A critique of the international criminal court : The Making of the “International Community” through international criminal prosecutions

Abstract

It is not “the state” but a more diffuse and amorphous power which revitalizes the twin legacies of the state of containment and disciplinary supervision of problematic populations at the global level. The International Criminal Court (ICC) as the current leading institution of both formulating and disseminating the international criminal law discourse is not only part and parcel of this progressively evolving global power but also a constituent agent as well as a product of the so-called international community. One aim of this study is to understand how international crimes become salient in the public sphere and what sort of techniques and procedures are applied to prevent and punish them. The effort of creating and developing more detailed and organized webs and networks to deal with the supposedly rising problem of global insecurity in connection to international crimes is subsequently associated with conditions of global political economy facilitating the establishment and operation of the ICC. Notwithstanding the complicated nature of discursive power enabling resistance besides subjectification, the invasive and deepening support given to the ICC within the framework of the current neoliberal discourse brings about a detrimental vision with regard to the international criminal law discourse. A critique of the ICC drawing on both Foucauldian and Gramscian thought projects the intensifying inequalities through the lenses of the international criminal law discourse embedded in a broader neoliberal discourse.