22, 1997.
51.
TRC Youth Hearings, Athlone, May 22, 1999.
52.
Lawrence Langer and Mazal Holocaust Collection, Holocaust Testimonies: The Ruins of Memory (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991), 171.

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Department of Political Science, University of California-Riverside, Riverside, CA, USA
Bronwyn Leebaw

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Bronwyn Leebaw
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Correspondence to Bronwyn Leebaw .

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Department of Political Science, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin, USA
Daniel J. Kapust
Department of Political Science, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin, USA
Helen M. Kinsella

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Leebaw, B. (2017). Radical Restorative Justice and the Practice of Listening: Lessons from South Africa. In: Kapust, D., Kinsella, H. (eds) Comparative Political Theory in Time and Place. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-52815-5_8

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-52815-5_8
Published: 09 November 2016
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-53320-3
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-52815-5
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)

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