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1 - The Standard of Civilisation in International Law

Politics, Theory, Method

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 October 2020

Ntina Tzouvala
Ntina Tzouvala
Affiliation:
Australian National University College of Law
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Summary

This introductory chapter lays out the method, theory and historical framework of the study. It focuses on the potential for historical materialism to help us better understand and critique international law uncovering its structural complicity with oppression, exploitation and dispossession. Along with offering a succinct summary of the capitalist mode of production in Marxist thought, the chapter also reflects on the benefits of combining textual deconstruction with materialist analysis in order to better comprehend law as a textual discipline that is at the same time profoundly entangled with extra-textual processes of capitalist accumulation. Drawing from epistemology and the Marxist philosopher, Luis Althusser, the author defends the importance of a symptomatic reading of international legal materials that centres a specifically juridical problematic.

Keywords

methodsymptomatic readingtextualityMarxcivilisationlogic of improvementlogic of biologyindeterminacy
Type
Chapter
Information
Capitalism As Civilisation
A History of International Law
 , pp. 1 - 43
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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