As the Universal Breaks: Moments of Awkwardness in International Justice

Abstract

Kjersti Lohne closes out our special section on post-truth with a personal political reflection on the challenges that beset scholars engaging with the world in the post-truth era. She reflects on the challenges of researching and teaching about international criminal justice and military tribunals in an age when the very idea of universality is, like truth, under attack from all sides. What once seemed critical and emancipatory, laying out the challenge to universal claims about humanity and law, now appears part of the corrosive common sense of our era of ‘alternative facts’. But we can’t simply forget our critical insights, can we? Lohne reveals how this tension creates ‘moments of awkwardness’ when engaging through both research and teaching.