Nonchalance and the Fascist Gaze, in Reframing Transitional Justice: Innovations, Boundaries, and Refractions (Mark A. Drumbl & Kirsten J. Fisher eds., 2026)
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Description
The destruction of cultural property is an international war crime, and a push has arisen to make it a crime against humanity. The destruction of cultural property is also central to transitional justice and liberation efforts. These dualities tend to be reconciled by aesthetic judgement on what is ‘ugly’ cultural property, namely, cultural property linked to oppressors, abusers, and tyrants. It is only cultural property that is worthy of protection whose destruction is seen as criminal. In many jurisdictions—the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and throughout Central and Eastern Europe—‘ugly’ cultural property is toppled, removed from public spaces, sequestered, destroyed, and renamed. These include Confederate monuments, statuary of settler colonialism, busts of Lenin and Stalin, Nazi relics, etc. Yet this is not the only way to interface with ‘ugly’ cultural property. Italy offers a different approach. This is an approach of nonchalant integration to Mussolini-era monuments and iconography. Through the use of visual ethnography, this paper phenomenologically narrates this approach through the eyes of one outsider.
ISBN
9781041097747
Publication Date
2026
Publisher
Routledge
Disciplines
Criminal Law | Cultural Heritage Law | Human Rights Law | International Law | Law | Legal History | Military, War, and Peace
Repository Citation
Mark A. Drumbl, Nonchalance and the Fascist Gaze, in Reframing Transitional Justice: Innovations, Boundaries, and Refractions (Mark A. Drumbl & Kirsten J. Fisher eds., 2026),
https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/fac_books/252