The Lore of the Laws of War: Textual Constructions of Archetypal Identities in the War on Terrorism.
详细信息
文摘
Since 9/11 a wide range of violent practices including indefinite detention,torture,and targeted killing have been employed by the United States and the "international community" against "international terrorism." Modern laws of war are portrayed as the bright line that distinguishes the "international community" from "unlawful combatants." The threat posed by unlawful combatants has been portrayed as so exceptionally grave that the international community is justified in the transgression of those very laws of war that constitute the distinction between "us" and "them." In consequence the efficacy of modern laws of war to provide humanitarian protections has been cast into doubt and many characterize humanitarian laws of war as obsolete. Existing work on the politics of exception and the exclusion of Guantanamo Bay detainees from US federal law does not frame the problem of the exception in terms of international law. Though many consider the prerequisites for politics of exception absent in the international system,I argue that a dispersed notion of sovereignty and constructivist approaches to law resolve obstacles to considering the exception at the level of the state system. I explore system level exceptional politics through a critical reading of modern laws of war. Rejecting essentialist historical narratives,I first conduct a genealogical study of laws of war from ancient Greece through the Middle Ages. I then conduct a critical reading of three texts from the War on Terrorism； Barack Obamas 2009 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech,John Brennans "The Ethics and Efficacy of the Presidents Counterterrorism Strategy," and Medea Benjamins interruption of John Brennan. I argue that modern narratives of war law venerate codification and textually privilege a "mystical" figure of modern law. This figure empowers a universalized "international community" as laws privileged agent. Violence employed by this archetypal community,even when outside the law,is rendered ethically pure and historically necessary. In consequence modern humanitarian law as a bright line always permits excluded archetypal identities and vast powers of violence are mobilized by the "international community" against discrete individual human bodies who are identified with this excluded archetype,or who simply find themselves in the way.