Chapter 4-Question

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Referring back to the Long Night Journey into Day, how effective did the Truth and Reconciliation Commission negotiate historical dialectically in intercultural interaction? How did the killers and the families of the victims strick a balance between the past and present?

Chapter 4

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In the chapter, the author mentions the apartheid in South Africa. It reminds me the documentary " Long Night Journey into Day." The series of violence are caused and motivated by political forces. But the more significant underlying case is the historical background. The dominated minority caused the imbalance power between intercultural interactions.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission mission is by bringing the families and the killer together and allowing them to interact. It is a practice of the theory of the contact hypothesis. And the reconciliation also falls into several conditions of contact hypothesis.
First of all, the Strong normative and institutional support for the contact should be provided. TRC holds a reconciliation meeting and with the corporation between institutions, two opponent parties could come together confront the issue in a peaceful manner. Secondly, contact between the groups should be voluntary. In order to solve the issue, he victim parties and the killer parties attempted to compromise and tried to understand each other. Even though the results might not be quit optimistic, they were not being forced to the negotiation. Most of the other conditions also fall into the documentary. The Long Night movie is a great example for us to get a more dimensional prespectives to understand the chapter.
