Abstract
In Brazil, the set of administrative, judicial and legal measures, and the application of compensatory activities, educative actions and politics of memory adopted in order to come to terms with the violence perpetrated by the State agents during the civil-military dictatorship (1964-1985) encompass compensating and educational actions, as well as politics of memory and truth carried out through the efforts of the Special Commission for the Dead and Missed Opponents, the Amnesty Commission and the National Truth Commission. What is questioned here is if the measures of transitional justice implemented by the commissions of reparation and truth may assume a therapeutic meaning, promoting the process of working-through the trauma resultant from the atrocities perpetrated by the agents of repression. The narratives produced by the commissions are submitted to an inquiry that takes into account the working-through process of such traumatic experiences in the context in which the Brazilian State puts in place measures for the recognition, reparation, reconciliation, clarification and acknowledgement of the crimes of repression. It is agreed that the deficiencies identified in the Brazilian transitional process inhibit the debate and social commitment, hinder the recognition of violence, hold back the symbolisation and the collective apprehension of its representations and take their terms to oblivion or revision. Therefore, the representations produced by the measures of transitional justice do not promote the social process of working-through the traumatic legacies of the violence committed by the agents of repression during the civil-military dictatorship in Brazil. These conditions keep hindering that the work of memory of such violence emerges as the process of working-through the legacies of its trauma.
Keywords:
Transitional justice; Dictatorship; Brazil; Trauma; Working-through