Full Description
While communism was proclaimed dead in Eastern Europe around 1989, archives of communist secret services lived on. They became the site of judicial and moral examination of lives, suspicions of treason or 'collaboration' with the criminalized communist regime, and contending notions of democracy, truth, and justice. Through close study of court trials, biographies, media, films, and plays concerning judges, academics, journalists, and artists who were accused of being communist spies in Poland, this critical ethnography develops the notion of moral autopsy to interrogate the fundamental problems underlying global transitional justice, especially, the binary of authoritarianism and liberalism and the redemptive notions of transparency and truth-telling. It invites us to think beyond Eurocentric teleology of transition, capitalist nation-state epistemology and prerogatives of security and property, and the judicialized and moralized understanding of history and politics.
Contents
Prologue: Endtimes; Introduction: Moral Autopsy after Communism; Part I. Contextualizations: 1. Judicializing and Dissecting Communism at the 'End of History'; 2. Democracy Must be Defended: Sovereignty, Property, Security; Part II. In the Court of Law: 3. A Biography of Law: Fear, Shame, and Responsibility; 4. Naming the Secret Communist Agent: Suspicion, Archive, and Ambiguity; Part III. Public Tribunals of Judgment: 5. The Right to Know: Publicity and Media Revelations from Archives; 6. Performing Law: Public Scenes and Contentions of Truth-Telling; Conclusion: Of Truth and Political Responsibility; Epilogue: Democracy Irrestorable.
