Work

Authorial Labour in the Postcolonial Historiography of International Law

Year: 2025

Type: article

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.

Source: Journal of the History of International Law / Revue d’histoire du droit international

DOI: 10.1163/15718050-bja10118

Author: Michele Tedeschini

Institution: Freie Universität Berlin

Language: English

Topic: International Law and Human Rights

Subfield: Political Science and International Relations

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Peace, justice, and strong institutions

Open Access status: hybrid

Funder: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft