Affective Justice: The International Criminal Court and the Pan-Africanist Pushback by Kamari Maxine Clarke (review)

Kamari Maxine Clarke uses the term “affective justice” in her book to describe how feelings, spoken words, biopower, and history influence justice. Clarke’s work contributes to the debate over African states’ sovereignty and the alleged inequalities that accompany the International Criminal Court (ICC). The complex interrelationships between the victims-perpetrators approach of the ICC’s anti-impunity campaign and the Pan-Africanist pushback are products of the realities, values, and power structure of affective justice. Clarke’s revelation of affective justice shows how emotional regimes rely on Africa’s legal technocratic practices. These technocratic practices are carried out by political elites who rely on historical colonial experience to create an emotional regime that enforces affective justice. Clarke cites the example of technocratic practices like President Uhuru Kenyatta’s use of Kenya’s struggle to discredit the ICC’s charges against him as a colonial witch hunt. Clarke cites President Uhuru Kenyatta’s response to the ICC’s charges to engage in affective justice domains (technocratic practices and emotions). The book’s discussion of the transitional justice continuum is an easy read. Clarke’s use of interviews and participant observation in Kenya, Nigeria, and The Hague discloses the pitfalls of international justice and the effects of affective justice. Clarke uses practice theory to explain the sociocultural world of emotions and affection from an international and African perspective

In the book, Clarke used charges against President Uhuru Kenyatta and Kenya’s Chief Attorney General, Shamiso Mbizvo, for crimes against humanity on Kenya’s massacre and other events like the abduction of young schoolgirls in Nigeria to discuss transitional justice. Clarke’s book consists of six chapters divided into two sections. The first section includes four chapters, while the second section is two chapters.

The first chapter of the book describes victimhood between those who seek justice from violent attacks and structural violence victims that may not have that option. Clarke discusses the goal of civil societies’ anti-impunity campaign that seeks justice for victims of violent conflicts while also echoing the relevance of fair judgment in ICC affairs. Clarke’s identification of the manifest and latent (covert and overt) functions of the ICC is a revelation of its operation mode.

The second chapter of the book focuses on the effectiveness of social alignments through legal narratives from ICC proponents and the “usage of persuasive political speeches” filled with compassion by African leaders (97). This chapter reveals how public speeches produce political publics through a subconscious institutionalization of affective justice. Clarke highlights President Uhuru Kenyatta and Shamiso Mbizvo’s speeches on Kenya’s independence struggle as an example of what Durkheim terms “collective effervescence” (106). This “collective effervescence” involves feelings and brings people with shared experiences, histories, and thoughts together toward passionate group coalition (106). The third chapter of this book explains the efficiency of bio-mediation through social media in the international community. Clarke argues that “online activism is symptomatic of a more fundamental process of dislocation seen through the deployment of bodily and biotechnological advocacy” (118). This biotechnological advocacy benefitted from the twenty-first-century social media participation by local and international social elites. The rhetoric of who needs to be saved and prosecuted fortifies the ICC’s call for justice.

Chapters five and six of the book build on the first section (the first four chapters) and focus on the incompatibility between the African Union (AU) and the ICC. Chapter five discusses “the signs of struggle deployed by these new Pan-African campaigns [and] draws on a symbolic, historical framework that is very unlike the roots of the AU’s formation” (189). Clarke briefly highlights the shift from the precolonial Pan-African doctrine and postmodern Pan-Africanism. According to Clarke, this shift results from the obsession with modernity that negates the origin of Pan-Africanism, “creating an Africa that can build itself and take care of itself” (210). Here, Clarke describes the shift from...