Conclusion

Abstract

Abstract The conclusion revisits our justice paradox: how can justice be both fluid and contested and still successfully enlist victims in the project of international criminal justice? I resolve the paradox by showing how justice contestations in The Hague and the ideological subjection of victims in Kenya and Uganda are two sides of the same coin: on one side is the visible liberal imaginary in which everyone can express different ideas about justice, on the other side the hidden reality in which people are ideologically subjected to work for justice; on one side is the courtroom in which justice is deliberated, on the other side the field in which justice is produced; on one side is the equal realm of market exchange, on the other the unequal realm of production and social reproduction. The International Criminal Court (ICC) has indeed become a victims’ court, I argue, though not as victims’ advocates had envisioned in 1998. The ICC creates victims who not only work for the Court’s institutional and ideological reproduction but also for a global order that designates them as cheap and readily available manual, care, and migratory labour. The conclusion will first situate this argument in the critical literature on international criminal law to showcase the book’s contribution. It will then further theorize the material and affective economy of international criminal justice through the concept of the blame cascade, and, lastly, draw out the latter’s implications for resistance and abolition in international criminal justice.