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Trajectories of spirituality: Producing and assessing cultural evidence at the International Criminal Court

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 January 2024

Sigurd D'hondt Open the ORCID record for Sigurd D'hondt [Opens in a new window] ,
Juan-Pablo Pérez-León-Acevedo Open the ORCID record for Juan-Pablo Pérez-León-Acevedo [Opens in a new window] ,
Fabio Ferraz de Almeida Open the ORCID record for Fabio Ferraz de Almeida [Opens in a new window]  and
Elena Barrett Open the ORCID record for Elena Barrett [Opens in a new window]
Sigurd D'hondt*
Affiliation:
University of Jyväskylä, Finland
Juan-Pablo Pérez-León-Acevedo
Affiliation:
University of Oxford, United Kingdom
Fabio Ferraz de Almeida
Affiliation:
University of Jyväskylä, Finland
Elena Barrett
Affiliation:
University of Jyväskylä, Finland
*
Address for correspondence: Sigurd D'hondt University of Jyväskylä PO Box 35, FI-40014 University of Jyväskylä Finland sigurd.a.dhondt@jyu.fi
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Abstract

In this article, we examine the production and assessment of evidence about spirit beliefs in the international criminal trial of Ugandan rebel commander Dominic Ongwen, submitted by the defense to show that their client committed the crimes he is accused of under duress. This duress defense was ultimately rejected by the ICC Judges, based on a binary understanding of ‘believing’ that depicts Ongwen and other LRA commanders as impostors. However, our analysis of how this evidence about Acholi spirituality is entextualized in testimony-taking and recontextualized in the Judgment reveals that this belief-binary is not exclusively the outcome of the Judges’ recontextualization efforts. In fact, the foundations are already established at entextualization stage, in the questioning by the defense. These continuities, we argue, offer a fresh perspective on the notion of text trajectory, redirecting attention to the underlying ‘grammar’ of the legal language game. (International Criminal Court, text trajectory, entextualization, recontextualization, evidence, spirit belief, Dominic Ongwen, Uganda)*

Type
Article
Information
Language in Society , First View , pp. 1 - 22
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

*

This research was funded by the Academy of Finland, project number 325535 (“Negotiating international criminal law: A courtroom ethnography of trial performance at the International Criminal Court”). Previous versions of this article were presented at a KiVi Friday Seminar (Jyväskylä, November 2021), Sociolinguistics Symposium 24 (Ghent, July 2022), the interdisciplinary webinar Lights and Shadows in the Ongwen Case at the ICC (Jyväskylä, October 2022), and the Digital Meeting for Conversation Analysis (November 2022). In addition to those who commented during the events mentioned above, we would like to thank the editors and two reviewers for their valuable feedback.

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