From Reconciliation to Coexistence

In "Reconciliation after Ethnic Cleansing" (Public Culture 14 [spring 2002]: 281-304), John Borneman stresses that reconciliation requires acknowledging personal loss. Through witnessing, listening, and truth-telling, we can restore trust and regain a larger, more inclusive moral community. Truth-telling involves more than just finding out who did what to whom. It is about assessing these various truths in an intersubjective, relational way, or what Borneman calls "listening." When carried out in public forums with skilled listeners, truth-telling creates a community that can transcend the ethnicization and revenge cycle that is all too common in ethnic conflicts.

Restoration of social bonds of trust also requires retributive justice executed by institutions enforcing a higher morality, so that neither I nor my children have to take revenge. Retributive justice helps facilitate the mourning process by wiping the slate clean. Legitimate judicial institutions and rule of law can help people begin the memory work needed to deal with the trauma of ethnic cleansing.

Yet even with an emphasis on listening and reconciliation, we are left with several problems. First, is reconciliation really a question of dialogue? Why should nonviolent relations between ethnic groups be understood as "reconciliation"? Like "truth-telling," "accountability," "transparency," and of course, "human rights," the concept of reconciliation is peculiarly Western. Reconciliation postulates a situation prior to conflict that is marked by peace, friendship, and understanding—yet these circumstances most likely existed only as someone's nostalgia.

Let us replace the word reconciliation with coexistence, understood here simply as "the absence of violence." In a situation of coexistence, two conflicting parties simply ignore each other. Robert Edgerton has described this condition in Alone Together, his study of the ways in which different social groups occupy Venice Beach, California. ¹ On the beach, Edgerton argues, there is neither conflict nor reconciliation. There is simply public coexistence. In areas of world conflict, the act of ignoring or behaving as if the opponent is not present would certainly represent a step forward over the threat of ethnic cleansing. We see instances of such coexistence in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Kosovo, and East Timor, areas where we could expect much more violence given the prevalent frustrations and the absence of truth-telling that characterize these societies. Bosnia, Kosovo, and Timor, for example, have all had surprisingly peaceful elections.

Reinterpreting reconciliation as simple coexistence rather than as what Borneman calls "a departure from violence" means that a Catholic mother in Belfast can take her child to a Protestant school without being stoned, a Kosovo Serb can have a coffee in downtown Prishtina without being knifed, and an Israeli family can drive from Hebron to Jerusalem without being shot at. Coexistence means only being oblivious to the Other. Whereas Borneman's state of reconciliation demands voice and response, coexistence is a social order that requires no listening.

Borneman's emphasis on listening stems from his faith in dialogue. In his view, peacemaking seems to be one prolonged "conversation." I think this perspective reflects a kind of naïveté, present in many peacekeeping circles, regarding the power of dialogue: if we just sit down and talk things through, if we just get it off our chests, then we will somehow feel better and this alone will cause our social relations to improve. In this sense, reconciliation is about talk. This kind of model may operate in marital counseling, in family therapy, and even on American talk shows in which guests reveal their innermost traumas and confessions. But can this strategy of open communication operate effectively in actual peacemaking scenarios? After all, most social orders thrive not just on communication, but also on leaving certain things unsaid, undisputed, shrouded in mystery or taboo. Authenticity and revealing one's true motives and feelings—including feelings of guilt, shame, and powerlessness—are not always therapeutic. They are therapeutic, as Borneman would agree, only when they lead to a reconstitution of the social, to new forms of social action. For this latter process to occur, dialogue and [End Page 182...