Christiane Wilke | Carleton University (original) (raw)
Papers by Christiane Wilke
Forthcoming in: Alexandra Moore and James Dawes (editors), Technologies of Human Right Representation (SUNY Press,). , 2022
How do US military investigations of airstrikes that resulted in civilian casualties make sense o... more How do US military investigations of airstrikes that resulted in civilian casualties make sense of the violence under scrutiny? This essay argues that the investigations are extensions of the violence they review. It shows ways in which civilians who are recognized in other reports remain "unseen" or "unrecognized" in US military investigations. Analyzing the reports, the essay argues that the investigations reveal a "decorative" use of IHL: the investigations presume, but do not query, compliance with IHL.
The 1923 Draft Rules on Aerial Warfare proposed regulations on aerial bombing. These Rules were a... more The 1923 Draft Rules on Aerial Warfare proposed regulations on aerial bombing. These Rules were also the first text intended to become an international treaty that mentioned civilians as a specific category of non-combatants. The civilian emerges in international law at the precise moment when they are about to be bombed.
The article analyzes the relationship between technologies, legal techniques, and the articulation of the civilian status in the 1920s. It shows that civilian status was racially and spatially circumscribed and that civilians were conscripted into aiding the targeting process by making themselves "sufficiently visible" to the eyes in the sky.
What does it mean to be responsible, to be held responsible, or to claim responsibility? How are ... more What does it mean to be responsible, to be held responsible, or to claim responsibility? How are responsibility and irresponsibility ascribed in political and judicial decisions? This chapter examines contentions over responsibility for the enforced disappearance of thousands of people during the 1976-1982 Argentine military dictatorship. I argue that the trajectory of the trials (and amnesty measures) can be better understood if we pay attention to the performative work that assumptions and ascriptions of responsibility do. Responsibility norms shape politico-legal subjects, and subjects claim and reject responsibility in accordance with their understandings of personhood, authority, and agency. In these proceedings, responsibility was frequently claimed and celebrated as an attribute of military masculinity.
This article examines the politics of 'seeing' civilians in Afghanistan with a focus on the 2009 ... more This article examines the politics of 'seeing' civilians in Afghanistan with a focus on the 2009 Kunduz air strike. Drawing on the literature on professional vision and professional knowledges, I ask how divergences in the 'ways of seeing' between different professional communities can be explained, and how they are resolved in practice. 'Seeing,' I argue, is based on talking. The vocabularies with which we describe the world and understand our relationships shape how we 'see'. As a consequence, Afghans gathered around a truck can appear an 'immediate threat' or not -- depending on the ideological prisms at work. The article suggests that we need to treat professional vision as necessarily contested and examine how professionals are socialized into accepting one way of seeing as valid. Seeing is based on talking, and we need to talk about how we see (violence).
How do NATO officers see civilians in Afghanistan? The paper focuses on the contested counts of c... more How do NATO officers see civilians in Afghanistan? The paper focuses on the contested counts of casualties, especially civilian victims, after the 2009 Kunduz air strike. Drawing on studies of visualities in war, photography, and the social construction of the civilian, the chapter argues that civilians are not simply 'seen' but produced through 'siting prisms' that include military visual technologies.
The Journal of Modern African Studies, 2015
The chapter traces the travels of one model of criminal responsibility from Germany to Argentina,... more The chapter traces the travels of one model of criminal responsibility from Germany to Argentina, back to Germany, back to Argentina and other Latin American countries (focus on Peru) and the International Criminal Court (ICC). It elaborates on the insights from the SLS article and adds a significant section on the uses and transformations of Roxin's model in Peru.
This paper traces the invocations of the 'Rechtsstaat' (rule of law) in post-unification Germany.... more This paper traces the invocations of the 'Rechtsstaat' (rule of law) in post-unification Germany. It argues that East Germany is consistently understood as a place in which the rule of law is absent and from which one cannot criticize the rule of law. West Germany, in contrast, appears as the embodiment of the rule of law. The chapter traces these patterns to the postwar conceptualizations of the rule of law by Gustav Radbruch.
This conference presentation starts tracing the emergence of the term 'civilian' in U.S. legal di... more This conference presentation starts tracing the emergence of the term 'civilian' in U.S. legal discourse 1900-1920. It concludes that there was a diversity of contexts in which the term was used and asks questions about the legacy of these racialized imaginaries of civilianhood.
How do legal norms travel, spread, and change along the way? This article investigates the travel... more How do legal norms travel, spread, and change along the way? This article investigates the travels of one model of criminal responsibility for state violence as part of the global project of transitional justice. Claus Roxin’s model was first published in West Germany 1963 in order to address impunity for Nazi crimes, was not applied in its intended context, made its judicial debut in Argentina in 1985, had a comeback in Germany in 1994, traveled throughout Latin America, and was taken up at the International Criminal Court. This case study leads to three conclusions about the travel of legal concepts. First, the appeal of theoretical concepts has much to do with the context in which they are used. Second, traveling keeps concepts alive and changes them. Third, transitional justice and responsibility practices have become global and transnationalized in ways that highlight broader global inequalities and transnational hierarchies.
Jens Meierhenrich and Devin Pendas, ed., Political Trials: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (Cambridge University Press, 2016 forthcoming)
How does criminal responsibility for state violence matter? This paper shows that in the interpla... more How does criminal responsibility for state violence matter? This paper shows that in the interplay between courts, the President and Congress in Argentina in the 1980s, definitions of responsibility were understood as mechanisms for regulating trials. At the same time, ascriptions and performances of responsibility, obedience, and disobedience took on lives of their own as the officers who were interpellated as having been responsible in the past tried to work on crafting stories, responses, and public identities in response to the trials.
This article analyzes the presence of the past in a particular site: when German courts tried for... more This article analyzes the presence of the past in a particular site: when German courts tried former East German judges for judicial injustices, the (failed) trials of Nazi judges were often present in the background. I argue that we can best account for these partial presences if we understand them as ghosts. The article analyzes the work of these ghosts and the effects they had on the justice of the court proceedings.
Kritische Justiz, Sep 15, 2013
This editorial introduces the special section Critical Inheritance: National Socialism, Law, and ... more This editorial introduces the special section Critical Inheritance: National Socialism, Law, and Memory in the journal Kritische Justiz, issue 3, 2013, co-edited by Lena Foljanty and me.
We briefly survey the history of the legal profession's engagement with its past, recognize the important role that the journal Kritische Justiz itself has played in the debate, and discuss new questions and approaches to the question of the legacy of National Socialism in German law and the legal profession.
Law and Critique, Jan 1, 2010
How do memorials shape who we think we are? And how are our identities involved when we debate, c... more How do memorials shape who we think we are? And how are our identities involved when we debate, create, and interact with memorials? This essay engages in a conversation with scholarship on intersectional identities and memorial practices in Berlin. Intersectionality scholarship, with its roots in US critical race feminism, has much to offer for thinking about the complexity of identities, yet it does not consider the role of memory, time, and temporality. The scholarship on memory and memorials, in turn, does not sufficiently consider the complexity of identities of those who are memorialized and of those who visit memorials. The essay asks how three different monuments for Nazi victims in Berlin allow for or facilitate the memory of complex identities. The example of the Monument for the Persecuted Homosexuals shows that memorial practices can be crucial in contemporary identity politics and social movements. The essay calls for a more self-reflexive approach to the role of identities and complexity in memorial scholarship and practice.
NMT: Die Nuernberger Militaertribunale zwischen Geschichte, Gerechtigkeit und Rechtschoepfung, ed. Kim C. Priemel and Alexa Stiller (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2013)
Résumé: Les procès de Nuremberg constituent le fondement du droit criminel international contempo... more Résumé: Les procès de Nuremberg constituent le fondement du droit criminel international contemporain. Néanmoins, ces procès sont rarement étudiés dans un contexte social et conceptuel plus large. Cet article examine le contexte ainsi que le rôle du concept de «civilisation» tel qu'utilisé dans le cas de US v. Altstoetter, c'est-à-dire le procès de 1947 des juges et administrateurs judiciaires nazis à Nuremberg.
Forthcoming in: Alexandra Moore and James Dawes (editors), Technologies of Human Right Representation (SUNY Press,). , 2022
How do US military investigations of airstrikes that resulted in civilian casualties make sense o... more How do US military investigations of airstrikes that resulted in civilian casualties make sense of the violence under scrutiny? This essay argues that the investigations are extensions of the violence they review. It shows ways in which civilians who are recognized in other reports remain "unseen" or "unrecognized" in US military investigations. Analyzing the reports, the essay argues that the investigations reveal a "decorative" use of IHL: the investigations presume, but do not query, compliance with IHL.
The 1923 Draft Rules on Aerial Warfare proposed regulations on aerial bombing. These Rules were a... more The 1923 Draft Rules on Aerial Warfare proposed regulations on aerial bombing. These Rules were also the first text intended to become an international treaty that mentioned civilians as a specific category of non-combatants. The civilian emerges in international law at the precise moment when they are about to be bombed.
The article analyzes the relationship between technologies, legal techniques, and the articulation of the civilian status in the 1920s. It shows that civilian status was racially and spatially circumscribed and that civilians were conscripted into aiding the targeting process by making themselves "sufficiently visible" to the eyes in the sky.
What does it mean to be responsible, to be held responsible, or to claim responsibility? How are ... more What does it mean to be responsible, to be held responsible, or to claim responsibility? How are responsibility and irresponsibility ascribed in political and judicial decisions? This chapter examines contentions over responsibility for the enforced disappearance of thousands of people during the 1976-1982 Argentine military dictatorship. I argue that the trajectory of the trials (and amnesty measures) can be better understood if we pay attention to the performative work that assumptions and ascriptions of responsibility do. Responsibility norms shape politico-legal subjects, and subjects claim and reject responsibility in accordance with their understandings of personhood, authority, and agency. In these proceedings, responsibility was frequently claimed and celebrated as an attribute of military masculinity.
This article examines the politics of 'seeing' civilians in Afghanistan with a focus on the 2009 ... more This article examines the politics of 'seeing' civilians in Afghanistan with a focus on the 2009 Kunduz air strike. Drawing on the literature on professional vision and professional knowledges, I ask how divergences in the 'ways of seeing' between different professional communities can be explained, and how they are resolved in practice. 'Seeing,' I argue, is based on talking. The vocabularies with which we describe the world and understand our relationships shape how we 'see'. As a consequence, Afghans gathered around a truck can appear an 'immediate threat' or not -- depending on the ideological prisms at work. The article suggests that we need to treat professional vision as necessarily contested and examine how professionals are socialized into accepting one way of seeing as valid. Seeing is based on talking, and we need to talk about how we see (violence).
How do NATO officers see civilians in Afghanistan? The paper focuses on the contested counts of c... more How do NATO officers see civilians in Afghanistan? The paper focuses on the contested counts of casualties, especially civilian victims, after the 2009 Kunduz air strike. Drawing on studies of visualities in war, photography, and the social construction of the civilian, the chapter argues that civilians are not simply 'seen' but produced through 'siting prisms' that include military visual technologies.
The Journal of Modern African Studies, 2015
The chapter traces the travels of one model of criminal responsibility from Germany to Argentina,... more The chapter traces the travels of one model of criminal responsibility from Germany to Argentina, back to Germany, back to Argentina and other Latin American countries (focus on Peru) and the International Criminal Court (ICC). It elaborates on the insights from the SLS article and adds a significant section on the uses and transformations of Roxin's model in Peru.
This paper traces the invocations of the 'Rechtsstaat' (rule of law) in post-unification Germany.... more This paper traces the invocations of the 'Rechtsstaat' (rule of law) in post-unification Germany. It argues that East Germany is consistently understood as a place in which the rule of law is absent and from which one cannot criticize the rule of law. West Germany, in contrast, appears as the embodiment of the rule of law. The chapter traces these patterns to the postwar conceptualizations of the rule of law by Gustav Radbruch.
This conference presentation starts tracing the emergence of the term 'civilian' in U.S. legal di... more This conference presentation starts tracing the emergence of the term 'civilian' in U.S. legal discourse 1900-1920. It concludes that there was a diversity of contexts in which the term was used and asks questions about the legacy of these racialized imaginaries of civilianhood.
How do legal norms travel, spread, and change along the way? This article investigates the travel... more How do legal norms travel, spread, and change along the way? This article investigates the travels of one model of criminal responsibility for state violence as part of the global project of transitional justice. Claus Roxin’s model was first published in West Germany 1963 in order to address impunity for Nazi crimes, was not applied in its intended context, made its judicial debut in Argentina in 1985, had a comeback in Germany in 1994, traveled throughout Latin America, and was taken up at the International Criminal Court. This case study leads to three conclusions about the travel of legal concepts. First, the appeal of theoretical concepts has much to do with the context in which they are used. Second, traveling keeps concepts alive and changes them. Third, transitional justice and responsibility practices have become global and transnationalized in ways that highlight broader global inequalities and transnational hierarchies.
Jens Meierhenrich and Devin Pendas, ed., Political Trials: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (Cambridge University Press, 2016 forthcoming)
How does criminal responsibility for state violence matter? This paper shows that in the interpla... more How does criminal responsibility for state violence matter? This paper shows that in the interplay between courts, the President and Congress in Argentina in the 1980s, definitions of responsibility were understood as mechanisms for regulating trials. At the same time, ascriptions and performances of responsibility, obedience, and disobedience took on lives of their own as the officers who were interpellated as having been responsible in the past tried to work on crafting stories, responses, and public identities in response to the trials.
This article analyzes the presence of the past in a particular site: when German courts tried for... more This article analyzes the presence of the past in a particular site: when German courts tried former East German judges for judicial injustices, the (failed) trials of Nazi judges were often present in the background. I argue that we can best account for these partial presences if we understand them as ghosts. The article analyzes the work of these ghosts and the effects they had on the justice of the court proceedings.
Kritische Justiz, Sep 15, 2013
This editorial introduces the special section Critical Inheritance: National Socialism, Law, and ... more This editorial introduces the special section Critical Inheritance: National Socialism, Law, and Memory in the journal Kritische Justiz, issue 3, 2013, co-edited by Lena Foljanty and me.
We briefly survey the history of the legal profession's engagement with its past, recognize the important role that the journal Kritische Justiz itself has played in the debate, and discuss new questions and approaches to the question of the legacy of National Socialism in German law and the legal profession.
Law and Critique, Jan 1, 2010
How do memorials shape who we think we are? And how are our identities involved when we debate, c... more How do memorials shape who we think we are? And how are our identities involved when we debate, create, and interact with memorials? This essay engages in a conversation with scholarship on intersectional identities and memorial practices in Berlin. Intersectionality scholarship, with its roots in US critical race feminism, has much to offer for thinking about the complexity of identities, yet it does not consider the role of memory, time, and temporality. The scholarship on memory and memorials, in turn, does not sufficiently consider the complexity of identities of those who are memorialized and of those who visit memorials. The essay asks how three different monuments for Nazi victims in Berlin allow for or facilitate the memory of complex identities. The example of the Monument for the Persecuted Homosexuals shows that memorial practices can be crucial in contemporary identity politics and social movements. The essay calls for a more self-reflexive approach to the role of identities and complexity in memorial scholarship and practice.
NMT: Die Nuernberger Militaertribunale zwischen Geschichte, Gerechtigkeit und Rechtschoepfung, ed. Kim C. Priemel and Alexa Stiller (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2013)
Résumé: Les procès de Nuremberg constituent le fondement du droit criminel international contempo... more Résumé: Les procès de Nuremberg constituent le fondement du droit criminel international contemporain. Néanmoins, ces procès sont rarement étudiés dans un contexte social et conceptuel plus large. Cet article examine le contexte ainsi que le rôle du concept de «civilisation» tel qu'utilisé dans le cas de US v. Altstoetter, c'est-à-dire le procès de 1947 des juges et administrateurs judiciaires nazis à Nuremberg.
Course outline/syllabus for 4th year undergraduate class on transitional justice. The focus is on... more Course outline/syllabus for 4th year undergraduate class on transitional justice. The focus is on Canada and the relationship between transitional justice and settler colonialism. A secondary focus is on understanding the Canadian and South African transitional justice policies in comparison.
Reading List for my new graduate course on human rights. Carleton University, Winter 2017. LAWS 5... more Reading List for my new graduate course on human rights. Carleton University, Winter 2017. LAWS 5903.Z
Canadian Journal of Law and Society, 2019
Air strikes are the signature modality of violence used by NATO militaries, and civilian casualti... more Air strikes are the signature modality of violence used by NATO militaries, and civilian casualties from NATO airstrikes are common. Few airstrikes have been adjudicated in court. When victims have been successful in bringing NATO aerial violence to the attention of courts, they lost their cases. This paper examines two clusters of litigation for airstrikes: the ICTY and ECtHR adjudication of the 1999 NATO airstrikes on Yugoslavia, and responses by German courts to the 2009 NATO airstrike near Kunduz. In both sets of cases, courts construed their jurisdiction to the exclusion of the airspace taken up by the bombers. Where jurisdiction was not questionable, courts approved the military's way of seeing that found it hard to see, imagine, or expect civilians on the ground.
The 1923 Draft Rules on Warfare proposed regulations on aerial bombardment. They also mark the fi... more The 1923 Draft Rules on Warfare proposed regulations on aerial bombardment. They also mark the first time that a text intended to be turned into a treaty would mention the status of the civilian. The civilian comes into international legal existence at the precise moment they are about to be bombed.
The article analyzes the 1923 Draft Rules as well as previous scholarly discussions for the contours of the civilian status, their understanding of aerial technologies, and the legal techniques for regulating the encounters between bombs and civilians. The status of the civilian appears racially and spatially circumscribed. Civilians were not merely expected to remain passive, but to actively aid the targeting process by making civilian infrastructure "sufficiently visible" to the eyes in the sky.
Air strikes are the signature form of violence used by NATO militaries acting alone or in coaliti... more Air strikes are the signature form of violence used by NATO militaries acting alone or in coalitions. They rely on sophisticated technologies of vision, navigation, and violence. Despite claims to ever more " smart bombs " resulting in " precision " strikes, air strikes with increasingly larger bombs kill persons who don't take part in hostilities.1 And while other methods of using bombs – improvised explosive devices (IEDs) or suicide bombing – are almost universally condemned, the status of aerial bombing is much more ambiguous in the public imagination and in legal judgment. In this presentation, I analyze the responses by European courts to two sets of NATO bombings: the 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia that has been brought to the attention of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) and the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (OtP ICTY) and one specific 2009 air strike in Afghanistan that was litigated in German courts. Spoiler alert: no one was indicted, and the victims did not get compensation. On the basis of my reading of these decisions, I suggest that two forms of legal technicalities are crucial in the decisions by the courts and prosecutors: first, the drawing of jurisdictional boundaries that exclude the airspace taken up by the bombers and the ground on which the victims stood when they were killed.