This talk will be held with Deborah Posel, professor of sociology at the University of Cape Town and founding director of the Institute for Humanities in Africa. She will discuss issues relating to transitional justice: much attention has been focused on its repertoires of ‘reconciliation’, as opposed to more punitive versions of justice. Less interest has been accorded to the modes of expertise appropriate to the task. She will reflect on the determination and production of expertise in the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which looms large in the field of transitional justice as one of the most closely scrutinised and globally influential truth commissions. She finds that this reveals an incipient identity politics at play in the TRC – tensely articulated with its normative touchstone of non-racialism.