CAICL 2 day event - 'To become Kesselwäscher ... Victims as Victimizers, the Victimizer as Victim: Transcending International Criminal Law's Binaries'
4:30pm - 6:00pm /
Wednesday 18th November 2015
Type: Seminar /
Category: Research
- Rachel Barrett
- Suitable for: All welcome - please register
- Admission: Free to all registered: http://www.eventbrite.com/e/to-become-kesselwascher-victims-as-victimizers-the-victimizer-as-victim-transcending-international-tickets-19377238843
- Book now
Add this event to my calendar
Click on "Create a calendar file" and your browser will download a .ics file for this event.
Microsoft Outlook: Download the file, double-click it to open it in Outlook, then click on "Save & Close" to save it to your calendar. If that doesn't work go into Outlook, click on the File tab, then on Open & Export, then Open Calendar. Select your .ics file then click on "Save & Close".
Google Calendar: download the file, then go into your calendar. On the left where it says "Other calendars" click on the arrow icon and then click on Import calendar. Click on Browse and select the .ics file, then click on Import.
Apple Calendar: The file may open automatically with an option to save it to your calendar. If not, download the file, then you can either drag it to Calendar or import the file by going to File >Import > Import and choosing the .ics file.
Speaker - Professor Mark Drumbl, Class of 1975 Alumni Professor of Law Washington & Lee University School of Law, will be giving a talk titled 'To become Kesselwäscher ... Victims as Victimizers, the Victimizer as Victim: Transcending International Criminal Law's Binaries'. Prof Drumbl was one of the first scholars to speak in a critical register on international criminal justice, so the CAICL cluster is particularly pleased to welcome him. Please join us in Seminar Room 4, Rendall Building, 4.30pm-6pm. There will be a reception after the talk.
***Bio***
Mark Drumbl is the Class of 1975 Alumni Professor at Washington & Lee University, School of Law, where he also serves as Director of the University's Transnational Law Institute. Professor Drumbl's research and teaching interests include public international law, global environmental governance, international criminal law, post-conflict justice, and transnational legal process. He is author of the critically acclaimed Reimagining Child Soldiers in International Law and Policy (Oxford University Press, 2012) and Atrocity, Punishment, and International Law (Cambridge University Press, 2007) which received the 2007 Book of the Year Award by the International Association of Criminal Law (U.S. national section).
***Outline of talk***
Primo Levi’s writing memorializes the day-to-day in Auschwitz. Levi humanizes the inmates and presents them in their many conflicting dimensions. Schepschel, for example, stole from the factory in cahoots with Moischl. But Schepschel condemned him. And so Moishl was flogged. Schepschel did so because he aspired to curry favor in his quest to become a Kesselwäscher – a “vat washer” – with the easier life that such a promotion portended.
Levi’s texts – along with those of other Holocaust survivors such as Viktor Frankl, Ka-Tzetnik, and Imre Kertész – are populated by many Schepschels. These autobiographical ethnographers of camp life heap great scorn upon these Schepschels; all the while, however, they refrain from denouncing or judging them. The finesse of these accounts vivifies the reality that, in times of atrocity, the divide between victimizers and victims blurs.
International criminal law, on the other hand, tends to eschew any such permeability. The iconography of the criminal law is one of finality and category – guilty or innocent, victim or perpetrator, oppressor or oppressed, right or wrong, powerful and powerless. While the criminal law’s status as the iconic manner in which to deliver accountability for atrocity depends upon its crimped vocabulary, the point remains that this pronounced reductionism struggles to narrate how and through whom atrocity actually occurs.
These challenges now percolate in the trial of a formerly abducted child soldier, Dominic Ongwen, pending before the International Criminal Court. Ongwen rose well beyond Kesselwäscher – he became a Brigade Commander of northern Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army. He deployed great violence not only to survive but also to thrive.
This paper inquires how, if at all, criminally prosecuting Ongwen might narrate his coming of age in a fashion that can educate the public about child soldering, agency, and the malleability of power. While retaining some optimism for the ability of trials to deliver such rich granularity, this paper also lays bare international criminal law’s structural and strategic impulses. These impulses nourish international criminal law’s existence but simultaneously undermine its ability to speak in other than the crudest of registers.
***Bio***
Mark Drumbl is the Class of 1975 Alumni Professor at Washington & Lee University, School of Law, where he also serves as Director of the University's Transnational Law Institute. Professor Drumbl's research and teaching interests include public international law, global environmental governance, international criminal law, post-conflict justice, and transnational legal process. He is author of the critically acclaimed Reimagining Child Soldiers in International Law and Policy (Oxford University Press, 2012) and Atrocity, Punishment, and International Law (Cambridge University Press, 2007) which received the 2007 Book of the Year Award by the International Association of Criminal Law (U.S. national section).
***Outline of talk***
Primo Levi’s writing memorializes the day-to-day in Auschwitz. Levi humanizes the inmates and presents them in their many conflicting dimensions. Schepschel, for example, stole from the factory in cahoots with Moischl. But Schepschel condemned him. And so Moishl was flogged. Schepschel did so because he aspired to curry favor in his quest to become a Kesselwäscher – a “vat washer” – with the easier life that such a promotion portended.
Levi’s texts – along with those of other Holocaust survivors such as Viktor Frankl, Ka-Tzetnik, and Imre Kertész – are populated by many Schepschels. These autobiographical ethnographers of camp life heap great scorn upon these Schepschels; all the while, however, they refrain from denouncing or judging them. The finesse of these accounts vivifies the reality that, in times of atrocity, the divide between victimizers and victims blurs.
International criminal law, on the other hand, tends to eschew any such permeability. The iconography of the criminal law is one of finality and category – guilty or innocent, victim or perpetrator, oppressor or oppressed, right or wrong, powerful and powerless. While the criminal law’s status as the iconic manner in which to deliver accountability for atrocity depends upon its crimped vocabulary, the point remains that this pronounced reductionism struggles to narrate how and through whom atrocity actually occurs.
These challenges now percolate in the trial of a formerly abducted child soldier, Dominic Ongwen, pending before the International Criminal Court. Ongwen rose well beyond Kesselwäscher – he became a Brigade Commander of northern Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army. He deployed great violence not only to survive but also to thrive.
This paper inquires how, if at all, criminally prosecuting Ongwen might narrate his coming of age in a fashion that can educate the public about child soldering, agency, and the malleability of power. While retaining some optimism for the ability of trials to deliver such rich granularity, this paper also lays bare international criminal law’s structural and strategic impulses. These impulses nourish international criminal law’s existence but simultaneously undermine its ability to speak in other than the crudest of registers.