An Uncensored History of International Law
How complete are contemporary itineraries of international law—of its various obsessions and idiosyncracies, of its inherent prejudices, of its past? In this seminar, the attempt will be made to address questions of international law that are frequently sidelined and, today, rarely mentioned: in sum, if a subtitle were to be given to the seminar it would be “the hidden, the forgotten and the unfamiliar.”
Through thirteen weeks of seminars, we shall turn to such questions such as slavery, colonization and decolonization and test the “European” origins of international law. What does this mean, and why does Europe transfigure so largely in accounts of the beginning of international law? And why Hugo Grotius its father—its sole intellectual parent, as if we had an immaculate conception of sorts on our hands? We shall also consider the predominance of the State in the conceptualization and execution of international law, from the birth of institutions (the false promise of institutions! think of the invasion of Abyssinia!) to the nuclear politics that brought us the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.
Building on critical approaches to international relations, the seminar will be a prime opportunity to organize our thoughts on how, if at all, international law engages (and, more importantly, has engaged or has not engaged) the challenges of global justice and how (and why) some of these histories have, for all intents and purposes, now disappeared from view. What good does it do us to retrace these footsteps? To unpack the past? To revisit earlier destinies?
Those wanting to make a start on some of our interests may wish to make a start on some of the essays in Anne Orford, ed., International Law and Its Others (Cambridge, 2006), and to address any of their enquiries to Professor Kritsiotis ([email protected]).