A Dance of Shadows and Fires: Conceptual and Practical Challenges of Intergenerational Healing after Mass Atrocity

The legacy of mass atrocity—including colonialism, slavery or specific manifestations such as apartheid—continue long after their demise. Applying a temporal intergenerational lens adds complications. We argue that atrocity creates for subsequent generations deep psychological rupture akin to witnessing past atrocities. This moral liability in the present. Healing is process dependent on authenticity (evident discourse and action) with which we address contemporary problems. A further overriding task open social political space divergent voices. Acknowledgement requires more than one-off events institutional responses (the grand apology, truth commission). Rather, acknowledgement has become lived social, cultural reality. Without this acknowledgement, healing, either collectively individually, stymied. much about action (addressing inequalities racism) an act re-imaging created through constant contested re-writing.