Present-oriented reconciliation and reparative futures in the making – The case of Rodeemos el Diálogo in Colombia

Abstract

Today, policymakers and practitioners are encouraged to see reconciliation as a future- oriented process. While liberal peace paradigms conceive of reconciliation as something that lies ahead of us, achievable and measurable in linear processes, I contest teleological notions of reconciliation by drawing on evolutionary theory and neuroscience. I contend that reconciliation is a present-oriented process that cannot be produced through long-term planning and measured in log-frames, but instead requires unleashing the human brain's capacity for wonder and awe. Over the last ten years, Anglo-Colombian peacebuilding organisation Rodeemos el Diálogo has organised peace breakfasts, non-workshops, and memory initiatives, I argue that this is a form of present-oriented reconciliation, which keeps the imagination focused on reparative futures, and is nurtured by efforts that reframe the past. New identities emerge through imperfect collective processes committed to ending the recycling of violence and mending relations in the present. Present-oriented reconciliation cannot be measured or controlled; it can only be lived and experienced by being fully present in the unfolding of the universe, as the Tao Te Ching suggested almost three thousand years ago.