This article examines some of the deeper meanings of the denial of accountability in killings perpetrated by British soldiers during the conflict in Northern Ireland, as part of the debate on how to deal with the legacy of the past. It investigates the ways in which such “soldier‐perpetrators” are turned, instead, into “soldier‐victims” and asks what this tells us about the political culture that shapes such a response. In part, it will be argued, this is the product of a longer term Manichean distinction, deeply embedded in the history of empire and its wars, between “civilians” and “barbarians.” Here lawfulness, as a mark of “civility,” is identified with the self‐image of the (post‐) imperial state, contrasted with the unlawful chaos of the barbarian “Other.” In the context of both the counterinsurgency wars of the late 20th and early 21st century, and amid a presiding mood of “post‐imperial melancholia” and “heroic failure”, the figure of the “soldier‐victim,” therefore, becomes a means to turn the wrongs of state violence into an ideological potent imaginary of empire, the state (and its agents) as themselves those who have been wronged.

中文翻译：

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国家暴力，帝国以及北爱尔兰的“士兵-受害者”形象

本文探讨了否认北爱尔兰冲突期间英军杀人行为追究责任的更深层含义，这是关于如何处理过去遗留问题的辩论的一部分。它研究了将这种“士兵行凶者”转变为“士兵受害者”的方式，并询问这如何告诉我们形成这种反应的政治文化。有人会争辩说，这是马尼切长期区别的产物，这种区别深深植根于帝国及其战争的历史中，即“平民”和“野蛮人”之间。在这里，合法性是“文明”的标志，它被认为是（后）帝国的自我形象，与野蛮人“他者”的非法混乱形成鲜明对比。