While communism was proclaimed dead in Eastern Europe around 1989, archives of communist secret services lived on. They became the site of judicial and moral examination of lives, suspicions of treason or 'collaboration' with the criminalized communist regime, and contending notions of democracy, truth, and justice. Through close study of court trials, biographies, media, films, and plays concerning judges, academics, journalists, and artists who were accused of being communist spies in Poland, this critical ethnography develops the notion of moral autopsy to interrogate the fundamental problems underlying global transitional justice, especially, the binary of authoritarianism and liberalism and the redemptive notions of transparency and truth-telling. It invites us to think beyond Eurocentric teleology of transition, capitalist nation-state epistemology and prerogatives of security and property, and the judicialized and moralized understanding of history and politics.
| ISBN: | 9781009653794 |
| Publication date: | 30th October 2025 |
| Author: | Saygun Gökarksel |
| Publisher: | Cambridge University Press |
| Format: | Hardback |
| Pagination: | 350 pages |
| Series: | Cambridge Studies in Law and Society |
| Genres: |
Law and society, sociology of law Politics and government |
While communism was proclaimed dead in Eastern Europe around 1989, archives of communist secret services lived on. They became the site of judicial and moral examination of lives, suspicions of treason or 'collaboration' with the criminalized communist regime, and contending notions of democracy, truth, and justice. Through close study of court trials, biographies, media, films, and plays concerning judges, academics, journalists, and artists who were accused of being communist spies in Poland, this critical ethnography develops the notion of moral autopsy to interrogate the fundamental problems underlying global transitional justice, especially, the binary of authoritarianism and liberalism and the redemptive notions of transparency and truth-telling. It invites us to think beyond Eurocentric teleology of transition, capitalist nation-state epistemology and prerogatives of security and property, and the judicialized and moralized understanding of history and politics.
Moral Autopsy features in the following genres: Law and society, sociology of law, Politics and government
Moral Autopsy is available in Hardback
Moral Autopsy was written by Saygun Gökarksel and published by Cambridge University Press
Moral Autopsy has 350 pages
Yes it is part of Cambridge Studies in Law and Society series
£94.50