The Voice of the International: Who is Speaking?

When ‘we’ want to punish the most serious crimes of concern to the international community as a whole, who is ‘we’? The article embarks on an excursion where ‘we’ in the contexts of international criminal law is pictured as ‘humanity’ or ‘international community’, as well as a variety of other collective subjects. The article examines how the rhetorical ambiguities of we-talk may serve both for alignment and persuasion, and usurpation and exclusion. More than a banal rhetorical device, does we-talk potentially grow into an instrument of persuasion and assimilation, totalizing parts into a whole that it controls or suppresses? What would that mean for ‘the pursuit of global justice’?