Resignifying the Colonial Past: Historical Commissions and the Limits of Transitional Justice

This article examines what state-sponsored historical commissions reveal about the temporal and epistemic limitations of transitional justice in addressing colonial legacies, and how they may open pathways toward a more decolonial approach. These commissions – though not inherently decolonial – can unsettle key assumptions of the transitional justice paradigm. In foregrounding history as site of intervention, they carry out a process of resignification that reinterprets dominant historical narratives, and trace structural continuities between colonial rule and present-day inequalities, thereby fostering recognition of colonial injustices. This article contributes to debates on decolonising transitional justice by centring its historiographical and epistemic dimensions.