War Crimes and the Ruin of Law

Abstract

This article explores the manner in which the logic of the war crimes trial authorizes and legitimates the practice of war more generally. It proceeds from the recognition that all war involves injuring or the threat of injuring, and that articulating particular types of injuring as especially problematic takes as one of its effects the normalization of injuring in war more generally. The article queries the function of law through an analysis of the state of exception that is produced in the identification of 'war crimes'. It argues that the logic of excision, which produces the political conditions in which war crimes become possible is structurally replicated through the excision of the perpetrator in the context of the trial. It also explores the manner in which the narrative strategies of what Elaine Scarry calls 'active redescription' associated with war render most war-related deaths and injuries politically invisible. The article concludes with a number of strategies for rethinking what it means to account for violence.