vailable in:
Fadel Abdulghany
The impact of collective violence is not limited to fracturing a single dimension of collective life; rather, it extends to damaging relationships between individuals, the institutions that make cooperation predictable, the psychological capacities of those who suffered from it, and the symbolic frameworks through which groups define themselves.
Therefore, recovery cannot follow a single path. Nevertheless, transition processes in the aftermath of atrocities often gravitate toward a single axis: invoking pre-conflict cohesion or a shared destiny as the primary restorative tool. This orientation, which can be described as the “discourse of unity”—defined here as top-down calls for collective belonging that precede and replace the recognition of harm—is an approach that does not commensurate with the scale of the damage.
When it replaces structural work, reconciliation built upon it fails at the first serious test. Lasting recovery depends on an organized process of recognition, reconstruction through routine practices, and the addressing of trauma, not on the mere affirmation of the existence of a group whose prior conditions for existence were destroyed by violence.
The first aspect of failure is the failure of recognition. A person deprived of their status does not regain it simply because the political society affirms that all its members belong to it. Recognition is a dyadic process, requiring acknowledgment from a specific other party—usually the party that denied this status—across three distinct spheres: physical integrity, legal standing, and public esteem. Axel Honneth’s analysis of these spheres carries profound significance for post-atrocity politics.
What discourses of unity offer is not recognition, but rather inclusion into a collective self-description, and in the worst cases, symbolic recognition, where the position of the perpetrator is obscured within a “we” that is reaffirmed as a single, integrated entity. Structural healing cannot bypass this dyadic act. It is essential to name what happened, to whom it happened, and in whose name it happened. Until this is achieved, the state has addressed the aggrieved party without recognizing them.
The second failure is the failure of trust. Recognition is only achieved if the social environment in which it occurs is predictable enough to make it credible. Trust between former adversaries is not a feeling stirred by discourse; it is a deep-seated expectation formed by repetition, the stability of institutional behavior, and the accumulation of ordinary encounters that do not turn into violence.
However, violent conflict destroys precisely this capacity for predictability. A verbal affirmation of a shared identity cannot rebuild it, because trust operates at a deeper level than that of rhetoric. It is built in government office queues, in mixed classrooms, and in courts that issue the same judgment in every similar case. This is unattractive work, but it constitutes the infrastructure upon which recognition depends. Where this infrastructure is absent, declarations of unity do not bridge the gap; they merely expose it.
The third failure is the failure of timing. Large-scale traumas disrupt narrative coherence, chronological sequence, and the attribution of meaning; declarative political language does not harmonize with them. As Judith Herman demonstrated in her research, recovery passes through a specific sequence: safety, then remembrance and mourning, and finally reconnection with ordinary life. Each stage depends on the one before it, and none can be bypassed.
On a collective level, this sequence indicates that a society emerging from systematic state violence cannot reach reconciliation before ensuring safety and institutionally absorbing loss. Yet, discourses of unity often attempt to accelerate stages that society has not yet completed. They declare reconnection before mourning, and mourning before safety, confusing declaration with achievement.
The fourth failure is the failure of narrative. Recovery after atrocities is often described as the restoration of a shared story, and this is true to a large extent, but the type of story is what makes the difference. A narrative that insists on continuity with the pre-conflict era, and on the essential sameness of the society in what it did and what it suffered, closes the door to the only honest narrative: one in which rupture and loss are integrated into a changing collective identity.
Healing is not a return to a former self, but a transformation held together by narrative. This narrative is only effective if the voice of the affected is a fundamental element of it. Collective storytelling of this kind, being polyphonic, is in itself a symbolic and legitimate act. Therefore, the disagreement with the discourse of unity is not about the importance of collective narrative, but about who writes it and when it is written.
The natural objection here is that symbolic practices—such as commemorations, the renaming of public spaces, and shared civil celebrations—are all part of the recovery process, and that ignoring them would leave post-conflict politics without much-needed tools. This objection is correct, and there is nothing in the arguments against the discourse of unity that denies it.
However, the difference lies in the order and interconnection. Symbolic practices that come after legal redress, the recognition of reparations, and the normalization of life reinforce the work that other institutions have already begun. In contrast, a discourse of unity that precedes these steps and replaces them does not reinforce them, but substitutes itself for them. The difference here is also structural.
True recovery requires specific actors with clear obligations: courts that convict perpetrators, truth commissions that prepare an official record, reparations bodies that distribute compensation, and psychosocial support programs that accompany survivors on the path to recovery. The discourse of unity requires none of that. Its political appeal lies, precisely, in the fact that it is free of cost.
Originally published on the Syrian newspaper Al-Thawra website (in Arabic)
