UC Berkeley

In the aftermath of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), "reconciliation" has come to the fore as a keyword in global political culture. Although the possibilities associated with the transitional politics of truth and reconciliation have been widely touted, however, and the TRC much celebrated, the South African commission and its master narrative of truth and reconciliation have also been vigorously and repeatedly criticized. Reconciliation--closely associated with both amnesty and forgiveness, and explicitly theological in many of its articulations--has been tremendously controversial. Rising to global prominence as a result of experiments with innovative truth commissions in the global South, the promise of reconciliation was received warily at best by many North American scholars and human rights activists. Yet in the midst of both spirited critique and uncertain embrace, discourses of truth and reconciliation have come to represent one of the most prolific traveling theories of our time. Examining the intellectual struggles over reconciliation that accompanied the invention of truth commissions and the rise of transitional justice, analyzing the field-transforming efforts and effects of the South African TRC, and attending in particular to the critical uptake of reconciliation within North America, this dissertation pursues a critical sociological study of the secularity of contemporary intellectual culture.