The right to decolonial memory as a form of reparation in Colombia

Abstract

This project lies at the intersection of critical legal theory, biopolitics, and memory studies, addressing current debates on sovereignty, violence, and law. While European critical theory, particularly the works of Agamben, Schmitt, and Menke, has extensively theorized the relationship between law and violence, these frameworks often presuppose a uniform application of sovereign power globally. In Colombia, paramilitary groups exercised de facto sovereignty over specific territories, establishing exceptional legal procedures that normalized massacre, torture, and the suspension of rights. These practices defy comprehensive explanation through a purely European model of the state of exception. The main problem this research addresses is the absence of a conceptual framework that accounts for the convergence of colonial legacies, weak state sovereignty, and legal violence in the Global South, resulting in what is conceptualized here as sovereign massacre. Hence, the proposal to generate a right to decolonial memory focuses on finding the relationships between the colonial legacy and certain massacres that occurred in Colombia, allowing for a deeper understanding of the right to truth, rehabilitation, reparation, and guarantees of non-repetition.