The ethics of violence : Recent literature on the creation of the contemporary regime of law and war

This paper reviews a body of recent literature that interrogates the development and deployment of the contemporary regime of political violence. This literature includes Samuel Moyn's account of the emergence and dominance of the humanitarian paradigm and Francine Hirsch, Giovanni Mantilla and Boyd van Dijk's diplomatic histories of the creation of the central provisions of this paradigm. It also encompasses Dirk Moses, Benjamin Meiches and Sinja Graf's examinations of genocide and universal crime, Neve Gordon and Nicola Perugini's Human Shields, and Yagil Levy's Whose Life is Worth More? This is a diverse literature but, considered together, it traverses the creation of the legal categories, the cultural values and the ethical concerns that shape the current regime. It shows how these laws and values are created through political and cultural negotiations and how they become, themselves, political mechanisms that erase or legitimize certain forms of violence. By doing so, these works reveal the contingency and dangers of the current paradigm of ethical violence. They also, this review argues, show how difficult it is to escape from this paradigm.