Description: Focuses on perpetrators of human rights crimes, investigating confessions by human rights violators in contexts of transitional justice in South America and South Africa.
Review Quotes: "This text is productive and can be used in a range of comparative politics, international relations, performance studies, and transitional justice courses of all levels. It contributes valuable methodological insights that are conducive to renovating academia, activist, and policy communities' theoretical engagements with violence. Payne's text encourages the reader to consider deeper theorizations of violence and survival within the frameworks of the state."--Heather M. Turcotte, International Studies Review
"Beyond its potential for underscoring the polemics involved in national reconciliation after state violence, this is a profound work because of its comparative, multidimensional, detailed, and nuanced analysis of what permeates post-conflict societies. Those who will benefit most from this volume are students of peace and conflict studies, practitioners, and general readers. The book is both thought-provoking and engaging in terms of its details and very useful framework."--Earl Conteh-Morgan, American Historical Review "Payne provides a rich and original perspective on these historical processes in Argentina, Chile, Brazil and South Africa through a detailed analysis of the confessions of individuals responsible for past state violence."--Alexander Wilde, A Contracorriente "This book makes a significant contribution to the fields of transitional justice and democratization by examining what happens when the institutional silence and denial of past crimes is broken by individuals. Payne's important point here is that, whatever the motivations of the perpetrator who confesses, the stories open up debate and help challenge the political consensus of supporters of the past repressive regime."--Michael Humphrey, American Journal of Sociology