The Past is a Different Country, They Do Things Differently There: International Investigations in Space and Time (Geography and History)

Description

Invited talks at the workshop "Opening the Black Box of International Criminal Investigations: Challenges of Culture and Practice"

Summary:
Natural stumbling blocks for any 'fact-seeker' on mass atrocity violence – for global historians and international criminal investigators alike – are time and space. Apparent as these two interlocked pitfalls may seem, they remain largely neglected within the larger transitional justice industry. Cosmopolitan litigators and arbiters of atrocity crimes desire investigators to garner the impossible, namely: "undoubtable", understandable, and static data from far back and from far abroad. Such ideal 'global(ised) evidence' – rooted in Western legal culture, epistemology, and fact positivism – is, however, a rarity in most parts of the real world. What makes atrocity inquiries even more onerous are natural processes of 'source weathering'. The more remote in time and/or space, the more challenging it becomes to canvass, comprehend, and interpret "time-and-culture-specific" contexts of violence with a level of certainty that passes legal burdens of proof. Drawing from experiences in Rwanda and Afghanistan, I will discuss how historians navigate the problems, pitfalls, and (potential) promises of probing mass violence in 'distant' temporal and spatial environments.

Period	13 Jun 2024
Degree of Recognition	International