Resisting Erasure: Reimagining the Boundaries of Human Rights and Transitional Justice

In what ways do the fields of human rights and transitional justice erase voices and experiences? What are the implications of this erasure? And, how does research participate in, and resist, the dangers of erasure? Recent developments in scholarship and thinking on human rights and transitional justice have been concerned with the processes and effects of the invisibilisation of certain voices, perspectives, and experiences. Work as diverse as anthropological studies of silence, to legal sociologies of courtroom testimonies, have highlighted the biases and boundaries in human rights and transitional justice that limits recognition, participation and agency within these domains. Scholarship anchored in critical feminist thinking and decoloniality has condemned the intersectional shortcomings of transitional justice mechanisms and human rights instruments whose implementation erases both the histories and legacies of patriarchal and colonial power dynamics. Erasure is thus a clear danger in research, policy and practice. Beyond erasure as selective recognition, and elevation, of certain voices over others, research is increasingly drawing attention to chosen silence – highlighting the need to understand why some voices choose silence. Erasure can therefore be understood in a multitude of different ways, and not everyone shares the same vocabulary when grappling with such dynamics. What we do know is that the absence of certain voices, perspectives, and experiences is related to how power operates and that such absences can be both chosen and enforced. This in turn has profound effects on the way we do research, and the way policies are developed and implemented. How does and can research reproduce and/or resist erasure in human rights and transitional justice? In the fields of human rights and transitional justice, where harm is addressed and inequalities tackled, it is incumbent upon us to consider not only what is said and done, but equally to interrogate what is not said, written, acknowledged or addressed. Growing levels of political violence, large scale human rights abuses and armed conflicts around the world add urgency to the need to critically examine why some voices matter more than others, and what resisting erasure does, and can, look like for the future of human rights implementation and transitional justice mechanisms. To explore these questions, we invite panel and paper proposals interested in the forms, effects, and definitions of erasure as well as work which addresses how erasure can be resisted. This may relate to a specific law, convention, intervention, or experience, it may also relate to the nature and evolution of the fields of human rights and transitional justice. Potential topics include, but are by no means restricted to: ▪️ Erasure within the fields: who is considered to be a human rights or transitional justice actor or subject? Who has standing in the field? What disciplines and methods shape the field? ▪️ Erasure of certain topics: where is the climate? What topics are considered part of the domains and which not? What are the implications of these biases? ▪️ Erasure of the past: how do we remember? Where are there silences or amnesia? What future is possible when memory is selective? ▪️ Decolonisation, human rights and transitional justice. ▪️ Emotions, human rights and transitional justice. what role can, do, or should emotions play in the domains of human rights and transitional justice? ▪️ Erasure and the politics of knowledge. How is erasure reproduced and/or resisted in research within the fields of human rights and transitional justice? ▪️ Modalities of inclusion and exclusion; visibility and invisibility; voice and silence. ▪️ Standardisation and tools within and beyond the fields. ▪️ Are human rights and transitional justice still relevant to today’s dynamics and crises? ▪️ Academic freedom in the current geopolitical context, self-censorship, and the squeezing of space for critical discussion. ▪️ Embracing erasure: what productive need is there for erasure in human rights or transitional justice? Why do some voices choose silence and what does this teach us about the current state of human rights instruments and transitional justice mechanisms? The Section Co-Chairs wish to encourage early career as well as established scholars to participate in ECPR General Conferences and Workshops. This section aims to place scholars at different stages of their career in conversation with each other, in order to encourage, inspire and challenge a new generation of political scientists. As in previous years, the Co-Chairs aim to create an intellectual community during the ECPR General conference, allowing for inspiring conversations and exchanges throughout the section’s consecutive panels and beyond (e.g. through joint publication projects after the conference, such as blog contributions or a Special Issue). Finally, the Human Rights and Transitional Justice ECPR Standing Group will award the prize for the Best Paper in the section "Resisting Erasure: Reimagining the Boundaries of Human Rights and Transitional Justice". The Section organizers will choose the best paper among nominations done by discussants in each of the panels. The winner will be provided with a certificate, and opportunities for further award and publicity from ECPR.