Abstract
Abstract This chapter explores the use of atrocity crime trials as a source in perpetrator studies. It questions what knowledge we can possibly acquire about perpetrators of mass atrocities through the lens of the post-perpetration criminal trial. Informed by trial observations, this chapter contends that the epistemological significance of criminal proceedings to our understanding of perpetrator personality, motive, and rationale is puzzling and less promising than generally assumed. Through a critical appraisal and re-evaluation of Hannah Arendt’s reporting on the Eichmann trial as a standardized model, as well as other examples from a variety of international criminal trials, this chapter unravels limitations of the trial as a source for perpetrator studies. More generally, the chapter introduces the concept of ‘ordinary defendants in extraordinary circumstances’ and argues that the field of perpetrator studies is restrained by its attempt to know the unknowable, by observing the invisible, and by comparing the incomparable.
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