Sensing Justice: Legal Atrocity Archives, Plurality, and Memory in Fractured Societies - Benjamin Thorne

The University of Edinburgh Criminology Reading Group Seminar Series 2021/2022 presents:

Sensing Justice: Legal Atrocity Archives, Plurality, and Memory in Fractured Societies

Dr Benjamin Thorne, Associate Lecturer in Criminology, Arden University

International criminal courts and tribunals generate, through their extensive and often long legal processes, diverse archives relating to conflict/atrocity. This material includes witness testimonies, photographs, videos, audio, letters and diaries. However, the potential value of this material for post conflict communities to aid plural dialogue about contested pasts and intergenerational transmission of memory has received little attention. Taking the archive of the international criminal tribunal for Rwanda as its case study, this presentation firstly frames legal atrocity archives as ‘hauntings’ and will then outline an original conceptual framework using insights from memory studies (Wang, Ricoeur) and sensory criminology theory. It uses this lens to conceptualise the plural stories within legal archival material to interrogate whether these can contribute to plural dialogue about past events and contribute to the intergenerational transmission of memories. In doing so it also investigates the interplays between memory and the human senses, and how the senses interact and contribute towards shaping experiences of interacting with legal atrocity archives and their materials: what atrocity archive material means, 'looks' and 'feels' like to individuals and for Other people. To help illustrate these conceptual arguments, an example of research through artistic expression will be used, engaging with Benjamins work-in-progress audio and visual performative video which explores the interplays between the researcher, memory-senses, archive material and local communities. For more information, please refer to the Sensory Criminology Website

Benjamin completed his PhD in Law Studies (2020) Legal Witnessing and Mass Human Rights Violations: Remembering Atrocities. Benjamin is an interdisciplinary scholar with main areas of interest within socio-legal studies, transitional justice, and social and cultural theory. Currently a central focus is memory, transitional justice, and legal atrocity archives. More generally, Benjamin is interested in questions around visuals, sounds, as well as the broader sensory field, in how people experience crime, law and justice, particular in the international context; and the co-existence of spaces of law and faith in the aftermath of mass violence. Previously he was a Visiting Researcher at the University of Oxford Centre or Socio-Legal Studies, and the Aegis Trust Peace Education Team.

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This event will take place for around an hour with an opportunity for Q&A and discussion towards the end. The event is free for all and will take place on Zoom. Please register to get the zoom link!

Any questions, don’t hesitate to get in touch!

We look forward to seeing you!

- The Criminology Reading Group

 

 

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