Observing Memories Issue 2 | Page 14

DEEP ARTICLE Left Unsettled Confessions of Armed Revolutionaries Leigh A Payne Latin American Centre, Oxford School of Global and Area Studies W hat happens when armed left guerrilla or revolutionary fighters confess to past violence? Can they contribute to building stronger democracies or human rights cultures? Are they in any way similar to confessions by perpetrators of state violence? Some parts of my earlier work on state perpetrators -- Unsettling Accounts – carries through to this new study on Left Unsettled. The revolutionary left and state perpetrators, for example, make confessions that are unsettling in content, specifically terrorist violence against civilians and extreme violence against their own comrades. Like state perpetrators, confessions on the left sometimes break, or unsettle, a silence over left-wing involvement in past atrocities. When the left speaks out – like the right--, they do not settle accounts with the past, but unsettle them. Confessions by the armed left disrupt a narrative that has settled about that past, that is, the left as innocent victims, and not perpetrators, of atrocity. The term ‘left’ in the title of the new project refers in part to the stated ideology of the revolutionary groups; but it also refers to what is ‘left out,’ or silenced from memory politics, what remains or is ‘left behind,’ in the analysis of past violence. The earlier project suggests that despite the unsettling nature of the confessions and the near impossibility of reconciliation as a result--, engagement of the audience can nonetheless positively benefit democracy and human rights through “contentious coexistence.” Dialogic conflict over past violence puts into practice the very values of democracy--participation, expression, and contestation—that sharpens, refines, and promotes widespread support for human rights norms. The earlier book comes to this conclusion by developing a dramaturgical approach. It is not that the confessional 12 Observing Memories ISSUE 2