Fascist international law: the governance of the thing

Faculty Colloquium

Presenter: Jean d'Aspremont, Professor at Sciences Po School of Law

Discussant: Alain Pottage, Professor at Sciences Po School of Law

In the critical literature, it is common place to stress that a lot of what international law does to the world and to people it does it with words. And yet, as it is argued in this presentation, international law does not only do what it does through words but also with things. International law is the site of a mode of thinking that is called here thingifying thinking. 

By virtue of thingifying thinking, international law turns into a thingifying discourse that transforms into things all what crosses its path. In other words, international law is an irresistible thing-maker whereby the world, practices, states, actors, people, borders, environments, histories, cultures, traditions, races, genders, identities, economic development, discriminations, oppressions, injustices, etc are given a materiality which is treated as natural and external to international law. Interestingly, the thingification performed by international law also bears upon international law itself, with the result that the latter is similarly made a big thing that has a material (thingly) existence. This state of affairs is not benign at all. 

The thingly facticity awarded to the world and to international law by the thingifying thinking examined in this presentation carries with it what is called here a discursive immunity. Indeed, once elevated into a thing, international law and the world come to stand outside the performativity and the world-making effect of discourse: they become a-constructed.