Between Vengeance And Forgiveness By Martha Minow Summary

In her, “Between Vengeance and Forgiveness,” Martha Minow discusses, not only the tandem needs of truth and justice that arise and intersect in the wake of conflict but also the duality existing between the notions of vengeance and forgiveness that surface as needs, particularly in a society recovering from violence. The central question of Minow’s work explores the idea that there may be a need for middle ground between vengeance and forgiveness. For the purposes of this work, in delineating first the needs of victims and then the needs of society at large in the wake of violent conflict situations, it may be asserted the Minow’s middle ground abides at the intersection of acknowledgment of harms and retribution for harms committed. To demonstrate

In the void of formal acknowledgment from the state,, what defenses are there for victims against institutional erasure? What if the challenge becomes over time, the struggle to have the harms that were perpetrated against victims, even remembered? This is indeed one of the challenges associated with operating from a forgiveness-based paradigm. While forgiveness can offer victims agency and opportunities for moving on, it can also enforce strategies of erasure. Minow explains,

in practice, forgiveness often produces exemption from punishment. Especially when a governmental body adopts a forgiving attitude toward offenders, the instrument often takes the form of amnesty or pardon, preempting prosecution and punishment. This institutionalizes forgetfulness, and sacrifices justice in a foreshortened effort to move on. Moreover, such an effort to move on often fails because the injury is not so much forgiven but publicly ignored, leaving it to