Alternative accountability after the ‘naughts’

Abstract

AbstractThe article posits that in global politics, and in the scholarly subfield of international ethics, we should begin moving away from intentions and intentionality when considering accountability. Intentionality is problematic in at least three respects – analytically it is hard to determine; normatively it is difficult because we must invest our trust in authority; and it comes coupled with the problematic relationship between means and ends. This article explores these issues through three sections. First, it engages some of the purposes but also overall problems with ‘intentions’ in world politics (and especially the debate as it has progressed in the field of international ethics). The second section reviews recent theses on accountability, before moving towards an alternative aspect of accountability which already exists in world politics, termed in this article ‘the accountability of the scar’. This last form of accountability refers to the physical damage produced by violence, with reference to three domains – the anthrobiological, the architectural, and the agentic sphere. Two examples of the scar come to us from the different context of the Emmett Till case of 1955 and the more fluid, and recent case of Iranian protestor Neda Agha-Soltan.