Aliki Lafkidou Dick. Paedeia through Laughter: Jonson's Aristophanic Appeal to Human Intelligence. (Studies in English Literature, 76.) The Hague-Paris: Mouton, 1974. xi+141 pp. Dfl.32.

1976 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 452-454
Author(s):  
Katherine Lever
Keyword(s):  
English Literature ◽  
Human Intelligence ◽  
Intelligence Studies ◽  
The Hague

The politics of hard knowledge: uncertainty, intelligence failures, and the ‘last minute genocide’ of Srebrenica

2011 ◽  
Vol 37 (5) ◽  
pp. 2221-2235 ◽  
Author(s):  
ERNA RIJSDIJK
Keyword(s):  
War Crimes ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Responsibility ◽  
Intelligence Failure ◽  
Intelligence Studies ◽  
Criminal Intent ◽  
The Hague ◽  
Knowledge Uncertainty ◽  
Intelligence Failures

AbstractQuestions of uncertainty and responsibility have been central to the political and legal investigations of the failed UN/Dutch peacekeeping mission in Srebrenica. The official Dutch NIOD report on the peacekeeping mission has reconstructed the fall of Srebrenica as a surprise attack and as an ‘intelligence failure’. The report and its understanding of tactical uncertainty has led to a call for more intelligence in UN operations. I argue that the report builds its claims on a problematic epistemology of intelligence studies drawing upon a politics of ‘hard knowledge’. A similar epistemology can be identified in the proceedings of the war crimes tribunal in The Hague (ICTY) in the legal approach of criminal intent for the violence in Srebrenica. Although it is recognised that the political responsibility to prevent genocide and the juridical responsibility to punish those who have committed crimes have different implications for what can be called relevant foreknowledge or criminal intent, both the juridical and the political approaches close off paths for the mobilisation of histories that are more sensitive to the productive workings of language and images and thus to their bearing on possible futures.

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