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Unsettling international law and peace-making: An encounter with queer theory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 September 2020

Philipp Kastner  and
Elisabeth Roy Trudel
Philipp Kastner
Affiliation:
Law School, University of Western Australia, 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley, WA 6009, Australia, Email: philipp.kastner@uwa.edu.au
Elisabeth Roy Trudel
Affiliation:
Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture, Concordia University, 1455 de Maisonneuve Blvd O, Montréal, Québec H3G 1M8, Canada, Email: elisabeth.roytrudel@mail.concordia.ca
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Abstract

This article examines the usefulness of an encounter with queer theory to contribute to the peaceful resolution of armed conflicts, to question the traditional frontiers of international law, and to lay the groundwork for envisaging different forms of peace and peace-making. In a field where, arguably, little genuine progress has been made to resolve armed conflicts and to address underlying forms of violence, queer theory can reinforce a pluralistic understanding of law and suggest much-needed unsettling and creative approaches. The article focuses on queer theory’s specific critique of the construction and normalization of hierarchies, categories, and identities, which almost always – whether explicitly or implicitly – lie at the heart of armed conflicts and frame peace negotiations, without ever being truly reconsidered. Moreover, queer theory allows appreciating both peace and law beyond predetermined categorizations and as aspirational endeavours that are constantly evolving. Through a dialogue between two figures, which imagines what Peace and qt* might want to tell each other, this article also attempts to queer the standard academic format and to question the dominant forms of expression and knowledge-production in academia.

Keywords

armed conflictslegal pluralismnon-state actorspeace and conflict studiesqueer theory
Type
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Information
Leiden Journal of International Law , Volume 33 , Issue 4 , December 2020 , pp. 911 - 930
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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References

1 Without adopting a specific definition of ‘armed conflict’ or ‘armed group’, we focus in this article on conflicts that are marked by considerable armed violence as well as some level of organization of the parties involved, one of which will usually be the government of a state. For a more detailed discussion on such definitional questions within a legal-pluralistic framework see P. Kastner, Legal Normativity in the Resolution of Internal Armed Conflict (2015), at 24–5.

2 Christine Bell has called this new body of law relating to peace-making lex pacificatoria. See, e.g., C. Bell, On the Law of Peace, Peace Agreements and the Lex Pacificatoria (2008).

3 In turn, peace treaties played an important role in the formation of international law. See, e.g., R. Lesaffer, ‘Peace Treaties and the Formation of International Law’, in B. Fassbender and A. Peters (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of the History of International (2012), 71. See also R. Lesaffer (ed.), Peace Treaties and International Law in European History: From the Late Middle Ages to World War One (2012).

4 For this argument see, e.g., C. Bailliet, ‘Untraditional Approaches to Law: Teaching the International Law of Peace’, (2014) 12(2) Santa Clara Journal of International Law 1, at 8.

5 P. Alston, ‘Peace as a Human Rights’, (1980) 11(4) Bulletin of Peace Proposals 319, at 325.

6 This also emerges from the Declaration on the Right to Peace, which was adopted by the Human Rights Council in 2016, UN Doc. A/HRC/RES/32/28 (2016). For a concise critique of the draft declaration see Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, ‘Statement on the Right to Peace’, 8 September 2014, available at www.wilpf.org/wilpf_statements/statement-of-the-womens-international-league-for-peace-and-freedom-on-the-un-declaration-on-the-right-to-peace/. On the difference between positive and negative peace and other concepts of peace see infra notes 42, 45 and accompanying text.

7 For one of the first uses of the term queer theory see T. de Lauretis, Queer Theory: Lesbian and Gay Sexualities (1991). For a concise criticism of ‘simply using queer theory as (reductively) another, shorthand name for lesbian and gay studies’, see N. Giffney, ‘Denormatizing Queer Theory: More than (Simply) Lesbian and Gay Studies’, (2004) 5(1) Feminist Theory 73, at 74.

8 D. Otto, ‘Introduction: Embracing Queer Curiosity’, in D. Otto (ed.), Queering International Law: Possibilities, Alliances, Complicities, Risks (2017), 1; C. Weber, ‘Queer Intellectual Curiosity as International Relations Method: Developing Queer International Relations Theoretical and Methodological Frameworks’, (2016) 60(1) International Studies Quarterly 11.

9 R. T. Ford, ‘What’s Queer about Race?’, (2007) 106(3) South Atlantic Quarterly 477, at 478. Indeed, queer theory does not have a ‘proper’ object of study. For this discussion in the context of international relations see L. Wilcox, ‘Queer Theory and the “Proper Objects” of International Relations’, (2014) 16(4) International Studies Review 612. On the important claim of many queer theories to be able to critique the (heteronormative) entirety of society see H. Haberler et al., ‘Que[e]r zum Staat: Heteronormativitätskritische Perspektiven auf Staat, Macht, Gesellschaft. Eine Einleitung’, in H. Haberler et al. (eds.), Que[e]r zum Staat: Heteronormativitätskritische Perspektiven auf Staat, Macht, Gesellschaft (2012), 7, at 8.

10 I. Morland and A. Willox, ‘Introduction’, in I. Morland and A. Willox (eds), Queer Theory (2005), at 5.

11 As Judith Butler has noted, the term queer ‘will have to remain that which is, in the present, never fully owned, but always and only redeployed, twisted, queered from a prior usage and in the direction of urgent and expanding political purposes’. J. Butler, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex (2011), at 173.

12 For instance, on the ‘absence of feminist methods’ in international law see G. Heathcote, Feminist Dialogues on International Law: Successes, Tensions, Futures (2019), at 6.

13 For instance, as B. S. Chimni has argued, international law is ‘[a]rmed with the powers of international financial and trade institutions to enforce a neo-liberal agenda’ and ‘has always served the interests of dominant social forces and States in international relations’. B. S. Chimni, ‘Third World Approaches to International Law: A Manifesto’, (2006) 3 International Community Law Review 3, at 3, 26; on the hegemony of the international human rights law project, which delegitimizes other emancipatory vocabularies, see D. Kennedy, ‘The International Human Rights Movement: Part of the Problem?’, (2002) 15 Harvard Human Rights Journal 101, at 108.

14 In this sense, we take up the call to ‘strike alliances with other critics of the neo-liberal approach to international law’ voiced by Chimni, ibid., at 22. And, as Dianne Otto has noted, the contributors to a collection on queering international law ‘do not think of queer theory as autonomous from, or as surpassing, feminist analysis’. Otto, supra note 8, at 6.

15 D. Otto, ‘Resisting the Heteronormative Imaginary of the Nation-State’, in D. Otto (ed.), Queering International Law: Possibilities, Alliances, Complicities, Risks (2017), 236, at 239.

16 On relational theory see, e.g., R. Leckey, Contextual Subjects: Family, State and Relational Theory (2008).

17 On the concept of ‘peace formation’ see, e.g., O. Richmond, Failed Statebuilding: Intervention and the Dynamics of Peace Formation (2014).

18 D. Otto, ‘“Taking a Break” from “Normal”: Thinking Queer in the Context of International Law’, (2007) 101 American Society of International Law Proceedings 119, at 121; Otto, supra note 15.

19 This is, admittedly, as Doris E. Buss has argued, ‘a rather vague and ambiguous task’ but nevertheless a much-needed one. D. E. Buss, ‘Queering International Legal Authority’, (2007) 101 American Society of International Law Proceedings 122, at 123.

20 K. Plummer, ‘Critical Humanism and Queer Theory: Living with the Tensions’, in N. K. Denzin and Y. S. Lincoln (eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research (2011), 195, at 200.

21 Ruthann Robson’s performative essay ‘UnSettled’, for instance, combines the presumably real with the imagined. R. Robson, ‘UnSettled’, in R. Leckey and K. Brooks (eds.), Queer Theory: Law, Culture, Empire (2010), 591. Other examples are the graphic novel by CRAC Collective, ‘A Diversity of Sex Tactics Part 1’, in C. B. Daring et al. (eds.), Queering Anarchism: Addressing and Undressing Power and Desire (2012) 129 and Ken Plummer’s combination of ‘personal experiences of the body in illness with symbolic interactionist theory’ in ‘My Multiple Sick Bodies: Symbolic Interactionism, Autoethnography and Embodiment’, in B. S. Turner (ed.), Routledge Handbook of Body Studies (2012) 75.

22 Plummer, supra note 20, at 201. For a fairly playful, illustrated introduction to queer theory see M. Barker and J. Scheele, Queer: A Graphic History (2016).

23 B. de Sousa Santos, ‘Three Metaphors for a New Conception of Law: The Frontier, the Baroque, and the South’, (1995) 29(4) Law & Society Review 569, at 576–9.

24 See J. Butler, ‘A “Bad Writer” Bites Back’, (1999) New York Times.

25 Ford, supra note 9, at 483.

26 These are obviously not binary categories with hard boundaries and we would not want to push such categorizations too far. Moreover, and although queer theory would not presume any self-identification to be impossible, one may wonder who – in a time where thinking and being ‘critical’ appears to have become a ubiquitous imperative – still self-identifies as being part of the ‘mainstream’.

27 For law’s obsession with chirography see R. A. Macdonald, ‘Custom Made – For a Non-chirographic Critical Legal Pluralism’, (2011) 26(2) Canadian Journal of Law and Society 301.

28 See, e.g., Heathcote, supra note 12. For the argument that dialogism, in the Bakhtinian sense, ‘can inform the creativity of post-queer dialogical-becoming’ see D. V. Ruffolo, Post-Queer Politics (2016), at 65.

29 On what Dianne Otto has called ‘the politics of listening’ in the context of peoples’ tribunals and ‘our collective responsibility to find ways to act on these stories’ see D. Otto, ‘Beyond Legal Justice: Some Personal Reflections on Peoples’ Tribunals, Listening and Responsibility’, (2017) 5(2) London Review of International Law 225, at 239.

30 As Anna Carline and Zoe Person have argued, ‘uncertainty and unknowingness about future directions is inevitable’. A. Carline and Z. Person, ‘Complexity and Queer Theory Approaches to International Law and Feminist Politics: Perspectives on Trafficking’, (2007) 19(1) Canadian Journal of Women and the Law 73, at 116.

31 On similar thoughts in the context of queer theory and anarchism see J. Heckert, ‘Anarchy without Opposition’, in C. B. Daring et al. (eds.), Queering Anarchism: Addressing and Undressing Power and Desire (2012), 63, at 70.

32 As Donald Hall has argued, ‘there is no “queer” theory in the singular, only many different voices and sometimes overlapping, sometimes divergent perspectives that can be loosely called “queer theories”’. D. Hall, Queer Theories (2003), at 5. Or, as Annamarie Jagose has noted, queer theory’s ‘most enabling characteristic may well be its potential for looking forward without anticipating the future’. A. Jagose, Queer Theory: An Introduction (1996), at 131. See also Plummer, supra note 20, at 197; R. Leckey and K. Brooks, ‘Introduction’, in R. Leckey and K. Brooks (eds.), Queer Theory: Law, Culture, Empire (2010), 1, at 1.

33 N. Sullivan, A Critical Introduction to Queer Theory (2003), at 43.

34 See, for instance, the book cover of C. B. Daring et al. (eds.), Queering Anarchism: Addressing and Undressing Power and Desire (2012).

35 N. Giffney, ‘Introduction: The “q” Word’, in N. Giffney and M. O’Rourke (eds.), The Ashgate Research Companion to Queer Theory (2016), 1, at 3.

36 L. Edelman, No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive (2004), at 17.

37 G. Heathcote, ‘Security Council Resolution 2242 on Women, Peace and Security: Progressive Gains or Dangerous Development?’, (2018) 32(4) Global Society 374, at 379.

38 Ford, supra note 9, at 479. Ford also notes that ‘[q]ueer theory’s destabilizing agenda offered me a way to resist the supersizing of identity politics’. Ibid, at 481.

39 Sullivan, supra note 33, at 50.

40 J. Halberstam, Trans*: What’s in a Name? (2018), at 3.

41 On maternal thinking see S. Ruddick, Maternal Thinking: Toward a Politics of Peace (1995).

42 On the distinction between positive and negative peace see J. Galtung, ‘Violence, Peace, and Peace Research’, (1969) 6(3) Journal of Peace Research 167.

43 Rubens’ classic painting ‘Minerva protects Pax from Mars (“Peace and War”)’ comes to mind – despite its depiction, in a simplifying and obviously gendered dichotomy, of Peace being passive and vulnerable and needing to be protected from Mars.

44 See, e.g., S. Campbell, D. Chandler and M. Sabaratnam (eds.), A Liberal Peace? The Problems and Practices of Peacebuilding (2011).

45 For examples see C. Cohn and S. Ruddick, ‘A Feminist Ethical Perspective on Weapons of Mass Destruction’, in S. Hashmi and S. P. Lee (eds.), Ethics and Weapons of Mass Destruction: Religious and Secular Perspectives (2012), 405; D. Roberts, ‘Beyond the Metropolis? Popular Peace and Post-Conflict Peace Peacebuilding’, (2011) 37(5) Review of International Studies 2535; R. M. Ginty, ‘Hybrid Peace: The Interaction Between Top-Down and Bottom-Up Peace’, (2010) 41(4) Security Dialogue 391; O. Richmond and A. Mitchell (eds.), Hybrid Forms of Peace: From Everyday Agency to Post-Liberalism (2012); W. Dietrich, Elicitive Conflict Transformation and the Transrational Shift in Peace Politics (2013); W. Dietrich and W. Sützl, ‘A Call for Many Peaces’, in W. Dietrich, J. Echavarría Alvarez and N. Koppensteiner (eds.), Keytexts of Peace Studies (2006), 282. For a useful overview of feminist approaches to war and peace and, specifically, a poignant critique, based on intersectional feminism, of universal claims made by transrational approaches to peace see A. Weber, ‘Why a Feminist Standpoint Epistemology Is Necessary in Times of Hegemonic Masculinity: Thoughts on Intersectionality and Transrationality’, in J. Echavarría Alvarez, D. Ingruber and N. Koppensteiner (eds.), Transrational Resonances: Echoes to the Many Peaces (2018), 83, at 102–3. For an examination of the conceptualization and evolution of peace in international relations see O. Richmond, Peace in International Relations, (2020). Richmond highlights the ‘paucity’ of international relations’ ‘historical engagement with peace as a complex concept’. Ibid, at 1.

46 For an analysis of statements of the permanent five members of the UN Security Council made in the context of discussions about sexual violence in armed conflict see T. P. Paige, ‘The Maintenance of International Peace and Security Heteronormativity’, in D. Otto (ed.), Queering International Law: Possibilities, Alliances, Complicities, Risks (2017), 91.

47 As Sundhya Pahuja has argued, international law has both ‘an imperial and counterimperial dimension’. S. Pahuja, Decolonising International Law: Development, Economic Growth and the Politics of Universality (2011), at 1. ‘Discontent’, in Dianne Otto’s words, ‘arises from deep hopefulness that international law may yet be turned to emancipatory ends’. D. Otto, ‘Celebrating Complexity’, (2012) 106(1) American Society of International Law Proceedings 168, at 168–9.

48 R. G. Teitel, Transitional Justice (2000), at 20.

49 For a discussion on the applicability of common Art. 3 of Additional Protocol II to the Geneva Conventions to non-state actors see L. Zegveld, Accountability of Armed Opposition Groups in International Law (2002), at 9–18.

50 For this argument see A. Clapham, ‘Human Rights Obligations of Non-State Actors in Conflict Situations’, (2006) 88(863) International Review of the Red Cross 491. On the human rights obligations of non-state actors see generally A. Clapham, Human Rights Obligations of Non-State Actors (2006).

51 D. Murray, Human Rights Obligations of Non-State Armed Groups (2016).

52 For an overview and case study of Sudan see S. Herr, ‘Binding Non-State Armed Groups to International Humanitarian Law’, (2010) PRIF-Report No. 94, available at www.operationspaix.net/DATA/DOCUMENT/6858~v~Binding_Non-State_Armed_Groups_to_International_Humanitarian_Law.pdf.

53 On the ‘vibrant contribution of NGOs to international law’ see S. Charnovitz, ‘Nongovernmental Organizations and International Law’, (2006) 100(2) American Journal of International Law 348; on what has been called the ‘participatory revolution’ in international environmental law, with NGOs being described as ‘major actors in the formulation, implementation, and enforcement of international environmental law’ see K. Raustiala, ‘The Participatory Revolution in International Environmental Law’, (1997) 21(2) Harvard Environmental Law Review 537, at 538; on the contribution of corporations to transnational regulation and governance see D. Danielsen, ‘How Corporations Govern: Taking Corporate Power Seriously in Transnational Regulation and Governance’, (2005) 46(2) Harvard International Law Journal 411; for some examples of the ways in which experts and networks reshape traditional forms of power and authority as well as international law see H. Cullen, J. Harrington and C. Renshaw (eds.), Experts, Networks and International Law (2017).

54 P. M. Haas, ‘Introduction: Epistemic Communities and International Policy Coordination’, (1992) 46(2) International Organization 1.

55 R. McCorquodale, ‘An Inclusive International Legal System’, (2004) 17(3) Leiden Journal of International Law 477, at 485.

56 A. Roberts and S. Sivakumaran, ‘Lawmaking by Nonstate Actors: Engaging Armed Groups in the Creation of International Humanitarian Law’, (2012) 37(1) Yale Journal of International Law 107.

57 For the claim that ‘the Weberian approach to statehood has arguably attained the status of orthodoxy in the mainstream literature’ in the field of peace- and statebuilding see N. Lemay-Hébert, N. Onuf and V. Rakić, ‘Introduction: Disputing Weberian Semantics’, in N. Lemay-Hébert et al. (eds.), Semantics of Statebuilding: Language, Meanings and Sovereignty (2014), 1, at 2. For the argument that the notion of heteronormative hegemony, ‘as a positive formation of state power’ allows going beyond dominant understandings of the state within mainstream state theory see G. Ludwig, ‘From the “Heterosexual Matrix” to a “Heteronormative Hegemony”: Initiating a Dialogue between Judith Butler and Antonia Gramsci about Queer Theory and Politics’, in M. do Mar Castro Varela, N. Dhawan and A. Engel (eds.), Hegemony and Heteronormativity: Revisiting ‘The Political’ in Queer Politics (2011), 43. See also H. Haberler et al. (eds.), Que[e]r zum Staat: Heteronormativitätskritische Perspektiven auf Staat, Macht, Gesellschaft (2012).

58 K. Knop, ‘Re/Statements: Feminism and State Sovereignty in International Law’, (1993) 3 Transnational Law & Contemporary Problems 293, at 318. Knop is particularly critical of radical feminists, like Andrea Dworkin, who have analogized the body to the state and the violation of state sovereignty to sexual intercourse. Ibid, at 326.

59 See, e.g., Clapham, supra note 50, at 493. On human rights’ paradoxical suspicion and strengthening of the state see Kennedy, supra note 13, at 113.

60 M. Finnemore and S. J. Toope, ‘Alternatives to “Legalization”: Richer Views of Law and Politics’, (2001) 55(3) International Organization 743, at 751. See also J. Brunnée and S. J. Toope, Legitimacy and Legality in International Law: An Interactional Account (2010).

61 M. Kleinhans and R. A. Macdonald, ‘What is a Critical Legal Pluralism?’, (1997) 12 Canadian Journal of Law and Society 25, at 39, 45; R. A. Macdonald, ‘Here, There… and Everywhere: Theorizing Legal Pluralism; Theorizing Jacques Vanderlinden’, in N. Kasirer (ed.), Étudier et enseigner le droit: hier, aujourd’hui et demain – études offertes à Jacques Vanderlinden (2006), 381, at 391; R. A. Macdonald and D. Sandomierski, ‘Against Nomopolies’, (2006) 57 Northern Ireland Legal Quarterly 610, at 618–19.

62 This draws on Fuller’s understanding of law. E.g., L. L. Fuller, The Morality of Law (1969), at 192.

63 Emily Jones alludes to the idea that a queer approach must be anti-law. E. Jones, ‘Review of Dianne Otto (ed): Queering International Law: Possibilities, Alliances, Complicities, Risks’, (2018) Feminist Legal Studies, at 5.

64 M. Wetherell, ‘Themes in Discourse Research: The Case of Diana’, in M. Wetherell, S. Taylor and S. J. Yates (eds.), Discourse Theory and Practice: A Reader (2001), 14, at 15–16.

65 R. M. Cover, ‘The Supreme Court, 1982 Term – Foreword: Nomos and Narrative’, (1983) 97(4) Harvard Law Review 4, at 5.

66 ‘JEM Rebels Head to Doha for Talks on Darfur Peace Process’, Sudan Tribune, 12 November 2010, available at www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article36906

67 For a rejection of the monist, centralist, positivist, and prescriptivist beliefs of legal orthodoxy see Macdonald, supra note 61, at 390.

68 With apologies to Carl von Clausewitz for paraphrasing his saying that ‘war is the continuation of politics by other means’.

69 General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina (Dayton Peace Agreement), 14 December 1995, 35 ILM 75, Annex 4, art. V.

70 Certain provisions relating to political representation based on identities have even been invalidated by the European Court of Human Rights. For a critical discussion of the Court’s 2009 judgment in Sejdić and Finci v. Bosnia and Herzegovina see C. McCrudden and Brendan O’Leary, ‘Courts and Consociations, or How Human Rights Courts May De-stabilize Power-sharing Settlements’, (2013) 24(2) European Journal of International Law 477. For a deconstruction of the ethnic logics embedded within the Dayton Peace Agreement see P. Pinkerton, ‘Deconstructing Dayton: Ethnic Politics and the Legacy of War in Bosnia and Herzegovina’, (2016) 10(4) Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding 548.

71 D. Chandler, Faking Democracy After Dayton (2000).

72 L. Sjoborn, ‘Queering the “Territorial Peace”? Queer Theory Conversing With Mainstream International Relations’, (2014) 16(4) International Studies Review 608, at 610.

73 C. Weber, ‘Performative States’, (1998) 27(1) Millennium 77, at 90.

74 U. Beck and E. Beck-Gernsheim, Individualization: Institutionalized Indivualism and its Social and Political Consequences (2001), at 203.

75 As D. Otto has argued, a ‘queer perspective challenges the idea of the immutability of any aspect of identity’. Otto, ‘“Taking a Break” from “Normal’”, supra note 18, at 121. See also Morland and Willox, supra note 10, at 2.

76 E. Kosofsky Sedgwick, ‘Axiomatic’, in I. Morland and A. Willox (eds.), Queer Theory (2005), 81, at 83.

77 E.g., M. Jessop, D. Aljets and B. Chacko, ‘The Ripe Moment for Civil Society’, (2008) 13 International Negotiation 93, at 107.

78 As it has been argued, ‘the inclusion of civil society actors … has become part of the normative framework of peace negotiations and … is increasingly being internalized as a legal obligation’. Kastner, supra note 1, at 147. On both internal and external representation deficits in peace negotiations see M. Saliternik, ‘Perpetuating Democratic Peace: Procedural Justice in Peace Negotiations’, (2016) 27(3) European Journal of International Law 617.

79 T. Pfaffenholz, ‘Civil Society and Peace Negotiations: Beyond the Inclusion-Exclusion Dichotomy’, (2014) 30(1) Negotiation Journal 69.

80 For a critique of the presumably hard boundary between civil society and the state in Sri Lanka see O. Walton with P. Saravanamuttu, ‘In the Balance? Civil Society and the Peace Process 2002-2008’, in J. Goodhand, J. Spencer and B. Korf (eds.), Conflict and Peacebuilding in Sri Lanka: Caught in the Peace Trap? (2011), 183, 184.

81 For the argument that international human rights non-governmental organizations operate behind a ‘façade of neutrality’, whereas they actually ‘seek the establishment of a particular political system’ see M. Mutua, ‘Human Rights International NGOs: A Critical Evaluation’, in C. E. Welch Jr. (ed.), NGOs and Human Rights: Promise and Performance (2001), 151, at 159.

82 Walton, supra note 80, at 184.

83 Leckey and Brooks, supra note 32, at 9. Moreover, as M. Warner writes in The Trouble with Normal, ‘even an expanded catalog of identities can remain blind to the ways people suffer, often indiscriminately, from gender norms, object-orientation norms, norms of sexual practice, and norms of subjective identification’. M. Warner, The Trouble with Normal: Sex, Politics and the Ethics of Queer Life (2000), at 39.

84 As Ford notes, queer theory offers an ‘alternative attitude, tone or “stance’”. Ford, supra note 9, at 482.

85 As similarly pointed out by Judith Butler, there is no viable critique ‘that fails to account for its complicity in forms of oppression, whether they be colonial, class-based, racist, or homophobic’. J. Butler, ‘Against Proper Objects’, in E. Weed and N. Schor (eds.), Feminism Meets Queer Theory (1997), 1, at 2.

86 R. Kapur, ‘Bollywood Cinema and Queer Sexualities’, in R. Leckey and K. Brooks (eds.), Queer Theory: Law, Culture, Empire (2010), 37.

87 M. Marinucci, Feminism is Queer: The intimate connection between feminist and queer theory (2010), at 34; M. H. Kirsch, Queer Theory and Social Change (2000), at 43.

88 Similarly, it has been argued that the discipline of political science ‘remains distinctly untroubled by queer theory’. N. J. Smith and D. Lee, ‘What’s Queer About Political Science?’, (2015) 17 British Journal of Politics and International Relations 49. For an analysis as to why the discipline of international relations has not gone ‘somewhat queer’ see C. Weber, ‘Why is there no Queer International Theory?’, (2015) 21(1) European Journal of International Relations 27. For the argument that ‘the impact of queer theory or queer studies remains limited on peace and justice studies’ see G. W. Bateman, ‘Queer Possibilities in Peace and Justice Studies’, in M. Groarke and E. Welty (eds.), Peace and Justice Studies: Critical Pedagogy (2018), 42, at 43. For a recently edited collection that brings together a variety of queer approaches to international law see D. Otto (ed.), Queering International Law: Possibilities, Alliances, Complicities, Risks (2017).

89 While itself not immune to such dangers of co-option (including by being discussed in a well-established international law journal), queer theory is inherently undefinable and uncertain about its current and future identity, and seems better equipped to resist co-option than other critical voices and theories. However, normalizing queer theory certainly risks losing its radical potential. D. M. Halperin, ‘The Normalization of Queer Theory’, (2003) 45(2-4) Journal of Homosexuality 393, at 343.

90 See, e.g., D. Otto, ‘Power and Danger: Feminist Engagement with International Law through the UN Security Council’, (2010) 32 Australian Feminist Law Journal 97, at 107; D. Otto, ‘The Exile of Inclusion: Reflections on Gender Issues in International Law Over the Last Decade’, (2009) 10 Melbourne Journal of International Law 11; Heathcote, ‘Security Council Resolution 2242’, supra note 37, at 382; G. Heathcote, ‘Gender, Participation and Security’, in D. Otto and G. Heathcote (eds.), Rethinking Peacekeeping, Gender Equality and Collective Security (2014) 48. For the ‘silencing of voices outside the dominant subject’, as revealed in feminist peace and conflict theory, see Weber, supra note 45, at 84.

91 E.g., J. A. Redding, ‘Queer-Religious Potentials in US Same-Sex Marriage Debates’, in R. Leckey and K. Brooks (eds.), Queer Theory: Law, Culture, Empire (2010), 122, at 124.

92 Ford, supra note 9, at 478. Similarly, as Ayeal Gross has noted, the 2007 Yogyakarta Principles on the Application of International Human Rights Law in Relation to Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity do not challenge the problematic binary categories of gender and sexuality and, more generally, existing structures of hierarchy but ‘represent an attempt at offering freedom of, but not freedom from, sexual orientation and gender identity’. A. M. Gross, ‘Sex, Love, and Marriage: Questioning Gender and Sexuality Rights in International Law’, (2008) 21 Leiden Journal of International Law 235, at 251.

93 We use this term intentionally in a Gramscian sense.

94 On affinities between anarchism and queer theory, anarchism’s comparatively limited focus and queer theory’s ‘infinite possibilities for resistance’ see S. Song, ‘Polyamory and Queer Anarchism: Infinite Possibilities for Resistance’, in C. B. Daring et al. (eds.), Queering Anarchism: Addressing and Undressing Power and Desire (2012), 165, at 167. See also Plummer, supra note 20, at 197.

95 Otto, supra note 15, at 246.

96 See, e.g., Warner, supra note 83; M. do Mar Castro Varela, N. Dhawan and A. Engel(eds.), Hegemony and Heteronormativity: Revisiting ‘The Political’ in Queer Politics (2011).

97 This relies on de Sousa Santos’s argument that we must not only ‘side with the victim’ but ‘become the victim’, i.e., the oppressed and marginalized. de Sousa Santos, supra note 23, at 580. On the importance of ‘listening to peripheral subjects’ see Heathcote, ‘Security Council Resolution 2242’, supra note 37, at 390.

98 As Annette Weber writes, ‘[a]n assumed neutrality of the mediator or facilitator … is already loaded with meaning and power’. Weber, supra note 45, at 86.

99 B. de Sousa Santos, ‘Law: A Map of Misreading. Toward a Postmodern Conception of Law’, (1997) 14(3) Journal of Law and Society 279.

100 As Dianne Otto argues, ‘queer relational practices offer emancipatory non-state-centred imaginaries of human connection and interdependence’. Otto, ‘Resisting the Heteronormative Imaginary of the Nation-State’, supra note 15, at 239.

101 Stacy, aka sallydarity, ‘Gender Sabotage’, in C. B. Daring et al. (eds.), Queering Anarchism: Addressing and Undressing Power and Desire (2012), 43, at 55.