Queering temporalities of international criminal justice: Srebrenica remembrance and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY)

Abstract

ABSTRACT The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY, or the Tribunal) completed its mandate in 2017, marking the end of its 24-year lifespan. While the ICTY has officially ceased operations, the implications of the Tribunal’s closure continue to manifest in contemporary settings of transitional justice. Embracing a queer approach to time, the ICTY can be better understood as temporally fluid, open, and contested, rather than confined to its establishment and closure. This is because as a site for the (re)production and (re)presentation of discourses, the ICTY transcends temporal boundaries, continuing to shape and constitute (post-)conflict and transitional contexts. In this paper, I deploy queer approaches to time to interrogate how discourses of gender, sexuality, and violence at the ICTY traverse legal-political temporalities. Using the Tribunal’s Srebrenica remembrance as a case study, I demonstrate how gendered and sexualised logics constituted at the ICTY exceed the Tribunal’s official temporal mandate. Adopting a queer approach to time, I argue that gendered memories of violence at the ICTY permeate temporalities of international justice and global politics.