Date: 2021
Type: Book
The problems of genocide : permanent security and the language of transgression
Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2021
MOSES, A. Dirk, The problems of genocide : permanent security and the language of transgression, Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2021
- https://hdl.handle.net/1814/69867
Retrieved from Cadmus, EUI Research Repository
Genocide is a problem: not only the terrible fact of mass death, but also how the relatively new idea and law of genocide organises and distorts our thinking about civilian destruction. Taking the normative perspective of civilian immunity from military attack, this book argues that the implicit hierarchy of international law, atop which sits genocide as the "crime of crimes," blinds us to other types of humanly caused civilian death, like bombing cities, the "collateral damage" of missile and drone strikes, blockades, and sanctions. In other words, talk of genocide functions ideologically to detract from systematic violence against civilians perpetrated by governments. The Problems of Genocide also contends that this violence is the consequence of "permanent security" imperatives: the striving of states, and armed groups seeking to found states, to make themselves invulnerable to threats. To solve the problems of genocide, this book proposes replacing it with permanent security, which should be criminalized.
Table of Contents:
-- Introduction
-- Part I - The Language of Transgression
-- Part II - Permanent Security
-- Part III - The Language of Transgression, Permanent Security, and Holocaust Memory
-- Index
Cadmus permanent link: https://hdl.handle.net/1814/69867
Full-text via DOI: 10.1017/9781316217306
ISBN: 9781316217306; 9781107103580
Publisher: Cambridge University Press