Humanities and Social Sciences Colloquium - Daniel Leese

The Politics of Historical Justice after the Death of Mao Zedong

How do states and societies cope with the legacies of injustices and state crimes? This question has attracted enormous scholarly and political attention during the past two decades. Research has oftenbeen framed by the concept of “transitional justice” that denotes various types of judicial or non-judicial approaches to address past human rights abuses. Underlying most studies is a normative decision to analyze transitions from dictatorship to democracy only. Yet how are we to make sense of the politics of historical justice that took place in the People’s Republic after the death of Mao Zedong? How were previous injustices dealt with under state socialism? The talk will present results of my project on how the Chinese Communist Party dealt with legacies of the Mao era. It will also discuss the difficulties of doing research in an adverse political environment and showcase the digital archive built as part of the project.