Conclusion

The concluding chapter critiques current scholarly trends to discuss crimes against humanity based on the feelings of horror they create and argues that an analysis of the power politics waged through their discursive mobilization requires analytical scrutiny. The conclusion therefore appraises the difference between hegemonic and counterhegemonic deployments of crimes against humanity in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The twenty-first-century deployments comprise the designation of slavery and apartheid as crimes against humanity (a designation that resulted from international political activities by actors from the Global South) as well as the denunciation of the 2003 US-led military campaign in Iraq as a crime against humanity (by transnational social movements). The chapter closes with a critique of debates on the Anthropocene that posit humanity as an undifferentiated, totalizing geological force and argues that, once again, scrutiny of the concrete, differential power positions structuring humanity is imperative for assessing the social causes of climate devastation.