Discursive fields and subject positions: becoming 'victim', 'offender' and 'community' in restorative justice

This article offers an understanding of the concepts of 'victim', 'offender' and 'community' in restorative justice, looking at their discursive origins. Following a short literature overview, the paper conceptualises, in a Foucauldian perspective, restorative justice and 'mainstream' criminal justice as discursive fields with specific cultural, social, political and academic underpinnings. It then comparatively investigates the emergence of the concepts of 'victim', 'offender' and 'community' from the dynamics that characterise the discursive fields. The final part of the work is devoted to sketching out how those concepts are 'set in motion' by a given restorative procedure (victim-offender mediation) and how they might impact the participants' subjective identities. Some implications and recommendations are drawn up in order to enrich the restorative practitioners' sensitivity toward subjectivation processes and to stimulate a constructivist and discourse-oriented approach to the field.