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The Decolonial Turn of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) Archives

  • Journal of Korean Society of Archives and Records Management
  • Abbr : JRMASK
  • 2026, 26(3), pp.115~131
  • DOI : 10.14404/JKSARM.2026.26.3.115
  • Publisher : Korean Society of Archives and Records Management
  • Research Area : Interdisciplinary Studies > Library and Information Science > Archival Studies / Conservation
  • Received : July 13, 2026
  • Accepted : July 28, 2026
  • Published : August 31, 2026

Kyong Rae Lee 1

1한신대학교 대학원 기록관리(협) 강사

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This study analyzes the mechanisms of records governance under South Africa’s apartheid regime and examines the dynamics and structural limitations of the decolonial turn undertaken by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) archives during the transition to democracy. Under the apartheid government, state archives functioned as a material apparatus of governance through which racial discipline and surveillance were enforced. Emerging in the wake of the 1994 regime transition, the TRC archives initiated a radical experiment―responding to Derrida’s “archive fever” and drawing on Verne Harris’s philosophy of the “archive for justice”―that displaced the state’s monopoly over archival sovereignty in favor of subaltern voices. By injecting the victims’ oral testimonies and everyday memories into the fissures of bureaucratic, textual narratives, the TRC reconfigured the archive into a public commons where historical trauma and justice collide. However, beneath this monumental achievement, decolonial dilemma and a new archival gap coexisted, both catalyzed by institutional distortions and political compromises during the transfer of power. By simultaneously reflecting on the archival achievements and limitations of the TRC archives, this study transcends the quantitative opening of unearthing hidden documents to raise the critical question of archival sovereignty: who possesses the right to record, and whose suffering is validated as public memory? Ultimately, this research aims to expand the practical horizons of the decolonial archive in socially reconstructing the temporalities of state violence.

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