Spectacles and Specters

Ertür provides incredibly rich jurisprudential readings of this series of trials that document acontinual struggle over the historical record, the question of who can establish the history thatrulings should be based upon, collective memory, and the uniqueness of the Holocaust in relation tothe jurisprudence of genocide. This book provides insights to anyone interested in the relationbetween law and politics, and a riveting introduction to the issues surrounding the Armeniangenocide to those who are less familiar with this event.

– “Law & Society Review”Spectacles and Specters is a superior achievement in the application of critical theory to law and politics. Ertür’s grasp and deft engagement with political and legal theory surrounding the received (largely liberal) idea of political trials provides precisely the right framework to situate her novel conceptualization, centered as it is on both the generative character of law’s performativity and the performative failures, contradictions, and excesses of law that produce unintended political effects.—Aslı Ü. Bâli, Professor, UCLA School of LawOffering an exquisite and impressive weave of theory, legal history, trial drama, and political storytelling, Spectacles and Specters is a highly nuanced critical legal study of the modern political trial. Grounded in a set of detailed readings of several trials concerning the 1915 Armenian genocide, the book displaces Nuremberg as the model of the modern political trial and offers a sophisticated theorization of the performativity of the law and state sovereignty.—Avery Gordon, author of The Hawthorn Archive: Letters from the Utopian Margins