Shattered Voices: Language, Violence, and the Work of Truth Commissions

by Teresa Godwin Phelps

Book Overview

Following periods of mass atrocity and oppression, states are faced with a question of critical importance in the transition to democracy: how to offer redress to victims of the old regime without perpetuating cycles of revenge. Traditionally, balance has been restored through arrests, trials, and punishment, but in the last three decades, more than twenty countries have opted to have a truth commission investigate the crimes of the prior regime...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 081221949X
• ISBN13: 9780812219494
• Release Date: February 2006
• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

healing words

Phelps skillful conflation of an international history, philosophy, law, and literature persuasively argues that truth commissions contribute to personal and public healing and resist the cycle of retributive vengeance. Shattered Voices should be read by all who fear the consequences of existing hostilities in Bosnia, Iraq, and Sudan as well as those who consider language and storytelling as markers of civilization and essential to justice.

revenge and storytelling

An excellent book. Phelps restores the desire for revenge to a natural place within the human psyche. But then she explores alternatives to violence as ways of accommodating this basic human need. She is remarkably adept at exploring storytelling as a means of satisfying the need for revenge, particularly in relationship to social justice. Her range of reference in these arguments is amazing. Relying on history, psychology, philosophy, and literature, she creates a very rich read, full of ideas and insights. You keep stopping to rethink things you thought you already knew. If you think there's no reason for hope because of all the violence in the world, give this book a chance.