Reconciliation and Memory in Postwar Nigeria
Last, Murray. “Reconciliation and Memory in Postwar Nigeria.” In Violence and Subjectivity, edited by Veena Das, Arthur Kleinman, Mamphela Ramphele and Pamela Reynolds, 315-332. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001. https://doi-org.ezproxy.st-andrews.ac.uk/10.1525/9780520921825-015
This chapter, from the wider collection of essays titled Violence and Subjectivity, provides a detailed analysis of the processes of reconciliation and their implications following the Nigerian civil war. The government’s reconciliation policies meant ‘hurts’ were moved from the public to the private memory where a sense of ambivalence, anger and resentment were left unresolved. Last explores the process of reconciliation in the private memory. He prefaces his argument with a detailed summary of the conflict including details of the losses and the human aftermath. Last’s key argument lies in what he considers obstacles to reconciliation. He differentiates between watchers of violence, who are traumatized and feel ineffective from afar, and bystanders, whose act of non-intervention is an active act of dissent. He argues reconciliation needs to be aimed at watchers of violence for the hurt to be resolved. Lastly, he outlines the cultural understandings of responsibility and punishment, highlighting the difference between the victor’s viewpoint and the victim’s, and how we define these terms. Finally, he suggests areas to be looked at for a more successfully reconciled future.
I found this chapter thought-provoking in the perspective it presented on a reconciliation that occurs in the private space, and the role of ‘watchers of violence’ and how this interacts with the specific cultural context of conflict.