About RECONFEM

Since the landmark UN Security Council Resolution 1324 of the year 2000, attention has been paid to the need to integrate women and their perspectives in conflict-resolution and peace-building processes. The project Spaces of Reconciliation: Post-Conflict Interventions in Anglophone Women's Writing aims to foreground the responses of women writers to the policies and debates involved in reconciliation, and to shed light on the complexities of post-conflict situations from a feminine perspective, intersectional and transnational.

By reconciliation we refer to processes of transitional justice in the aftermath of conflict and violations of human rights, where a society progresses towards the recognition of past wrongs, social reconstruction and peace. The origin of conflict may lie in political, interethnic violence and repression, as in the cases of South Africa and other African nations, or in the grievances suffered by indigenous populations in the colonial past in settler societies as Australia or Canada (e.g.: the Stolen Generations, Indian Residential Schools).  We approach the literary text as a potential space of reconciliation where the challenges and contradictions of reconciliatory processes are played out, but also where ideas and initiatives conducive to social reconstruction are creatively generated. We adopt an agonistic approach to reconciliation not as an event, but as an open process, a space of relationality and dialogism, an arena of negotiation and encounter with the other, not devoid of conflict, but ultimately a space guided by the ethics of care with its emphasis on human interdependence, respect of difference, empathy and responsibility towards the other. We will focus on a representative sample of transitional contexts in the Anglophone world, including a selection of African countries, Australia and Canada. At the same time, we intend to widen this geographical span to include relevant but less paradigmatic cases.  

This project aims to be a thorough investigation into the interplay of women's writing and reconciliatory discourses in post-conflict societies, methodologically framed within the realms of transitional justice, memory studies and the feminist ethics of care. The work carried out within the project includes the publication of an edited volume featuring the contributions of international scholars and a final international seminar or symposium, among other events and activities.