Truth Commissions: State Terror, History, and Memory

by Greg Grandin, Thomas Miller Klubock

This special issue of Radical History Review looks at the different kinds of history produced by truth commissions organized to investigate political violence, state terror, and human rights violations around the globe and examines how these histories elide or confront social inequality and political violence. The essays consider the tensions implicit in the multiple mandates of truth to establish historical truths, to recognize the experiences of victims, to effect social and political reconciliation, and to reestablish the legitimacy of the nation-state at a time of market-driven globalization. The issue also addresses difficulties faced by the commissions, such as limitations on the use and nature of evidence, oral testimony, and archival documentation. Comparative in nature, this collection includes essays on Chile’s long history of amnesties, pardons, and commissions organized to uncover past episodes of political violence; the dissemination and use of the historical findings of the Guatemalan Commission for Historical Clarification; and internal tensions in the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which sought to recover the memories of the victims of apartheid. Several shorter essays offer reflections on U.S. commissions related to the country’s history of racial violence, Cold War imperialism, and Vietnam War atrocities and on the findings of the 9/11 Commission report. Contributors . Felipe Aguero, Sally Avery Bermanzohn, Alejandro Castillejo-Cuellar, Grant Farred, John J. Fitzgerald, Greg Grandin, Thomas Miller Klubock, Elizabeth Lira, Brian Loveman, Mary Nolan, Elizabeth Ogelsby, Paul Ortiz, Kimberly Phillips-Fein, Charles Walker

Genres: History

184 pages, Paperback

First published December 15, 2006

About the author

Greg Grandin is the author of Fordlandia, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. A Professor of History at New York University, Grandin has published a number of other award-winning books, including Empire's Workshop, The Last Colonial Massacre, and The Blood of Guatemala.

Toni Morrison called Grandin's new work, The Empire of Necessity, "compelling, brilliant and necessary." Based on years of research on four continents, the book narrates the history of a slave-ship revolt that inspired Herman Melville's other masterpiece, Benito Cereno. Philip Gourevitch describes it as a "rare book in which the drama of the action and the drama of ideas are equally measured, a work of history and of literary reflection that is as urgent as it is timely."

Grandin has served on the United Nations Truth Commission investigating the Guatemalan Civil War and has written for the Los Angeles Times, The Nation, The New Statesman, the Guardian, the London Review of Books, and The New York Times.

He received his BA from Brooklyn College, CUNY, in 1992 and his PhD from Yale in 1999. He has been a guest on Democracy Now!, The Charlie Rose Show, and the Chris Hayes Show.