Introduction: Looking and Listening, Seeing and Hearing

Authors

Mark A. Drumbl, Washington and Lee University School of LawFollow

Document Type

Essay

Publication Title

Temple International & Comparative Law Journal

Publication Date

2023

Abstract

This issue of the Temple Journal of International and Comparative Law hosts a symposium about Randle DeFalco's cutting-edge book, Invisible Atrocities: The Aesthetic Biases of International Criminal Justice. In it, DeFalco glances at glimpses of the metastasis of mass atrocity. He sees these metastatic processes-these movements-as simultaneously fast and slow. By fast, he refers to obvious and instantly horrific acts of physical violence. These are massacres, attacks, pogroms, and wanton destruction. But DeFalco also discerns that mass violence implicates slower movements and less directly causal harms: these are famine, starvation, corruption, impoverishment, mental anguish, and aid interference.' The movements of atrocity, therefore, occur through multiple gears and at variable velocities. All gears, however, come into play when atrocity normalizes and industrializes. And there may be no clear relationship between the vector (or velocity) of violence and the harm it produces.

Recommended Citation

Mark A. Drumbl, Introduction: Looking and Listening, Seeing and Hearing, 37 Temp. Int'l & Comp. L.J. 1 (2023).