"Guatemalan theater began to address the atrocities committed during the thirty-six years of civil war, the longest war in Latin American history, in the 1990s. This theatrical movement expresses Guatemala's hope for renewal by looking at the past. Rather than being haunted by a traumatic history, the theater pushes the painful issues forward to center stage in order that the vicious cycle of old hatreds and grudges not hold them prisoner. The plays examined in this study, which range from satire to tragedy, aid in breaking free from the bars that entrapped the country in violence and atrocities. However, the outrage is contained: the plays do not condemn the perpetrator, but rather highlight that understanding is the way to peace. The key to release from the cycle of violence is portrayed as remembering without blaming." "The purpose of this study is twofold: 1) to identify how the civil war as well as the change to civilian government in 1986, which culminated in the signing of the Peace Accord in 1996, has affected the form and content of the plays written in the 1990s; and 2) to examine the work of the Guatemalan playwrights who have largely been ignored in Latin American theater studies."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

This book trenchantly diagnoses the law's limits in making sense of mass atrocity.

An ambitious revisionist history of the modern Middle East What Really Went Wrong offers a fresh and incisive assessment of American foreign policy’s impact on the history and politics of the modern Middle East. Looking at flashpoints in Iranian, Egyptian, Syrian, and Lebanese history, Fawaz A. Gerges shows how postwar U.S. leaders made a devil’s pact with potentates, autocrats, and strongmen around the world. Washington sought to tame assertive nationalists and to protect repressive Middle Eastern regimes in return for compliance with American hegemonic designs and uninterrupted flows of cheap oil. The book takes a counterfactual approach, asking readers to consider how the political trajectories of these countries and, by extension, the entire region may have differed had U.S. foreign policy privileged the nationalist aspirations of patriotic and independent Middle Eastern leaders and people. Gerges argues that rather than focusing on rolling back communism, extracting oil, and pursuing interventionist and imperial policies in Iran, Egypt, and beyond, postwar U.S. leaders should have allowed the Middle East greater autonomy in charting its own political and economic development. In so doing, the contemporary Middle East may have had better prospects for stability, prosperity, peace, and democracy.

Humphrey examines contemporary political violence and atrocity in the context of the crisis of the nation-state. This book provides a theoretical and comparative analysis of the legacies of violence for social reconstruction.

International criminal justice is, at its core, an anti-atrocity project. Yet just what an 'atrocity' is remains undefined and undertheorized. This book examines how associations between atrocity commission and the production of horrific spectacles shape the processes through which international crimes are identified and conceptualized, leading to the foregrounding of certain forms of mass violence and the backgrounding or complete invisibilization of others. In doing so, it identifies various, seemingly banal ways through which international crimes may be committed and demonstrates how the criminality of such forms of violence and abuse tends to be obfuscated. This book suggests that the failure to address these 'invisible atrocities' represents a major flaw in the current international criminal justice system, one that produces a host of problematic repercussions and undermines the legal legitimacy of international criminal law itself.

According to the popular maxim, a nation at war reveals its true character. In this incisive work, Chris Gilbert examines the long history of US war politics through the lens of political cartoons to provide new, unique insights into American cultural identity. Tracing the comic representation of American values from the First World War to the War on Terror, Gilbert explores the power of humor in caricature to expose both the folly in jingoistic virtues and the sometimes-strange fortune in nationalistic vices. He examines the artwork of four exemplary American cartoonists—James Montgomery Flagg, Dr. Seuss, Ollie Harrington, and Ann Telnaes—to craft a trenchant image of Americanism. These examinations animate the rhetorical, and indeed comic, force of icons like Uncle Sam, national symbols like the American Eagle, political stooges like President Donald J. Trump, and more, as well as the power of political cartoons to comment on issues of race, class, and gender on the home front. Throughout, Gilbert portrays a US culture rooted in and riven by ideas of manifest destiny, patriotism, and democracy for all, yet plagued by ugly forms of nationalism, misogyny, racism, and violence. Rich with examples of hilarious and masterfully drawn caricatures from a diverse range of creators, this unflinching look at the evolution of our conflicted national character illustrates how American cartoonists use farce, mockery, and wit to put national character in the comic looking glass.