In the last two decades, many countries going through transitional justice have established truth commissions. Unlike conventional war tribunals, most truth commissions are established by the local government and local human rights groups. Truth commissions are still a nascent political choice, yet a sizable literature has developed around it, evaluating its potential as a new institution for dealing with the past and moving towards restorative justice. This work examines four major questions debated in the transitional justice literature over truth versus justice: 1) whether or not a truth commission is an valid alternative mechanism to seeking out retributive justice, 2) whether or not truth commissions are the product of political compromise which avoiding justice, 3) if truth commissions can be the agent of new national identity and national unity founded on the principles of universal human rights, and 4) if amnesty can be legitimized. This work aims to determine to what extent the idea itself of truth commissions has been actualized up to now and what lot it may expect in the future, despite incidental political restrictions and difficulties in the political transition. Despite the common assertion that the goals of truth commissions are to bring about official acknowledgment of the past, restore the dignity of the victims, and achieve reconciliation in divided society, this paper does not intend to evaluate the truth commissions in the past based on these criteria; nor does this work intend to argue what truth commissions can resolve in the transitional justice societies. Rather, this paper seeks to uncover what social reaction or human emotions truth commissions in the past have evoked in a divided society. To explore the question, this paper focuses on the distinctive activities and merits of truth commissions from the standpoint of retributive justice and looks into the important implication in the interaction between the victims and the perpetrators, as well as between the audience and those two parties. Roger Errera, a member of the French Conseil d’Etat, stated that “Memory is the ultimate form of justice.” Inspired by the statement, this work argues that justice can be found in the act of pursing truth, remembering it, and responding to those voices from the past.

Paradoxical results on object-recognition delayed nonmatching-to-sample (DNMS) tasks have been found in monkeys and rats that receive either partial, ischemia-induced hippocampal lesions or complete hippocampal ablation. Ischemia results in severe DNMS impairments, which have been attributed to circumscribed CA1 cell loss. However, ablation studies indicate that the hippocampus plays only a minimal role in the performance of the DNMS task. Two hypotheses have been proposed to account for these discrepant findings (Bachevalier & Mishkin, 1989). First, the "hippocampal interference" hypothesis posits that following ischemia, the partially damaged hippocampus may disrupt activity in extrahippocampal structures that are important for object-recognition memory. Second, previously undetected ischemia-induced extrahippocampal damage may be responsible for the DNMS impairments attributed to CA1 cell loss. To test the "hippocampal interference" hypothesis, the effect of partial NMDAinduced lesions of the dorsal hippocampus were investigated on DNMS performance in rats. These lesions damaged much of the same area, the CA1, as did ischemia; but did so without depriving the entire forebrain of oxygen, thereby reducing the possibility of extrahippocampal damage. In Experiment 1, rats were trained on the DNMS task prior to receiving an NMDA-lesion. Postoperatively, these rats reacquired the nonmatching rule at a rate equivalent to controls and were unimpaired in performance at delays up to 300 s. In Experiment 2, naive rats were given NMDA-lesions and then trained on DNMS. These rats acquired the DNMS rule at a rate equivalent to controls and performed normally at delays up to 300 s. These findings suggest that interference from a partially damaged hippocampus cannot account for the ischemia-induced DNMS impairments and that they are more likely produced by extrahippocampal neuropathology. In Experiment 3, rats from the previous study were tested on the Morris water-maze. Compared to sham-lesioned animals, rats with partial lesions of the dorsal hippocampus were impaired in the acquisition of the water-maze task. Thus, subtotal NMDA-lesions of the hippocampus impaired spatial memory while leaving nonspatial memory intact. Mumby et al. (1992b) suggested that the ischemia-induced extrahippocampal damage underlying the DNMS deficits is mediated or produced by the postischemic hippocampus. To test this idea, preoperatively trained rats in Experiment 4 were subject to cerebral ischemia followed within 1hr by hippocampal aspiration lesions. It was hypothesized that ablation soon after ischemia would block the damage putatively produced by the postischemic hippocampus and thereby prevent the development of postoperative DNMS deficits. Unlike "ischemia-only" rats, the rats with the combined lesion were able to reacquire the nonmatching rule at a normal rate and performed normally at delays up to 300 s. Thus, hippocampectomy soon after ischemia eliminated the pathogenic process that lead to ischemia-induced DNMS deficits. Experiment 5 investigated the role of ischemiainduced CA1 cell death as a factor in the production of extrahippocampal neuropathology. Naive rats were given NMDA-lesions of the dorsal hippocampus followed 3 weeks later by cerebral ischemia. If the ischemia-induced CA1 neurotoxicity is responsible for producing extrahippocampal damage then preischemic ablation should attenuate this process and prevent the development of DNMS impairments. This did not occur: Rats with the combined lesion were as impaired as the "ischemia-only" rats in the acquisition of the DNMS task. This suggests that the ischemia-induced pathogenic processes that result in extrahippocampal neuropathology comprise more than CA1 neurotoxicity. The findings presented in this thesis are consistent with the idea that ischemiainduced DNMS deficits in rats are the result of extrahippocampal damage mediated or produced by the postischemic hippocampus. The discussion focuses on three main points: 1) How might the post-ischemic hippocampus be involved in the production of extrahippocampal neuropathology? 2) In what brain region(s) might this damage be occurring? 3) What anatomical, molecular, or functional neuropathology might ischemia produce in extrahippocampal brain regions? The results are also discussed in terms of a specialized role for the hippocampus in mnemonic functions and the recently emphasized importance of the rhinal cortex in object-recognition memory.

This is a research study that explores the kind of pedagogical possibilities that collective remembrance mediated by practices of drama in education, might offer to the work of memory. Under study is a drama-remembrance (an artistic and pedagogical project) that attempts to link significant historical learning with critical remembrance through the classroom drama praxis. Assuming the school as a terrain within which a community of memory is possible, this research is concerned with educational processes that facilitate the understanding of the ‘work of collective memory’. The hypothesis is that through the work of drama framed as a performative practice of remembrance, students can productively explore the work of memory; its functioning, implications and structures. In addition, by manipulating the elements of the art form, it is proposed that students also learn how drama works, its mechanisms and devices. I call this approach “Drama-Remembrance Praxis”, as it constitutes a particular application of theatre to the memory and remembrance framework. This dissertation provides an account of and analyzes key episodes of the research journey of a group of 16 students in a Grade 10 drama class, their drama teacher and myself -a drama artist, researcher and educator- as we collectively explored issues of historical memory through practices of process drama. The setting for this exploration was a project to initiate a drama classroom-based "community of memory" with one class in the Normal-Distrital Maria Montessori School, in Bogotá, Colombia, South America. Participant-researchers worked through questions regarding the public remembrance of the story of the Colombian Afro-descendant Manuel Saturio Valencia, one of last prisoners to be executed by the State before capital punishment was eliminated from Colombia in 1910. As an Afro-descendant, the story of Saturio's life and subsequent execution remains little known in Colombia. Thus at stake in this project was the recovery of forgotten stories, the construction of a more inclusive public memory, and the formation of a critical historical consciousness.

This is a research study that explores the kind of pedagogical possibilities that collective remembrance mediated by practices of drama in education, might offer to the work of memory. Under study is a drama-remembrance (an artistic and pedagogical project) that attempts to link significant historical learning with critical remembrance through the classroom drama praxis. Assuming the school as a terrain within which a community of memory is possible, this research is concerned with educational processes that facilitate the understanding of the ‘work of collective memory’. The hypothesis is that through the work of drama framed as a performative practice of remembrance, students can productively explore the work of memory; its functioning, implications and structures. In addition, by manipulating the elements of the art form, it is proposed that students also learn how drama works, its mechanisms and devices. I call this approach “Drama-Remembrance Praxis”, as it constitutes a particular application of theatre to the memory and remembrance framework. This dissertation provides an account of and analyzes key episodes of the research journey of a group of 16 students in a Grade 10 drama class, their drama teacher and myself -a drama artist, researcher and educator- as we collectively explored issues of historical memory through practices of process drama. The setting for this exploration was a project to initiate a drama classroom-based "community of memory" with one class in the Normal-Distrital Maria Montessori School, in Bogotá, Colombia, South America. Participant-researchers worked through questions regarding the public remembrance of the story of the Colombian Afro-descendant Manuel Saturio Valencia, one of last prisoners to be executed by the State before capital punishment was eliminated from Colombia in 1910. As an Afro-descendant, the story of Saturio's life and subsequent execution remains little known in Colombia. Thus at stake in this project was the recovery of forgotten stories, the construction of a more inclusive public memory, and the formation of a critical historical consciousness.

This thesis is an investigation of memory. Reflective memory demands two things. First, that it might relate and logically position itself in relation to what is absent. Second, that it is to remain open to free repetition for so long as it goes unchallenged by forgetting or correction. Under these structural requests, the ground for an ontological comparison appears: are not these demands also the demands of language? According to Husserl’s Logical Investigations, a sign must, in its hunger for truth and fulfillment, be able both to constitute a relation with the signified, though absent, object and to repeat its sense and meaning over time. Analogously then, memory is like a language insofar as it speaks of the past in its absence and, at the same time, drives forward to its ‘death’, self-effacement, and dissolution; that is, forward into the resolution of truth.

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