The Trouble with Truth: Silence, Denial and the Liberal Democratic State

The twenty-first century has been characterised by an ‘urge’ or ‘rush’ to truth in the aftermath of violent conflict. There are a number of jurisdictions, such as Spain, Mozambique and France, whose transition from a period of political violence and human rights abuses has been characterised by the absence of a formal truth process. In these sites and others, several powerful critiques of the perceived ‘need’ to recover truth about the past have been made. Couched within the euphemisms of ‘getting peace’ or promoting ‘reconciliation’, for example, some of the most slippery and strongly stated oppositional discourses to truth have been framed within a context of denial and silence. This paper focuses on the case study of Northern Ireland, part of a liberal democratic state with a stated commitment to the rule of law, but where silence on the past has dominated the post-conflict landscape. The primary way in which silence has been manifested is through a ‘piecemeal’ approach to the past and, as yet, the absence of a formal truth recovery body (Bell, 2003). Tracing and critiquing efforts at truth recovery through the themes of ‘The Limits of Legalism’, ‘The Meaning of Accountability’ and ‘Truth and Hierarchies of Victimhood’, this paper examines the tensions between truth, silence and the state in times of transition.