Publication of IJGHMI
Epistemologies of Repair: Community Healing, Justice, and Resistance in Post-Violence Societies
Author: Dr. Hugo Ramirez
Open Access | Volume 2 Issue 1 | Jan–Mar 2025
https://doi.org/10.63665/IJGHMI_Y2F1A001
How to Cite:
Dr. Hugo Ramirez, "Epistemologies of Repair: Community Healing, Justice, and Resistance in Post-Violence Societies", International Journal of Global Humanities and Management Insights [IJGHMI], Volume 2, Issue 1 (Jan–Mar 2025), pp. 1–10.
Abstract
Abstract - In post-systemic violence societies, the desire for justice extends beyond decent institutions into the practices of embodied communities to try to heal, remember, and resist. This essay analyses the notion of epistemologies of repair as a lens through which one can explore how knowledge, ethics, and collective resilience are reestablished in the wake of trauma. Based on inter-disciplinary insights of decolonial theory, feminist epistemology, and transitional justice, the research explores how survivors and communities reclaim the power to narrate their own repair stories. In a critical case study of post-conflict contexts in South Africa, Rwanda, and Colombia, the article addresses the question of the intersection of memory, resistance, and moral imagination. It contends that healing is not merely a psychological process but an epistemic one—a reclaiming of suppressed forms of knowing and being. Further, it differs from the constraints of legalistic-institutional frameworks of reconciliation and offers in their place a relational ethics, cultural representation, and communal engagements model. By the emphasis on marginal voices, this article highlights the need to redefine justice not as closure but as an ongoing, communal process of resistance and care in post-violence societies.
Keywords
Epistemologies of repair, community healing, decolonial theory, restorative justice, transitional justice, collective memory, post-violence societies, resistance, moral imagination, relational ethics
Conclusion
A. Synthesis of Key Arguments
The article has touched on the multifaceted concept of epistemologies of repair as both a theoretical tool and a methodological strategy for examining how societies mend moral and social fabrics after collective violence. Through historical, cultural, and structural contexts, we have indicated that repair is not a linear process of closure but a continuous flux of memory, resistance, and communal engagement. Embedded in this case is the understanding that knowledge and justice are inseparable from ethical accountability: healing is about reclaiming silenced epistemologies, restorative dignity, and relational bonds severed by violence. By analysing cultural rituals, narrative, art, and community-based models of justice, the study demonstrates how repair is as much about restoring moral imagination as it is about trauma relief. Epistemologies of repair therefore highlight the relational and ethical dimensions of recovery from violence, showing that communities are producer-knowledge subjects who absorb trauma and transform it into insight, agency, and ethical potential.
B. Future Directions
The applicability of epistemologies of repair cuts across various fields, from peacebuilding to cultural studies, ethics, and transitional justice. For scholars and practitioners of peacebuilding, this paradigm underscores practices based on local agency, relational restoration, and intergenerational knowledge transmission as opposed to the exclusivity of institutional or state mechanisms. In cultural critique, it demands higher awareness of how art, literature, and oral storytelling are epistemic intervention which subverts hegemonic narrative and promotes resilience. Ethically, the model underlines plurality, humility, and responsiveness in imagining interventions or research with survivors and impacted communities. Future scholarship may also explore how transnational networks, new media, and hybrid forms of narrative can continue to extend epistemologies of repair so that moral, historical, and cultural lessons are saved and deployed beyond geographies and generations.References
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