Chapter 10
In: Sights, Sounds, and Sensibilities of Atrocity Prosecutions
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Abstract
This chapter starts from the premise, shared in the social sciences, that individuals are essentially cultural beings who experience the world in cultural patterns that impact behaviour, including criminal conduct. However, noting a lack of proper attention being paid to culture in determinations of guilt, this chapter employs a sensory metaphor to challenge the existing regime of individual criminal responsibility in international trials. It posits that the legal interpretation of individual moral agency can be understood as light-based. Culture, for its part, can rather be understood as heat-based. As a result, where sight is limited to light-based imaging, heat becomes imperceptible, and so does culture. This chapter then offers an interpretation of the reasons that underpin this invisibility, located in the role of criminal proceedings as spectacles and the broader expressive function of international trials.