Asks what happens when perpetrators publicly admit or discuss their actions. This book contends that public confessions do not settle the past. It argues that this debate and the public confessions that trigger it are healthy for democratic processes of political participation, freedom of expression, and contestation of political ideas.
Asks what happens when perpetrators publicly admit or discuss their actions. This book contends that public confessions do not settle the past. It argues that this debate and the public confessions that trigger it are healthy for democratic processes of political participation, freedom of expression, and contestation of political ideas.
Leigh A. Payne is Professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She is the author of Uncivil Movements: The Armed Right-Wing and Democracy in Latin America and a coeditor of The Art of Truth-Telling about Authoritarian Rule and Business and Democracy in Latin America.
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Acknowledgments ix Abbreviations xiii Introduction: The Political Power of Confession 1 1. Confessional Performance 13 2. Remorse 41 3. Heroic Confessions 75 4. Sadism 107 5. Denial 141 6. Silence 173 7. Fiction and Lies 197 8. Amnesia 229 9. Betrayal 251 Conclusion: Contentious Coexistence 271 Notes 293 Bibliography 343 Index 353