International Law's Collected Stories

Sofia Stolk, Renske Vos, Sofia Stolk, Renske Vos

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9783030588342
• eBook ISBN:
  9783030588359
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: International Law
• Index: Law

This edited volume presents a collection of stories that experiment with different ways of looking at international law. By using different literary lenses -namely, storytelling, the novel, the drama, the collage, the self-portrait, and the museum- the authors shed light on elements of international law that usually remain unseen or unheard and expose the limits of what international law can do. We inquire into who the storytellers of international law are, the stages on which they tell their stories, and who are absent in these tales. We present it as a collection: a set of different essays that more or less deal with the same subject matter. Alternatively, we would like to call it a potpourri of stories, since the diversity of topics and approaches is eclectic and unconventional. By placing multiple perspectives alongside each other we aim to compare and contrast, to allow for second thoughts, and to rediscover. In doing so, we engage with the ambiguities of international law's characters and spaces, and with the worldviews they reflect and worlds they create.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020

S. Stolk, R. Vos (eds.)International Law's Collected StoriesPalgrave Studies in International Relationshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58835-9_1

Begin Abstract

1. Once Upon a Time in International Law…

Sofia Stolk¹ and Renske Vos²

(1)

T.M.C. Asser Instituut / University of Amsterdam, The Hague, The Netherlands

(2)

VU Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Sofia Stolk

Email: [email protected]

Renske Vos (Corresponding author)

Email: [email protected]

Keywords

International lawStoriesLaw and literatureStyle

End Abstract

In international law, we tell stories all the time, both within law and without.¹ Like all people, lawyers and legal scholars are storytellers. As human beings, telling stories is how we seek meaning.² This volume presents a collection of stories, as an effort to make sense of international law, to critique its dominant form and to recognize and explore its fundamentally literary character. It inquires into who the storytellers of international law are, where the stages on which they tell their stories are found, and who are absent from these tales. We present it as a collection: a set of different chapters that more or less deal with the same subject matter. Alternatively, we would like to call it a potpourri of stories, since the diversity of topics and approaches is an eclectic and unconventional mix. By placing multiple perspectives alongside each other we aim to compare and contrast, to allow for second thoughts, and to rediscover. In doing so, we engage with the ambiguities of international law’s characters and spaces, and with the worldviews they reflect and worlds they create.³

The idea of this volume is to experiment with alternative literary forms as lenses through which to look anew at international law and to find what doors this may open. In this way, we aim to expose the limits as well as the possibilities or ‘surplus’ of international law in a playful yet reflexive way. In so doing, we take Gerry Simpson’s plea for a sentimental international law to heart, and carry:

an attentiveness to the unseen and unheard or, seemingly, insubstantial or a commitment to an international law of style and love and smallness, and an attentiveness to the everyday and to the informalities of power.⁴

There is not just one way in which the story of international law can be told. To cite White: ‘to tell a story is to choose a language in which it is to be told, and to choose a language is, at some level, to recognize that there are other possible languages, other possible meanings.’⁵ This is the main driver behind this book: a curiosity about these other possibilities and a strong belief in the need for experimentation and creativity to push our boundaries of imagining and enacting international law.

Law bears an undeniable yet uncomfortable relation to stories. Lawyers are, perhaps more than anyone, aware that storytelling is part and parcel of the profession. At the same time, the term ‘story’ seems at odds with law’s presumed solemnity and objectivity. Storytelling connotes a degree of freedom and imagination, while legal language is typified as strict and as a ‘boring’ genre, marked by dry technocratic terms. For the larger part, any field of law is rather static and predictable in its use of language, limited by a narrow understanding of what is recognized as acceptable within the discourse of the discipline. In the words of Yahyaoui Krivenko: ‘By limiting the acceptable styles and usages of language, international law limits the number and nature of acceptable arguments. Therefore, despite a relatively broad range of possible outcomes available and the potential open-endedness of international law, the stylistic conventions of international law as a discipline exclude and thus significantly limit the number of acceptable avenues and outcomes.’⁶ For international law, the stylistic conservatism of its legal language clashes with another discourse that is foundational to its existence: the discourse of justice. International law seems to encounter problems with properly capturing the sensitivity of the dramatic subject matter it deals with in its limited vocabulary, and risks becoming simplistic, stereotypical, or overly technical.⁷

Still, the literary character of law has long been recognized. International law has been understood as a kind of language, as an argumentative practice, or, although rarely, as literary activity.⁸ More broadly speaking, the question of the relation between law and arts dates back comfortably to antiquity.⁹ Though it has been held that ‘we live in a period in which it is harder to unite literature, myth, theatre, law and political life than it was,’ it is equally alleged that there might also be an emerging tendency to (re)unite them.¹⁰ Efforts in the field of International Relations to involve aesthetics in a ‘search for thinking space: to explore ever new ways of writing, seeing, hearing and sensing the political’¹¹ have sparked engagement with cultural forms as varying as novels,¹² poetry,¹³ colour,¹⁴ and cartoons.¹⁵ Such explorations have also carried over to international law, as attested for by the latter discipline’s extending inquiry into, for example, narratives,¹⁶ painting,¹⁷ fashion,¹⁸ photography,¹⁹ architecture,²⁰ film,²¹ theatre,²² sound,²³ objects,²⁴ and comic books.²⁵

It is within the burgeoning yet sometimes inherently paradoxical fields of international law and literature or aesthetics that we loosely situate the collected stories presented in this book, without taking up a fixed position in the law and/as/in literature debate.²⁶ Rather, we aim to contribute to a type of international legal scholarship that, in the words of Hohmann and Joyce, aims to ‘disrupt established disciplinary techniques, boundaries, and hierarchies.’²⁷ We pivot this on an approach that is not only critiquing but also alluring, by (re)discovering new styles of reading and writing international law that are disruptive yet that sparkle. This is in order to contest and resist thinking in and about international law in a dogmatic language, but also to emphasize that it is within international law itself that we may find alternative ways of telling stories about it. To use the term ‘story’ does not aim to label the material in this volume ‘unreal,’ or to emphasize its non-legal character or to position it outside of the legal discourse. To the contrary, the analyses in this volume affirm that these stories are ‘not an uncharacteristic, but a quintessential part’ of what we call international law.²⁸

Even so, in international law not all stories can be told. Law demands a certain form, and demands stories to fit within that form. As a consequence, not everything is told in law; not everyone’s voice is heard. Because of law’s considerations of what counts as relevant and its allocation of space to speak, law can erase, morph, silence, and ‘un’-tell stories as much as it creates them.²⁹ Exposing international law’s political agenda and its potential—or even design—as a tool of oppression is extensively discussed and criticized, particularly in the Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) literature.³⁰ In this contribution, we ask what happens to the story of international law and who tells it when we change the form. We ask this partly in order to expose and challenge international law’s underlying tensions and assumptions, and partly to play with and to contemplate alternatives by changing its literary register.

Using different lenses enables the authors in this volume to direct our attention in different ways. Contributors experiment with stories viewed through literary lenses: novel, play, storytelling, portrait, collage, and museum. The book presents a collection of chapters, which in combined form reflect a kaleidoscope of stories told in international law, a picture book of international legal stages, and an assemblage of storytellers. From the outset, however, we want to make clear that this is indeed only a collection of possible stories, inherently limited and incomplete. This book too suffers from selectivity, displayed, for example, by its narrow geographical scope and the particular set of lenses chosen from an infinite pool of possibilities. That said, we propose that this book is an invitation rather than an end product. An invitation that has been taken up in an exciting variety of ways by the contributing authors.

The Collection

Elisabeth Schweiger and Aoife O’Leary McNeice take up the novel as a lens through which...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Once Upon a Time in International Law…
• 2. Pride and Prejudice: Jane Austen and the (In)ability to Speak International Law
• 3. Staging International Law’s Stories: Kapo in Jerusalem
• 4. A Story that Can(not) be Told: Sexual Violence against Men in ICTR and ICTY Jurisprudence
• 5. The Desire to be an International Law City: A Self-Portrait of The Hague and Amsterdam
• 6. International Legal Collage of an Ideal City
• 7. The Museum of White Terror, Taipei: ‘Children, don’t talk politics’
• 8. Becoming Epilogual