Seminar lecture:

Dr. Itamar Mann

University of Haifa, the Minerva Center for the Rule of Law under Extreme Conditions, Faculty of Law

Hangman's Perspective: Three Genres of Critique following Eichmann

Wednesday, May 1st, 2019 between 14:15-15:45

Room 1013, Terrace building, University of Haifa*

Participation is free 
Lecture will be streamed live on YouTube 

Abstract

This paper identifies three perspectives for thinking and criticizing mass atrocity trials, through an analysis of three non-legal sources. First, through an engagement with Hannah Arendt’s writing on the Eichmann trial, it discusses the rule of law genre of critique, in which mass atrocity trials are constantly suspected of becoming “show trials.” Second, it turns to Shoshana Felman’s work on the same trial, to identify a genre of critique premised on an experience of catharsis, in which the trauma of atrocity’s victims is alleviated (constituting post-atrocity political community). Third, it analyzes The Hangman, a 2010 film about Eichmann’s executioner, who suffered trauma following the hanging the convict, illustrating the unacknowledged risks of wielding the violence of criminal justice. Based on this “hangman’s perspective”, the chapter suggests that mass atrocity trials must be assessed in light of the questions: what transnational allocation of such risks do such trials rely upon? What preexisting inequalities, economic, ethnic, and other, determine the roles different people will end up playing in trials? At times, the need to enforce criminal justice makes some of us seem worthy of sacrifice.

Copy of the paper is available here

* The Center is located at ground level of the Terrace building (Hamadrega). See map
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