International Law And Posthuman Theory

Assembling a series of voices from across the field, this book demonstrates how posthuman theory can be employed to better understand and tackle some of the challenges faced by contemporary international law. With the vast environmental devastation being caused by climate change, the increasing use of artificial intelligence by international legal actors and the need for international law to face up to its colonial past, international law needs to change. But in regulating and preserving a stable global order in which states act as its main subjects, the traditional sources of international law – international legal statutes, customary international law, historical precedents and general principles of law – create a framework that slows down its capacity to act on contemporary challenges, and to imagine futures yet to come. In response, this collection maintains that posthuman theory can be used to better address the challenges faced by contemporary international law. Covering a wide array of contemporary topics – including environmental law, the law of the sea, colonialism, human rights, conflict and the impact of science and technology – it is the first book to bring new and emerging research on posthuman theory and international law together into one volume. This book’s posthuman engagement with central international legal debates, prefaced by the leading scholar in the field of posthuman theory, provides a perfect resource for students and scholars in international law, as well as critical and socio-legal theorists and others with interests in posthuman thought, technology, colonialism and ecology. Chapters 1, 9 and 11 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

"Feminist approaches to international law have been mischaracterised by the mainstream of the discipline as being a niche field that pertains only to women's lived experiences and their participation in decision-making processes. Exemplifying how feminist approaches can be used to analyse all areas of international law, this book applies posthuman feminist theory to examine the regulation of new and emerging military technologies, international environmental law and the conceptualisation of the sovereign state and other modes of legal personality in international law. Noting that most posthuman scholarship to date is primarily theoretical, this book also contributes to the field of posthumanism through its application of posthuman feminism to international law, working to bridge the theory and practice divide by using posthuman feminism to design and call for legal change. This interdisciplinary book draws on an array of fields, including philosophy, queer and feminist theories, postcolonial and critical race theories, computer science, critical disability studies, science and technology studies, marine biology, cultural and media studies, Indigenous onto-epistemologies, critical legal theory, political science and beyond to provide a holistic analysis of international law and its inclusions and exclusions. This interdisciplinary book will appeal to students and scholars with interests in legal, feminist, and posthuman theory, as well as those concerned with the contemporary challenges faced by international law"--

How might law address the multiple crises of meaning intrinsic to global crises of climate, poverty, mass displacements, ecological breakdown, species extinctions and technological developments that increasingly complicate the very notion of 'life' itself? How can law embrace -- in other words --the 'posthuman' condition -- a condition in which non-human forces such as climate change and Covid-19 signal the impossibility of clinging to the existing imaginaries of Western legal systems and international law? This carefully curated book addresses these and related questions, bringing 'law beyond the human' (drawing on Indigenous legalities, life ways and ontologies) and New Materialist and Posthuman/ist approaches into stimulating proximity to each other. Bold and astute, it draws an invigorating and lively mix of participants into its conversation: soils, urban animals, rivers, rights, Indigenous legalities, property as habitat, swarms, 'unusual posthuman capacities', decolonial critiques, eco-feedback, arts, affective encounters and more besides. Ultimately, this pivotal work shows how law currently fails to respond to the challenges and realities it faces, while demonstrating that law can also be a co-emergence of 'something else', more responsive, relational and prefigurative. Lively and engaging, Posthuman Legalities will prove an imperative read for students and scholars with a keen interest in breaking down barriers to address emerging challenges in environmental law, climate law, and human rights law, in conversation with new approaches to planetary justice.

This book provides a reimagining of how Western law and legal theory structures the human–earth relationship. As a complement to contemporary efforts to establish rights of nature and non-human legal personhood, this book focuses on the other subject in the human–earth relationship: the human. Critical ecological feminism exposes the dualistic nature of the ideal human legal subject as a key driver in the dynamic of instrumentalism that characterises the human–earth relationship in Western culture. This book draws on conceptual fields associated with the new sciences, including new materialism, posthuman critical theory and Big History, to demonstrate that the naturalised hierarchy of humans over nature in the Western social imaginary is anything but natural. It then sets about constructing a counternarrative. The proposed ‘Cosmic Person’ as alternative, non-dualised human legal subject forges a pathway for transforming the Western cultural understanding of the human–earth relationship from mastery and control to ideal co-habitation. Finally, the book details a case study, highlighting the practical application of the proposed reconceptualisation of the human legal subject to contemporary environmental issues. This original and important analysis of the legal status of the human in the Anthropocene will be of great interest to those working in legal theory, jurisprudence, environmental law and the environmental humanities; as well as those with relevant interests in gender studies, cultural studies, feminist theory, critical theory and philosophy.

In a context marked by the virulent return of patriarchal and white supremacist attitudes, a new generation of activists, from the Xenofeminists to Pussy Riot, are continuing the struggle, fighting alongside star feminists like Emma Watson and Scarlett Johansson: these are very feminist times. But how do these and other struggles relate to our contemporary posthuman condition? In this important new book, Rosi Braidotti examines the implications of the posthuman turn for feminist theory and practice. She defines the posthuman turn as a convergence between post-humanism on the one hand and post-anthropocentrism on the other, and she examines the double impact of these two lines of critical enquiry for contemporary feminist practice. In so doing she develops five theses: that contemporary feminism is neo-materialist and that feminism today is not a humanism; that Anthropos has been de-centered and that non-human life, Zoe, is now the ruling concept; and that, as a result of these shifts of perspective, today sexuality can be defined as a force beyond, beneath and after gender. The book ends with a plea for joyful political resistance, calling for embedded and embodied cartographies of the new power relations that are emerging from the current geo-political order. This bold new text by a leading feminist philosopher will be of great interest to students and scholars throughout the humanities and social sciences.

Feminist approaches to international law have been mischaracterised by the mainstream of the discipline as being a niche field that pertains only to women’s lived experiences and their participation in decision-making processes. Exemplifying how feminist approaches can be used to analyse all areas of international law, this book applies posthuman feminist theory to examine the regulation of new and emerging military technologies, international environmental law and the conceptualisation of the sovereign state and other modes of legal personality in international law. Noting that most posthuman scholarship to date is primarily theoretical, this book also contributes to the field of posthumanism through its application of posthuman feminism to international law, working to bridge the theory and practice divide by using posthuman feminism to design and call for legal change. This interdisciplinary book draws on an array of fields, including philosophy, queer and feminist theories, postcolonial and critical race theories, computer science, critical disability studies, science and technology studies, marine biology, cultural and media studies, Indigenous onto-epistemologies, critical legal theory, political science and beyond to provide a holistic analysis of international law and its inclusions and exclusions. This interdisciplinary book will appeal to students and scholars with interests in legal, feminist and posthuman theory, as well as those concerned with the contemporary challenges faced by international law.

How might law address the multiple crises of meaning intrinsic to global crises of climate, poverty, mass displacements, ecological breakdown, species extinctions and technological developments that increasingly complicate the very notion of 'life' itself? How can law embrace — in other words —the 'posthuman' condition — a condition in which non-human forces such as climate change and Covid-19 signal the impossibility of clinging to the existing imaginaries of Western legal systems and international law? This carefully curated book addresses these and related questions, bringing 'law beyond the human' (drawing on Indigenous legalities, life ways and ontologies) and New Materialist and Posthuman/ist approaches into stimulating proximity to each other.

Gender and the Law of the Sea successfully establishes the relevance of gender at sea and posits that feminist perspectives can help develop a more inclusive law for the oceans.