Imagining Justice

Abstract

What is justice? What does justice feel like? How is it experienced in the body and between persons? What happens once justice is meted out? These questions have animated Dr Vaisman's research for the past few years as she conducted fieldwork on the trials of crimes against humanity in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Exploring the many institutionalized procedures as well as informal practices that have sustained the search for justice over the past few years, she has wondered how justice is imagined and experienced both individually and collectively. Drawing on films and other visual representations of trials or lack thereof and on the descriptions of “justice making” as offered to her by judges, lawyers and victims she has interviewed, she stitches together a tapestry of what justice, both real and imagined, is like in the context of the long aftermath of the last military dictatorship in Argentina.