Introduction: Outlines of a New Politics of Memory in the Middle East.

While the historical trajectories of emergent attempts to deal with legacies of political violence in the Arab Middle East differ widely, certain commonalities can help us understand this new field across the region. On the one hand, evidence presented in this volume suggests that grassroots movements have to some extent succeeded in ending the politics of pretence and denial that long dominated Arab states. On the other hand, particular political groupings and media monopolize discourses of a universally applicable process of truth and reconciliation in a way that consciously makes use of international idioms, but effectively obfuscates other aspects of social and political justice and reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]