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Matt James, On Carnival and Context: A Response to Bridget Storrie, International Journal of Transitional Justice, Volume 9, Issue 3, November 2015, Pages 486–493, https://doi.org/10.1093/ijtj/ijv019
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I thank Bridget Storrie warmly for a fascinating article that helps me to think about carnival’s political promise in more rewarding ways.1 Storrie and I differ in how we assess the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), in our stances on the utility of traditionally investigative modes of official historical inquiry, and, perhaps to some extent, in the political ontologies underlying these differences. I thank the editors for allowing this exchange to occur, and I hope it contributes to our understanding of the Canadian TRC and to debates about responding to historic injustice more generally.2
‘Carnival of Truth’ focused on the TRC’s distinctively victim-centred approach to producing and disseminating knowledge. It noted that the Commission’s fault-finding and forensic investigative mandate were severely limited: the TRC was denied subpoena powers and lacked even the right to report on allegations against specific individuals (unless the individual had already been convicted of the offence at issue) or make assignments of individual responsibility or blame in its proceedings and findings. Instead, the TRC’s primary concern was to tell the story of Canada’s Indian residential schools policy through the experiential narratives of the former students, families and community members affected by that policy. At this response’s time of writing, the Commission had concluded seven years of roving public hearings, from which it garnered roughly 6,750 individual statements, to be housed permanently at the University of Manitoba’s National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR). The statements figured as important sources in the Commission’s final summary report of June 2015.3
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