8 - Conclusion

Summary

This concluding chapter offers some thoughts on the broader implications of the arguments made in this book. It specifically considers how the book’s contention that a dominant “atrocity aesthetic” influences how international crimes are recognized and conceptualized relates to broader debates concerning the role of international law and international criminal justice, such as those related to questions of determinacy, power, sovereignty, and Global North–South relations. It also considers how aesthetic biases may affect the actual purposes served by international criminal justice as a global project, raising the concerning possibility that one unstated purpose international criminal prosecutions serve is to provide cathartic relief to distant publics exposed to the ugliness of atrocity violence, rather than focusing on the interests and needs of those most directly affected by such violence. It concludes with a call to abandon outdated understandings of atrocities as horrific and spectacular eruptions of violence, and to reconsider what international crimes are in light of the many forms atrocity violence may actually take.