Dr Maria Elander researches in the areas of international criminal justice and cultural and feminist legal studies. She is particularly interested in questions of representation, victimhood and encounters between the local, national and international in crime and criminal justice. Her book Figuring Victims in International Criminal Justice was published in 2018 by Routledge Glasshouse and examined how practices of international criminal justice represent victims when representation is understood as a practice of subject formation. She is currently working on visualities of international criminal justice, and on collaborative projects on spatial justice in Cambodia, international criminal law and cinema, and on the spatiotemporalities of transitional justice.
Most discourses on victims in international criminal justice take the subject of victims for gran... more Most discourses on victims in international criminal justice take the subject of victims for granted, as an identity and category existing exogenously to the judicial process. This book takes a different approach. Through a close reading of the institutional practices of one particular court, it demonstrates how court practices produce the subjectivity of the victim, a subjectivity that is profoundly of law and endogenous to the enterprise of international criminal justice. Furthermore, by situating these figurations within the larger aspirations of the court, the book shows how victims have come to constitute and represent the link between international criminal law and the enterprise of transitional justice. The book takes as its primary example the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), or the Khmer Rouge Tribunal as it is also called. Focusing on the representation of victims in crimes against humanity, victim participation and photographic images, the book engages with a range of debates and scholarship in law, feminist theory and cultural legal theory. Furthermore, by paying attention to a broader range of institutional practices, Figuring Victims makes an innovative scholarly contribution to the debates on the roles and purposes of international criminal justice. Maria Elander is a lecturer at La Trobe Law School, Routledge titles are available as eBook editions in a range of digital formats
Across the world, non-state actors are documenting international crimes and creating archives for... more Across the world, non-state actors are documenting international crimes and creating archives for accountability purposes. In this article, we consider how archives and their records are ‘pressed into’ legal service. At a time of wider archive creations, we suggest the archives pertaining to the Khmer Rouge regime (1975-1979) provide insights as a compelling ‘post-accountability’ case of the continuum of archival processes. By examining four Khmer Rouge archives, we demonstrate how records are activated in legal processes across different spacetimes, and how the records themselves ‘(im)press upon’ on the legal process. In these processes, different actors seek to control the narrative of the past through archival holdings. We find that entrepreneurial justice, especially in the crucible of a legal process, can create fierce competition between actors over the economic and social capital inherent in record-keeping that is ultimately detrimental to understanding and pluralising the past.
Abstract
Testimony and genocide films
Techniques
Testimony
Responsibility
... more Abstract Testimony and genocide films Techniques Testimony Responsibility Conclusion: Listening to testimony Acknowledgments Funding ORCID iD Footnotes References Biographies
PDF / ePub
Cite article Share options Information, rights and permissions Metrics and citations
Abstract Genocide films have long contributed to public criminology’s exploration into ethics, responsibility and witnessing after atrocity. Whereas post-Holocaust theorisations of testimony have focused on victim testimony (and its limits), a recent wave of documentary films are instead centering on the perpetrators of atrocity. These are raising the question of how to engage with that shared by a person who experienced an atrocity not as its victim but as its perpetrator. This article examines this question through a close reading of Rithy Panh’s documentary film S21: The Khmer Rouge Killing machine (2003), a film that ‘compare[s] eye-witness accounts’ of a handful of men who all experienced notorious Khmer Rouge security centre S-21 either as its prisoners or its staff. I suggest that the confrontations and the bodily gestures by the former staff in S21 constitute forms of testimony, something which has implications for the understanding of both testimony and responsibility, as well as for the positionality of the spectator. The film, I suggest, provides a way to listen to the experiences of the perpetrators of the atrocity, without diminishing the suffering they caused.
This paper argues that a politics of scale plays a fundamental but uninterrogated role in interna... more This paper argues that a politics of scale plays a fundamental but uninterrogated role in internationalised criminal justice processes such as hybrid tribunals. Scale discourses—producing specific notions of “the international” and “the local”—are so naturalised in these endeavours that their regressive effects remain unacknowledged. Following Annelise Riles’ ground-breaking analysis of the politics of scale in colonial law, and feminist critiques of scale discourse in accounts of globalisation and conflict, we think critically about “the international” and “the local” in a postcolonial and post-conflict justice context. Using the case of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), we specifically examine the operation and effects of discourses of “international standards” and “local ownership”. We argue that denaturalising scale in international criminal justice would serve a wider project to decolonise international law and address the specific forms of disenfranchisement currently enacted by dominant “scales of justice”.
This article addresses legal procedures and the cinematography of film in international criminal ... more This article addresses legal procedures and the cinematography of film in international criminal justice. The examples range across fiction, documentary, and trial film. The concern is with relations of authority and subjectification within the architecture of the courtroom and before the image. It considers procedures of projection, evidential confrontation and the destruction of the image in the era of the witness.
Oxford Research Encylopedias, Criminology and Criminal Justice, 2017
and Keywords It is often stated that it is not possible to completely understand genocide: its ho... more and Keywords It is often stated that it is not possible to completely understand genocide: its horror and suffering defy complete representation. For those not immediately affected by the horror, representations of genocide through photography and film are often the primary form through which genocide is encountered. It is possible to discern two key questions underpinning scholarship that engages with representations of genocide in photography and film: First, to what extent can photos and film document and thereby provide evidence of genocide? One version of this question is linked to that of examining " truths " about genocide—whether genocide occurred and understanding its intricacies. Another leads to questions about the role of photography as evidence and its limits in providing " truths. " The second central question in the scholarship concerns the role that photos and film hold in bearing witness to genocide. Here, the scholarship tends to be framed not so much a question as an impetus to " never forget " or " never again. " During the Khmer Rouge genocide, somewhere between 1.5 and 2.25 million people were killed. While most killings do not meet the legal elements of genocide, the event is nevertheless colloquially known as genocide. Among the most known photographs from the period are the photographs taken at the security center S-21. Today, they stand as representative of the victims of the Khmer Rouge and have appeared at genocide museums, research archives, institutions of art, and as illustrations for various legal claims. The debates that have accompanied these appearances are illustrative of the debates on images of genocide more generally, focusing on, for example, limits of representation, the appropriate place for such photographs. and claims of voyeurism. Numerous films have been made about the Khmer Rouge period, some of which have been major commercial successes, others have been independent documentaries. Films such as The Killing Fields and The Missing Picture can be seen as bearing witness to the genocide, whereas documentaries such as S21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine pose intricate questions about responsibility. Finally, it is noteworthy to pay attention to the way film appears within criminal proceedings, as this sheds light on the different understandings of evidence when the task is to bear witness and assign responsibility.
At the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), the trial against the two survivi... more At the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), the trial against the two surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge charged in Case 002 is about to deal with the 'regulation of marriage'. This is the name given by the ECCC to the Khmer Rouge instigated marriages also known as 'red weddings' or 'forced marriage'. In this symbolically laden case, the charges relating to the marriages stand as the only alleged crime of sexual and gender-based violence after no charges were brought for the many rapes committed in security centres and work cooperatives. As such, the charges have been described as 'the Court's best last chance to contribute to the ever-evolving body of law aimed at better responding to perpetually neglected sexual and other gender-based crimes in times of conflict and atrocity'. In this article, I examine the ways in which the marriages so far have appeared at the ECCC. One aim in writing this is to simply bring to attention what is about to unfold at trial. But in reading the representations of the marriages, the difficulties in prosecuting gender based harms also come into view. Thus, the charges relating to the 'regulation of marriage' raise a question about the limits of the symbolic value in any one trial.
This chapter concerns the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), also known as ... more This chapter concerns the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), also known as the Khmer Rouge Tribunal, a criminal tribunal held in Cambodia with international assistance. Fully operational since 2007, the ECCC tries ‘senior leaders’ and those most responsible for serious crimes committed in Cambodia between April 1975 and January 1979. These dates refer to the infamous historical period of ‘Democratic Kampuchea’, being the name given to the country by the Khmer Rouge during their nearly four-year rule. In this chapter we set out the rationale and legal functioning of the tribunal, before turning to a discussion of the politics and geopolitics of the initial negotiation of the tribunal, as well as its progress to date. Following this, we comment on the historic role played by victims in this legal process – a world first in tribunals of this kind – finishing with a discussion of reparations measures and the contested social and political legacy of the ECCC.
Across the world, non-state actors are documenting international crimes and creating archives for... more Across the world, non-state actors are documenting international crimes and creating archives for accountability purposes. In this article, we consider how archives and their records are ‘pressed into’ legal service. At a time of wider archive creations, we suggest the archives pertaining to the Khmer Rouge regime (1975-1979) provide insights as a compelling ‘post-accountability’ case of the continuum of archival processes. By examining four Khmer Rouge archives, we demonstrate how records are activated in legal processes across different spacetimes, and how the records themselves ‘(im)press upon’ on the legal process. In these processes, different actors seek to control the narrative of the past through archival holdings. We find that entrepreneurial justice (Burgis-Kasthala, 2020), especially in the crucible of a legal process, can create fierce competition between actors over the economic and social capital inherent in record-keeping that is ultimately detrimental to understanding and pluralising the past.
Most discourses on victims in international criminal justice take the subject of victims for gran... more Most discourses on victims in international criminal justice take the subject of victims for granted, as an identity and category existing exogenously to the judicial process. This book takes a different approach. Through a close reading of the institutional practices of one particular court, it demonstrates how court practices produce the subjectivity of the victim, a subjectivity that is profoundly of law and endogenous to the enterprise of international criminal justice. Furthermore, by situating these figurations within the larger aspirations of the court, the book shows how victims have come to constitute and represent the link between international criminal law and the enterprise of transitional justice. The book takes as its primary example the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), or the Khmer Rouge Tribunal as it is also called. Focusing on the representation of victims in crimes against humanity, victim participation and photographic images, the book engages with a range of debates and scholarship in law, feminist theory and cultural legal theory. Furthermore, by paying attention to a broader range of institutional practices, Figuring Victims makes an innovative scholarly contribution to the debates on the roles and purposes of international criminal justice. Maria Elander is a lecturer at La Trobe Law School, Routledge titles are available as eBook editions in a range of digital formats
Across the world, non-state actors are documenting international crimes and creating archives for... more Across the world, non-state actors are documenting international crimes and creating archives for accountability purposes. In this article, we consider how archives and their records are ‘pressed into’ legal service. At a time of wider archive creations, we suggest the archives pertaining to the Khmer Rouge regime (1975-1979) provide insights as a compelling ‘post-accountability’ case of the continuum of archival processes. By examining four Khmer Rouge archives, we demonstrate how records are activated in legal processes across different spacetimes, and how the records themselves ‘(im)press upon’ on the legal process. In these processes, different actors seek to control the narrative of the past through archival holdings. We find that entrepreneurial justice, especially in the crucible of a legal process, can create fierce competition between actors over the economic and social capital inherent in record-keeping that is ultimately detrimental to understanding and pluralising the past.
Abstract
Testimony and genocide films
Techniques
Testimony
Responsibility
... more Abstract Testimony and genocide films Techniques Testimony Responsibility Conclusion: Listening to testimony Acknowledgments Funding ORCID iD Footnotes References Biographies
PDF / ePub
Cite article Share options Information, rights and permissions Metrics and citations
Abstract Genocide films have long contributed to public criminology’s exploration into ethics, responsibility and witnessing after atrocity. Whereas post-Holocaust theorisations of testimony have focused on victim testimony (and its limits), a recent wave of documentary films are instead centering on the perpetrators of atrocity. These are raising the question of how to engage with that shared by a person who experienced an atrocity not as its victim but as its perpetrator. This article examines this question through a close reading of Rithy Panh’s documentary film S21: The Khmer Rouge Killing machine (2003), a film that ‘compare[s] eye-witness accounts’ of a handful of men who all experienced notorious Khmer Rouge security centre S-21 either as its prisoners or its staff. I suggest that the confrontations and the bodily gestures by the former staff in S21 constitute forms of testimony, something which has implications for the understanding of both testimony and responsibility, as well as for the positionality of the spectator. The film, I suggest, provides a way to listen to the experiences of the perpetrators of the atrocity, without diminishing the suffering they caused.
This paper argues that a politics of scale plays a fundamental but uninterrogated role in interna... more This paper argues that a politics of scale plays a fundamental but uninterrogated role in internationalised criminal justice processes such as hybrid tribunals. Scale discourses—producing specific notions of “the international” and “the local”—are so naturalised in these endeavours that their regressive effects remain unacknowledged. Following Annelise Riles’ ground-breaking analysis of the politics of scale in colonial law, and feminist critiques of scale discourse in accounts of globalisation and conflict, we think critically about “the international” and “the local” in a postcolonial and post-conflict justice context. Using the case of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), we specifically examine the operation and effects of discourses of “international standards” and “local ownership”. We argue that denaturalising scale in international criminal justice would serve a wider project to decolonise international law and address the specific forms of disenfranchisement currently enacted by dominant “scales of justice”.
This article addresses legal procedures and the cinematography of film in international criminal ... more This article addresses legal procedures and the cinematography of film in international criminal justice. The examples range across fiction, documentary, and trial film. The concern is with relations of authority and subjectification within the architecture of the courtroom and before the image. It considers procedures of projection, evidential confrontation and the destruction of the image in the era of the witness.
Oxford Research Encylopedias, Criminology and Criminal Justice, 2017
and Keywords It is often stated that it is not possible to completely understand genocide: its ho... more and Keywords It is often stated that it is not possible to completely understand genocide: its horror and suffering defy complete representation. For those not immediately affected by the horror, representations of genocide through photography and film are often the primary form through which genocide is encountered. It is possible to discern two key questions underpinning scholarship that engages with representations of genocide in photography and film: First, to what extent can photos and film document and thereby provide evidence of genocide? One version of this question is linked to that of examining " truths " about genocide—whether genocide occurred and understanding its intricacies. Another leads to questions about the role of photography as evidence and its limits in providing " truths. " The second central question in the scholarship concerns the role that photos and film hold in bearing witness to genocide. Here, the scholarship tends to be framed not so much a question as an impetus to " never forget " or " never again. " During the Khmer Rouge genocide, somewhere between 1.5 and 2.25 million people were killed. While most killings do not meet the legal elements of genocide, the event is nevertheless colloquially known as genocide. Among the most known photographs from the period are the photographs taken at the security center S-21. Today, they stand as representative of the victims of the Khmer Rouge and have appeared at genocide museums, research archives, institutions of art, and as illustrations for various legal claims. The debates that have accompanied these appearances are illustrative of the debates on images of genocide more generally, focusing on, for example, limits of representation, the appropriate place for such photographs. and claims of voyeurism. Numerous films have been made about the Khmer Rouge period, some of which have been major commercial successes, others have been independent documentaries. Films such as The Killing Fields and The Missing Picture can be seen as bearing witness to the genocide, whereas documentaries such as S21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine pose intricate questions about responsibility. Finally, it is noteworthy to pay attention to the way film appears within criminal proceedings, as this sheds light on the different understandings of evidence when the task is to bear witness and assign responsibility.
At the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), the trial against the two survivi... more At the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), the trial against the two surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge charged in Case 002 is about to deal with the 'regulation of marriage'. This is the name given by the ECCC to the Khmer Rouge instigated marriages also known as 'red weddings' or 'forced marriage'. In this symbolically laden case, the charges relating to the marriages stand as the only alleged crime of sexual and gender-based violence after no charges were brought for the many rapes committed in security centres and work cooperatives. As such, the charges have been described as 'the Court's best last chance to contribute to the ever-evolving body of law aimed at better responding to perpetually neglected sexual and other gender-based crimes in times of conflict and atrocity'. In this article, I examine the ways in which the marriages so far have appeared at the ECCC. One aim in writing this is to simply bring to attention what is about to unfold at trial. But in reading the representations of the marriages, the difficulties in prosecuting gender based harms also come into view. Thus, the charges relating to the 'regulation of marriage' raise a question about the limits of the symbolic value in any one trial.
This chapter concerns the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), also known as ... more This chapter concerns the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), also known as the Khmer Rouge Tribunal, a criminal tribunal held in Cambodia with international assistance. Fully operational since 2007, the ECCC tries ‘senior leaders’ and those most responsible for serious crimes committed in Cambodia between April 1975 and January 1979. These dates refer to the infamous historical period of ‘Democratic Kampuchea’, being the name given to the country by the Khmer Rouge during their nearly four-year rule. In this chapter we set out the rationale and legal functioning of the tribunal, before turning to a discussion of the politics and geopolitics of the initial negotiation of the tribunal, as well as its progress to date. Following this, we comment on the historic role played by victims in this legal process – a world first in tribunals of this kind – finishing with a discussion of reparations measures and the contested social and political legacy of the ECCC.
Across the world, non-state actors are documenting international crimes and creating archives for... more Across the world, non-state actors are documenting international crimes and creating archives for accountability purposes. In this article, we consider how archives and their records are ‘pressed into’ legal service. At a time of wider archive creations, we suggest the archives pertaining to the Khmer Rouge regime (1975-1979) provide insights as a compelling ‘post-accountability’ case of the continuum of archival processes. By examining four Khmer Rouge archives, we demonstrate how records are activated in legal processes across different spacetimes, and how the records themselves ‘(im)press upon’ on the legal process. In these processes, different actors seek to control the narrative of the past through archival holdings. We find that entrepreneurial justice (Burgis-Kasthala, 2020), especially in the crucible of a legal process, can create fierce competition between actors over the economic and social capital inherent in record-keeping that is ultimately detrimental to understanding and pluralising the past.
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Testimony and genocide films
Techniques
Testimony
Responsibility
Conclusion: Listening to testimony
Acknowledgments
Funding
ORCID iD
Footnotes
References
Biographies
PDF / ePub
Cite article
Share options
Information, rights and permissions
Metrics and citations
Abstract
Genocide films have long contributed to public criminology’s exploration into ethics, responsibility and witnessing after atrocity. Whereas post-Holocaust theorisations of testimony have focused on victim testimony (and its limits), a recent wave of documentary films are instead centering on the perpetrators of atrocity. These are raising the question of how to engage with that shared by a person who experienced an atrocity not as its victim but as its perpetrator. This article examines this question through a close reading of Rithy Panh’s documentary film S21: The Khmer Rouge Killing machine (2003), a film that ‘compare[s] eye-witness accounts’ of a handful of men who all experienced notorious Khmer Rouge security centre S-21 either as its prisoners or its staff. I suggest that the confrontations and the bodily gestures by the former staff in S21 constitute forms of testimony, something which has implications for the understanding of both testimony and responsibility, as well as for the positionality of the spectator. The film, I suggest, provides a way to listen to the experiences of the perpetrators of the atrocity, without diminishing the suffering they caused.
Testimony and genocide films
Techniques
Testimony
Responsibility
Conclusion: Listening to testimony
Acknowledgments
Funding
ORCID iD
Footnotes
References
Biographies
PDF / ePub
Cite article
Share options
Information, rights and permissions
Metrics and citations
Abstract
Genocide films have long contributed to public criminology’s exploration into ethics, responsibility and witnessing after atrocity. Whereas post-Holocaust theorisations of testimony have focused on victim testimony (and its limits), a recent wave of documentary films are instead centering on the perpetrators of atrocity. These are raising the question of how to engage with that shared by a person who experienced an atrocity not as its victim but as its perpetrator. This article examines this question through a close reading of Rithy Panh’s documentary film S21: The Khmer Rouge Killing machine (2003), a film that ‘compare[s] eye-witness accounts’ of a handful of men who all experienced notorious Khmer Rouge security centre S-21 either as its prisoners or its staff. I suggest that the confrontations and the bodily gestures by the former staff in S21 constitute forms of testimony, something which has implications for the understanding of both testimony and responsibility, as well as for the positionality of the spectator. The film, I suggest, provides a way to listen to the experiences of the perpetrators of the atrocity, without diminishing the suffering they caused.