Making race speakable in international criminal law : review of Lingaas' The Concept of Race in International Criminal Law

The concept of race and the process of racialisation rarely feature in international criminal law discourse. Despite the field’s diverse geographic representation and attempts to come to terms with political violence, there have been no systematic analyses of race, with one scholar describing race as ‘the elephant in the room’.1 The following book review, dealing with the speakability of race, highlights that such engagement is likely to be seen as contradicting the cosmopolitan aims of scholars and institutions of international criminal law. These cosmopolitan and inclusive aspirations often run in tandem with the field’s ‘racial blindness’ and an ‘anti-racist posture that refuses to “see” race’ except where it is blatant, individualistic and overt.