"Taking Responsibility for the [White] Collective": Implicated Subjects (Bystanders) and Transitional Justice in the United States

The transformative possibilities of transitional justice (TJ) are hampered by the field’s traditional boundaries within the victim-perpetrator binary. This paper engages with a figure most closely aligned with the ‘bystander,’ or what Michael Rothberg terms "implicated subjects," a class of actors not directly perpetrating violence, yet who nevertheless enable, perpetuate or benefit from regimes of domination that reproduce the conditions of violence. Drawing upon immersive field research within predominantly-white anti-racist spaces in the Greater Boston Area of the United States, and engaging what Gready and Robins call “‘new’ civil society” actors and social movements beyond the traditional confines of TJ, where TJ is not (only) a set of institutional mechanisms but also a set of discourses and form of politics, I explore what these white activists’ endeavors and struggles to reckon with their implication in the histories and present-day injustices of white supremacy can tell us about the boundaries of human rights and transformative justice models. I then expand upon Wendy Lambourne’s four key elements of transformative justice to suggest a conceptual model for engaging implicated subjects in TJ, bringing existing movements for racial justice in the United States in conversation with other (aspiring) transformative justice contexts.