Chapter 25
In: Sights, Sounds, and Sensibilities of Atrocity Prosecutions
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Abstract
This chapter examines the sounds, sights, and sensibilities of international law during the Cold War. By adopting a sensory lens, this chapter disrupts the common understanding of international law during the Cold War as languishing in a period of hiatus and stagnation. This chapter proceeds through three experiential case studies rooted in a museum, in street protests, and in science fiction literature respectively. This chapter thereby touches upon the episteme (from where do we know what we know about law?) and the place of the senses in that knowledge-base, as well as method (how do the senses present a way to talk, express, experience, and construct law?). This chapter proposes a methodology central to this entire book, namely to expand the conversation about law formation and law enforcement to incorporate moments in time, sensory inputs, and the power of allegory and individual experience. And hereby lies the ‘methodology’ of this book, the methodology of this aesthetic project, through which we aim diversify how international lawyers engage with law while embracing (instead of avoiding) the salience of emotion and the centrality of sentiment.