The Archival Politics of International Courts

Archives produced by international courts have received little attention in ICJ or IR studies, but this book argues that they contain a significant record of past violence and help to constitute the international community as a particular reality. It offers an interdisciplinary reading of archives, integrates insights from IR, archival science, and post-colonial anthropology, and critically examines the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda's archive to understand how knowledge is produced and contested within the international domain.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 245 pages
Publication date: 16 November 2023
Publisher: Cambridge University Press

The archives produced by international courts have received limited empirical, theoretical, or methodological attention within international criminal justice (ICJ) or international relations (IR) studies. However, as this book argues, these archives hold a substantial record of past violence and also contribute to constituting the international community as a distinct reality. Thus, this book offers an interdisciplinary reading of archives, integrating new insights from IR, archival science, and post-colonial anthropology to establish the link between archives and community formation. It then focuses on the archive of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), providing a critical examination of how knowledge is produced in international courts, offering an account of the type of international community that is imagined within these archives, and establishing the significance of the materiality of archives for understanding how knowledge is produced and contested within the international domain.

Archives produced by international courts have received limited empirical, theoretical, or methodological attention within international criminal justice (ICJ) or international relations (IR) studies. However, as this book argues, these archives hold a substantial record of past violence and also contribute to constituting the international community as a distinct reality. Thus, this book offers an interdisciplinary reading of archives, integrating new insights from IR, archival science, and post-colonial anthropology to establish the link between archives and community formation. It then focuses on the archive of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), providing a critical examination of how knowledge is produced in international courts, offering an account of the type of international community that is imagined within these archives, and establishing the significance of the materiality of archives for understanding how knowledge is produced and contested within the international domain.

Archives produced by international courts have received limited empirical, theoretical, or methodological attention within international criminal justice (ICJ) or international relations (IR) studies. However, as this book argues, these archives hold a substantial record of past violence and also contribute to constituting the international community as a distinct reality. Thus, this book offers an interdisciplinary reading of archives, integrating new insights from IR, archival science, and post-colonial anthropology to establish the link between archives and community formation. It then focuses on the archive of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), providing a critical examination of how knowledge is produced in international courts, offering an account of the type of international community that is imagined within these archives, and establishing the significance of the materiality of archives for understanding how knowledge is produced and contested within the international domain.

ISBN-13: 9781108948838