Beyond a politics of recrimination: Scandal, ethics and the rehabilitation of violence
| Published date | 01 September 2017 |
| Date | 01 September 2017 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1354066116669569 |
| Author | Jamie M. Johnson |
E
JR
I
https://doi.org/10.1177/1354066116669569
European Journal of
International Relations
2017, Vol. 23(3) 703 –726
© The Author(s) 2016
Reprints and permissions:
sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/1354066116669569
journals.sagepub.com/home/ejt
Beyond a politics of
recrimination: Scandal,
ethics and the rehabilitation
of violence
Jamie M. Johnson
University of Sheffield, UK
Abstract
The practice of contemporary warfare seems to be plagued by scandal. It is often
assumed that the act of bearing witness to these moments of ethical failure, in which the
relationship between the martial and the ethical breaks down, plays an important role in
holding powerful actors to account for their conduct. Considerable faith has been placed
in the role of transparency and truth-telling as foundations for normative engagements
with war. This article argues that we must be cautious about this investment. Drawing on
the work of Jean Baudrillard, this article offers a method for critically reading scandals as
a series of line-drawing manoeuvres. Taken together, these manoeuvres demonstrate
how scandals function to enable, excuse and obscure the complex landscapes of violence
that define the spectacular and mundane sites of contemporary war. Reducing critical
engagements with violent practices to a logic of recrimination, scandals often function
to revitalise the very principles they appear to contest. Focusing upon the socio-political
implications of wartime scandals, this article demonstrates that the performative force
of scandals is therefore the reproduction of a violent status quo rather than opening up
new spaces for imagining less violent futures. Offering a critical reading of controversies
relating to the provision of humanitarian assistance and education in Afghanistan, this
article reflects on the ambiguities and anxieties of critiquing violence.
Keywords
Baudrillard, ethics, humanitarian intervention, resistance, violence, war
Corresponding author:
Jamie M. Johnson, Department of Politics, Elmfield, Northumberland Road, S10 2TU, UK.
Email: j.m.johnson@sheffield.ac.uk
669569EJT0010.1177/1354066116669569European Journal of International RelationsJohnson
research-article2016
Article
704 European Journal of International Relations 23(3)
Introduction
In a time of universal deceit — telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
(George Orwell)
War is a controversial enterprise. Recent experiences of liberal or humanitarian warfare
have been beset by the revelation of scandals that appear to unsettle and contest the
legitimacy of these practices. Exposing these moments of ethical failure, in which the
relationship between the martial and the ethical appears to break down, wartime scandals
seem to present us with uncomfortable truths about the conduct and legitimacy of mili-
tary force. Confronted with the disclosure of their wrongdoing, wartime scandals appear
to play an important role in holding powerful actors to account by naming and shaming
them for practices that would have otherwise remained unaccounted for. Considerable
faith has been placed in the normative force of truth-telling and transparency, of which
scandals are but one form, for providing a platform for contesting the legitimacy of
dominant wartime narratives and practices.1 It is through this dominant cultural under-
standing of the legitimacy and necessity of tireless truth-seekers that we can understand
the socio-political significance of actors as varied as Wikileaks, the Bureau for
Investigative Journalism and the Chilcot Inquiry. Understood as a basis for critique and
popular resistance, scandals are often interpreted as a revolutionary act of bearing wit-
ness, in which truth is spoken to power.
This article does not dispute the idea that scandals are acts of truth-telling. It does,
however, contest and complicate how we should understand what it means to speak truth.
This is motivated by a concern with the socio-political function of wartime scandals. An
important distinction is therefore made between two ways of understanding the act of
truth-telling. Understood in terms of speaking truth to power, truth-telling is a process of
exposing a transgressive reality that exists independently of its disclosure and denuncia-
tion. This article, by contrast, focuses on the notion of truth-telling in terms of how it
demonstrates the power of truth. The emphasis of such an approach shifts from focusing
upon what scandals make visible, that is, how they reflect an independent and prior real-
ity, and instead urges us to understand scandals in terms of what they make possible.
From this perspective, scandals can be seen as crucial sites in the reproduction of particu-
lar representational logics and knowledge claims. They can also be seen as enabling and
realising a particular form of politics.
This politics is not the one we would perhaps expect. The argument of this article is
that scandals reduce critical interventions to a logic of recrimination in which acts of
excessive violence are denounced for ‘not following the rules of the game’ (Baudrillard,
1994: 15). Confined to such a logic, scandals may, in fact, serve to blunt the possibilities
of critically reflecting upon particular wartime practices. Perversely, far from a demon-
stration of the fragility of the relationship between the martial and the ethical, this logic of
interpreting and responding to ethical failure through scandal serves to revitalise the very
practices it appears to call into question. To be clear, the argument presented here is that
through wartime scandals, the legitimacy of violence is secured and reaffirmed rather than
contested. Moments of ethical failure are therefore, counter-intuitively, the conditions of
possibility for more rather than less violence. Far from being a revolutionary act, the
To continue reading
Request your trial