Sunday, April 30, 2023

Haldemann: Transitional Justice for Foxes: Conflict, Pluralism and the Politics of Compromise

Frank Haldemann
(Université de Fribourg) has published Transitional Justice for Foxes: Conflict, Pluralism and the Politics of Compromise (Cambridge Univ. Press 2022). Here's the abstract:
There is a memorable line by ancient Greek poet Archilochus: 'The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.' Drawing on this metaphor made popular by Isaiah Berlin, this book sets out to 'think like a fox' about transitional justice in an intellectual environment largely dominated by hedgehogs. Critical of the unitary 'hedgehog-like' vision underlying mainstream discourse, this book proposes a pluralist reading of the field. It asks: What would it mean for transitional justice to constructively deal with conflicts of values and interests in societies grappling with a violent past? And what would it imply to make meaningful room for diversity, to see 'the many' rather than just 'the one'?