TALKING ABOUT A COMBATANT’S GUILT: DIVERSITY IN PUBLIC DISCOURSE ABOUT MORALITY IN POST-CONFLICT TRUTH AND JUSTICE
TALKING ABOUT A COMBATANT’S GUILT: DIVERSITY IN PUBLIC DISCOURSE ABOUT MORALITY IN POST-CONFLICT TRUTH AND JUSTICE

Summary/Abstract: This essay examines how a combatant’s moral status – a complex social phenomenon – impacts on attempts to promote public conversation about truth and justice. A wide range of discourses about combatant status appear in different countries and different cultures, visible in attitudes towards the separation of soldiers from society, in discussion of criminal acts conducted in time of armed conflict, and in discourse about apologies in post-conflict political transitions. Many scholarly explorations cast both transitional justice and the moral status of combatants as fixed cultures, viewing them through the lens of a relatively old and elitist sociology. This may cause the dominant parties’ default approaches to talking about combatant guilt to appear immune to discussion or change. Alternatively, social expectations placed on combatants – and the way they are judged and stigmatized when they fall short of those expectations – can be understood by paying attention to a ‘lower’ or more ‘popular’ level of social activity, by using more pluralistic tools and perspectives present in post-structuralist sociology. Instead of focusing solely on competitions regarding crucial political and military decisions, this wider picture may help to explain larger difficulties in terms of the reintegration of combatants and with respect to public expectations regarding recognition and apologies for committed crimes.

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