Spectating genocide: Rethinking the bystander at the intersection of international criminal law and criminology

Abstract

This article examines the fragile dialogue between international criminal law and criminology in their treatment of genocide. While international criminal law codifies individual responsibility and modes of participation, criminology analyses the social and structural conditions that enable mass violence. At their intersection, a recurring triad of victim, perpetrator, and bystander organises responsibility and explanation, yet its boundaries remain unstable. Building on recent visual and sensory turns, the article argues that genocide cinema reorganises this shared terrain at the level of perception. Drawing on Jacques Rancière’s concepts of the distribution of the sensible and the emancipated spectator, it reframes the bystander as a notion of spectatorship rather than solely a historical or sociological role. Through a close reading of Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest (2023), the analysis shows how cinematic form redistributes visibility and displaces violence into sound, unsettling the alignment of victim, perpetrator, and bystander. The film relocates the question of inaction into the spectator’s perceptual position. In doing so, the instability of the bystander emerges as a bridge between doctrinal responsibility, structural complicity, and contemporary regimes of global spectatorship.