Unsettling accounts : neither truth nor reconciliation in confessions of state violence

Focusing on confessions to acts of authoritarian state violence, Leigh A. Payne asks what happens when perpetrators publicly admit or discuss their actions. She contends public confessions do not settle the past, but catalyze contentious debate. She argues debate and public confessions that trigger it are healthy for democratic processes of political participation, freedom of expression, and contestation of political ideas. She draws on interviews, television film, newspaper archives, and books written by perpetrators to analyze confessions of state violence in Argentina, Chile, Brazil, and South Africa. She considers perpetrators' confessions as performance, examining what perpetrators say and what they communicate non-verbally and different ways that perpetrators portray their pasts, whether in terms of remorse or heroism, denial or sadism, or through lies or betrayal--Publisher's description. "A John Hope Franklin Center book"--Page i xvi, 374 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm