Description
In Infrastructures of Impunity Elizabeth F. Drexler argues that the creation and persistence of impunity for the perpetrators of the Cold War Indonesian genocide (1965-66) is not only a legal status but also a cultural and social process. Impunity for the initial killings and for subsequent acts of political violence has many elements: bureaucratic, military, legal, political, educational, and affective. Although these elements do not always work at once--at times some are dormant while others are ascendant--together they can be described as a unified entity, a dynamic infrastructure, whose existence explains the persistence of impunity. For instance, truth telling, a first step in many responses to state violence, did not undermine the infrastructure but instead bent to it. Creative and artistic responses to revelations about the past, however, have begun to undermine the infrastructure by countering its temporality, affect, and social stigmatization and demonstrating its contingency and specific actions, policies, and processes that would begin to dismantle it. Drexler contends that an infrastructure of impunity could take hold in an established democracy.
Author: Elizabeth F. Drexler
Publisher: Southeast Asia Program Publications
Published: 12/15/2023
Pages: 282
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.29lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.75d
ISBN13: 9781501773099
ISBN10: 1501773097
BISAC Categories:
- Political Science | Human Rights
- Social Science | Ethnic Studies | Asian Studies
- Political Science | Genocide & War Crimes
About the Author
Elizabeth Drexler is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Peace and Justice Studies at Michigan State University. She is the author of Aceh, Indonesia.