Humanity and its beneficiaries: Footing and stance-taking in an international criminal trial

Abstract

This article elucidates the role of metapragmatic devices like footing and stance-taking in trial hearings before the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague. It focuses on the case of Ahmad al Faqi al Mahdi, a Malian Islamist found guilty of the 2012 destruction of cultural heritage in Timbuktu. We examine how the prosecution and defense reflexively formulate the hearing as part of a wider text trajectory and how they align personae across participation frameworks by locating the current courtroom event into a wider dialogical field. A careful inspection of these metapragmatic devices reveals how trial participants navigate the multiple tensions facing this emergent, amalgamated form of criminal adjudication, which lacks a coercive apparatus of its own and still bears the traces of the political act of its institution.