Carnivalizing Reconciliation

Criminal justice inquiries may be the most historically dramatic means for coming to terms with traumatic legacies, but it is in the more subtle social and cultural processes of "memory work" that most individuals encounter historical reconciliation in practice. This book analyzes, within the realms of national literature and film, recent Australian and Canadian attempts to reconcile with Indigenous populations in the wake of forced child removal. As Hanna Teichler demonstrates, their systematic emphasis on the subjectivity of the victim is "carnivalesque," temporarily overturning discursive hierarchies. Such fictions of reconciliation venture beyond simplistic narratives and identities defined by victimization, offering new opportunities for confronting painful histories.