The Cultural Contexts of Testimony: The WEIRDness of Global Cosmopolitan Norms

This chapter explores the ways in which cultural, social and political factors influence if and how testimony is put to use in processes of transitional justice and post-conflict reconciliation. The authors consider three factors: political and economic institutions; type of conflict; and dominant philosophical and psychological worldviews in the local context. Current discussions about cosmopolitan memory tend to assume a “universal code” for dealing with the past, a code that is born of European experiences of atrocity and which does not give due attention to this diversity. A decolonial critique of such “memory standardisation” calls for provincialisation of European approaches to memorialisation and testimony’s role within it. Instead these “WEIRD” models should be put into dialogue with modes of memory developed in multiple contexts and cultures.