Dr John Reynolds recently participated in the Pan-European Conference on International Relations organised by the European International Studies Association.
Dr Reynolds presented a paper in a stream on Law & Violence, together with Dr Michelle Farrell of the School of Law & Social Justice, University of Liverpool. The paper, entitled ‘Words of Violence: Discourses of Abuse in Crisis, Conflict and States of Emergency’, is part of a larger collaborative project on law and language. Below is the abstract for the paper.
In this paper, we will discuss the intimate connection between international law and violence through the lens of language. We will consider, first, how the language of human rights and international law is managed, utilised and co-opted by States in the construction and performance of crisis, conflict or states of emergency, in order to legitimise the use of violence against individuals or populations. We ask: how does the language and rhetoric of international law contribute to the construction of bodies without rights – the native, the other, the barbarian, the savage, the terrorist – persons who can be tortured or killed? We will examine, second, how the discourse of human rights and international law is employed to justify or mask acts of violence and abuse; how situations are framed or categorised in particular rhetorical terms so as to precipitate particular legal/policy responses as “natural”. Crucially, we will scrutinize the sanitisation of war, violence and abuse through the choice of adjective, adverb and metaphor. What are we to understand from the ubiquitous attachment of the descriptor “surgical” to the rendering of a drone strike, for example?
Full details of the conference are available online.
John is a lecturer at Maynooth University Department of Law where he lectures in World Trade Law, International Human Rights, and Economic, Social and Cultural Rights on the Department's LLM (Global Legal Studies) and LLM (International Justice) programmes.