Political contempt, divided societies, and transitional justice

Judith Shklar presumes an individualized experience of injustice. However, group-based identities in deeply divided polities mediate the sense of injustice. There, the narratives that define group identities include entrenched, collective fears about survival given the threat posed by members of the opposing group given memories of victimization. In deeply divided communities, both groups see themselves as victims, and group identities are shaped by incommensurable narrative understandings of who has been victimized in the past, who is a victim in the present, and who is vulnerable to victimization in the future. Such divisions make responding to injustice through transitional justice processes such as reparations and truth commissions deeply fraught.