Torture, Necessity and Existential Politics

Kutz, Christopher

doi:10.2139/ssrn.870602

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…47 Similarly, Angela Northman MP, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Africa, who rejects Benson's view, relies on deontological ethics, grounded in Kantian philosophy (by focusing on humanistic reasoning and refusing to sacrifice Alia for an external goal). 48 The UK Attorney-General, George Matherson, joins her view, but for a different reason, grounded in a realist outlook on Western political interests: 'If Al-Shabaab kill eighty people, we win the propaganda war. If we kill one girl, they do.'…”

Section: Actors and Subjects Of Ihl: North South And Tech A) North An...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Drone-Cinema, Data Practices, and the Narrative of IHL

Krebs¹

2022

ZaöRV / HJIL

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This article explores how advanced military technologies and data practices reshape and reassert a particular, Western-centric, narrative of International Humanitarian Law (IHL). Analysing the dissemination of this narrative through popular culture, with a focus on he 2015 British thriller Eye in the Sky, I explore how the representation of IHL data practices reaffirms a humanitarian narrative of IHL. As a popular culture product – and one that is embraced by senior IHL experts and professionals – Eye in the Sky reflects and participates in the ethical, legal, and political debates about advanced military technologies, and presents mundane data practices as a system of knowledge production through which IHL exercises its jurisdiction over facts, people, time, and space. In particular, the article analyses how Eye in the Sky’s representations of IHL’s data practices strengthen and reinforce a particular IHL narrative, which is consistent with Western countries’ narrative about their existing bureaucracies of killing. Based on Interdisciplinary analysis of socio-legal studies (SLS), Science and Technology Studies (STS), and culture and media literature, this article answers the following three questions: (i) who is given the power to speak IHL (and who is not)? (ii) to whom is IHL speaking? and (iii) how do data practices shape IHL’s jurisdiction? The article concludes that Eye in the Sky speaks international law through the voices of drone-owning nations, and is directed to their mass publics, legitimising data-centred violence. At the same time, it disguises normative choices as inevitable, and erases African decision-makers, communities, and perspectives.

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Section: Actors and Subjects Of Ihl: North South And Tech A) North An...mentioning

confidence: 99%