Performing 'Victim-Centredness': The Affective Politics of Knowledge Production in Transitional Justice

The politics of knowledge production have increasingly featured as a critical object of enquiry in the field of transitional justice, with recent works examining who counts as an expert and what type of knowledge is considered authoritative in transitional justice processes. At the same time, claims for victim participation and victim-centredness have accompanied critical assessments of the field for many years: ‘victims’ are –rhetorically at least– foreseen in roles that are supposed to go beyond those of mere beneficiaries of transitional justice ‘projects’. This paper proposes to reflect upon the affective politics of knowledge production in the field of transitional justice. What are the emotional implications of claims to victim-centredness in transitional justice? What is the emotional labour experienced by ‘victims’ when they intervene amongst policymakers and practitioners to push for their claims for justice and truth? How do spaces created for ‘victim-centredness’ in the field of transitional justice regulate the emotions of those performing as ‘victims’? To address these questions, this paper engages with the interdisciplinary literature on emotions and (international) politics, and brings it into conversation with critical scholarship on transitional justice. It further draws from qualitative fieldwork on victim mobilisation for justice and truth in the Syrian and Cambodian cases.