(image source: Brill)
Editorial: Bridging Past and Future. A New Chapter for JHIL (Raphael Schäfer & Inge Van Hulle)
DOI 10.1163/15718050-bja10125
DOI 10.1163/15718050-bja10125
The Turn to Historiography in International Law: Limitations and New Horizons (Thomas Kleinlein & Jean d'Aspremont)
DOI 10.1163/15718050-bja10120
Abstract:
DOI 10.1163/15718050-bja10120
Abstract:
This article, for the sake of introducing the contributions to the special issue that follows, revisits some of the key scholarly controversies that have punctuated the last decades of debates and critiques of the histories of international law. Commonly called the ‘turn to history’, this special issue construes this development rather as a historiographical turn. Particular attention is paid to the kinship between the historiographical turn and postcolonial critiques of international law, the relationship between the historiographical turn and the increased interest in the history of international law scholarship, and the relationship between such historiographical appetite and the idea of presentism. Finally, and before introducing the contributions to this special issue, this essay floats the idea of a post-progressive approach to the history of international law, with a view to creating new spaces for the renewal of the never-ending critique and rewriting of the histories of international law.
The ‘Narrative Turn’ and Its Limits (Felix Lange)
DOI 10.1163/15718050-bja10117
Abstract:
This article explores the implications of the ‘narrative turn’ for the history of international law. It refers to the epistemological and methodological debate about narrative elements in historical writing and examines how claims about ‘history as fiction’ have been received in writings on the history of international law. It uses Reinhart Koselleck’s concept of the ‘veto power of sources’ as a means of addressing the ‘narrative turn’ and its implications. As an example, the article points to the methodological flaws of Vladimir Putin’s historical justification of Russian aggression against Ukraine.
The Narrative Fragmentation of International Legal History (Ryan Martínez Mitchell)
DOI 10.1163/15718050-bja10121
Abstract:
The historiography of international law is highly pluralistic and resistant to unifying master narratives. This pluralism is reflected in diverging authorial strategies. To categorise such strategies, this article borrows Hayden White’s typology of ‘emplotments’, or narrative logics, as a useful method of classification. As the article shows, leading accounts of international law’s history have often involved conflicting forms of subjective identification with protagonists and forces. This article also suggests that the turn from a relatively homogenous understanding of international legal history to one characterised by inescapable fragmentation can be dated to the geopolitical, ideological, and cultural transitions of the 1950s-60s. Entrenched ideological conflict and decolonization resulted in a stubbornly diverse historiography that remains the essential condition of the field today. For modern historians of international law, it is crucial to recognise this narrative fragmentation as well as the resulting choices it imposes upon authors making sense of the past.
Recovering the Radical Tradition in the International Legal History of Decolonisation (Tor Krever)
DOI 10.1163/15718050-bja10119
Abstract:
Despite growing interest in the international legal history of decolonisation, significant elisions remain. Through a ‘symptomatic reading’ of recent engagements with that history, this article argues that such work contributes to an erasure of the Marxist tradition in the history of the Third World movement. It argues that Marxism and a Marxist theory of imperialism were important influences on anti-colonial political thought and practice, while also shaping radical Third World lawyers’ attitudes towards the relationship between international law and imperialism and the uses and limits of the former in challenging the latter. Against the erasure of this tradition, the article calls for a recovery of silenced histories of radicalism and anti-imperial thought and of a tradition that still offers resources for an emancipatory politics grounded in a critique of international law, imperialism and global capitalism.
Authorial Labour in the Postcolonial Historiography of International Law (Michele Tedeschini)
DOI 10.1163/15718050-bja10118
Abstract:
The article draws on the psychoanalysis of Jacques Lacan to offer an alternative reading of three texts that exemplify a postcolonial trend in the historiography of international law. These texts are Antony Anghie’s 2005 Imperialism, Sovereignty, and International Law; Rose Parfitt’s 2019 The Process of International Legal Reproduction; and Luis Eslava, Michael Fakhri, and Vasuki Nesiah’s introduction to the 2017 volume Bandung, Global History, and International Law. Disregarding the merits of the historical accounts they offer, the article draws on these text to show (i) that postcolonial historiographers of international law construct their own authorial selves as they reconstruct the past; and (ii) that this procedure, which is informed by desire, turns every (postcolonial) history into a personal history.
Futurism: Neglected Histories of International Law (Rebecca Mignot-Mahdavi)
DOI 10.1163/15718050-bja10122
Abstract:
This contribution proposes to unearth, scrutinise, and possibly disrupt futuristic moves in international law. Existing scholarship has demonstrated that the narrative technology of historicisation in international legal scholarship typically adheres to a linear and unidirectional temporality. This sequence, it is argued here, progresses not solely from the past to the present but also extends from the past and present towards the future. This significant step has been overlooked thus far. The article demonstrates that futuristic moves in international law not only fit within the linear and unidirectional approaches to time and international law but are also intimately linked with a celebration of human agency and of international lawyers’ capacity to act upon and fix future crises. Futuristic moves, however, are not solely future-oriented as they might appear. They are, the article shows, a narrative technology to govern the present. This narrative technology, to date, has mainly perpetuated existing power structures and historical modes and modalities of domination and oppression. The article suggests that inspiration is to be found in Afrofuturist movements as a source for counternarratives to disrupt the current use of futurism as a narrative technology of continuity, governance and oppression.
Book reviews
- Investment Law’s Alibis: Colonialism, Imperialism, Debt and Development, written by David Schneiderman (Oliver Hailes)
- Portraits of Women in International Law: New Names and Forgotten Faces?, edited by Immi Tallgren (Aden Knaap)
Read the full issue here.
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