Briony Jones - University of Warwick will be holding a research seminar on Seeking a ‘Just Justice’: Discursive Strategies of Resistance to Transitional Justice in Côte d’Ivoire . The seminar will begin with lunch at 12:30 and will start at 1pm in S2.12.

This chapter analyses the discursive strategies of resistance of actors in Côte d’Ivoire and the Ivorian diaspora who self-identify as resisters against the state-sanctioned transitional justice process. Building on the work of Stef Jansen on discursive strategies of resistance in Serbia, the analysis presented here discusses to what extent these voices of resistance represent a search for a ‘just justice’. Semi-structured interviews with politicians, civil society representatives, diaspora activists, staff of international organisations and the local population highlight the ways in which the current transitional justice process is a focal point for continued contestations over the country’s complex history of socio-political crises related to citizenship, autochthony and economic collapse, as well as the meaning of justice today. The discursive strategies of resistance by those who self-identify as resisting the transitional justice process link together the unjust oppressor of an illegitimate President supported by the former colonial power of France with the just cause of defending Ivorian sovereignty and democracy. The analysis concludes that these discursive strategies suggest alternative policies and in fact echo many of the criticisms made by more ‘moderate’ voices, but raises questions about the ability of researchers to maintain a moral and legal position on past violence when working on and with those who resist transitional justice.