Confronting the Dictatorial Past in Tunisia: Human Rights and the Politics of Victimhood in Transitional Justice Discourses Since 2011

Abstract

While the goals of transitional justice encompass more than the law, the field has been long-dominated by a legal paradigm that defines it primarily as a judicial answer to mass atrocities. Throughout this legalistic approach, the field of transitional justice built itself in a stated opposition to politics and put forward its own discourse of “depoliticization” as an intrinsic value. This article explores, through an analysis of Tunisia, the limits of such detachment of the field of transitional justice from politics. Discourse on “facing the past” in Tunisia was rapidly instrumentalized in a political fashion: by putting forward specific types of victims or by promoting certain forms of reparations. A different account of Tunisia is explored, and thereby, a different form of political project also emerges.