Washington University Jurisprudence Review

Article Title

Subject to Surveillance: Genocide Law As Epistemology of the Object

Authors

Tawia Ansah, New England Law | Boston

Publication Title

Washington University Jurisprudence Review

Abstract

This Article analyzes the discourse on genocide from two angles: the legal genesis of the term in the 1940s and subsequent legal "capture" of the concept of genocide, and a recent socio-political critique of the legal meaning of genocide. The article suggests that a cross-disciplinary critique of genocidal violence not only describes the event and the victim, but also produces knowledge of them as discursive "objects." The key issue is the "surveillance" role of the outside observer, also produced as such in discursive relation to the object. At stake in this view of genocide law as epistemology is the capacity to reimagine law in order to help us make hard choices about how, whether, and when to intervene in events that may be characterized as genocide.

Recommended Citation

Tawia Ansah, Subject to Surveillance: Genocide Law As Epistemology of the Object, 3 Wash. U. Jur. Rev. 31 (2011).
Available at: https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/law_jurisprudence/vol3/iss1/3