University of Groningen
Listening to silence
Schweiger, Elisabeth
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Publication date: 2018
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Schweiger, E. (2018). Listening to silence: 'targeted killing' and the politics of silence in customary international law. University of Groningen.
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Proefschrift Elisabeth Schweiger: Listening to Silence: ‘Targeted Killing’ and the Politics of Silence in Customary International Law
Propositions
1. The dissertation challenges the interpretation of silence as tacit consent to ‘targeted killing’ claims regarding a more expansive customary interpretation of the right to self-defence; because power relations have excluded some actors from the possibility of speaking, because there actually have been instances of protest, and because of different forms of (not) listening by those who invoke and interpret silence as evidence for acquiescence.
2. Conceptually, the dissertation posits the centrality of implicit assumptions and power relations regarding the phenomenological existence and the particular communicative function of discursive facts through the example of the role of silence in international law debates.
3. Through the analytical lens of silence, the dissertation shows the necessity to develop a new theorization of international law which moves beyond a solid understanding of international law as a set of rules differentiated from international politics and instead analyses customary international law as a type of language game.
4. The dissertation posits that those who are often conceptualized as outside observers of state acts (e.g. scholars, journalists, NGOs) directly participate within the language game of customary international law through the (re-)production of assumptions and discursive facts.
5. The dissertation shows how in the debates on ‘targeted killing’, silence can work as (i) ignoring ‘targeted killing’ practices and claims as (ii) leaving the question of legality open, as well as (iii) tacit consent, thus demonstrating three different modes of engaging within the language game of customary international law.
6. The dissertation demonstrates the contingency of assumptions such as the novelty of ‘targeted killing’ which determine the mode of the language game of customary international law by showing that the claims and practices described through different invocations of the concept
‘targeted killing’ have historical continuities with colonial uses and justifications of force against non-state actors.
