{"title":"Perimeters of possibility: legal imagination and structural indeterminacy in international legal thought","authors":"A. Leiter","doi":"10.1080/20414005.2023.2203540","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Ntina Tzouvala’s book Capitalism as Civilisation offers a critical analysis of the ‘standard of civilisation’ in international law. By combining historically situated Marxist analysis with structural linguistics the book makes a powerful contribution to the landscape of legal theory. This essay engages with Tzouvala’s methodological intervention and her proposition of a materialist theory of international law. While concurring with Tzouvala’s starting point that ‘critiquing law while avoiding its reification is one of the biggest challenges for materialist legal theory’, the essay questions Tzouvala’s insistence on linguistic structuralism as yet another form of reification through dialectic predetermination. It is this assumed predetermination, as a habit of thought of dialectical thinking, that makes it difficult to relate affirmatively to progressive practices in international law. To develop an alternative understanding of international legal practice that defies the perimeters of possibility of linguistic structuralism, this essay draws on scholarship loosely related to new materialism.","PeriodicalId":37728,"journal":{"name":"Transnational Legal Theory","volume":"14 1","pages":"100 - 112"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Transnational Legal Theory","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20414005.2023.2203540","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"Social Sciences","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
ABSTRACT Ntina Tzouvala’s book Capitalism as Civilisation offers a critical analysis of the ‘standard of civilisation’ in international law. By combining historically situated Marxist analysis with structural linguistics the book makes a powerful contribution to the landscape of legal theory. This essay engages with Tzouvala’s methodological intervention and her proposition of a materialist theory of international law. While concurring with Tzouvala’s starting point that ‘critiquing law while avoiding its reification is one of the biggest challenges for materialist legal theory’, the essay questions Tzouvala’s insistence on linguistic structuralism as yet another form of reification through dialectic predetermination. It is this assumed predetermination, as a habit of thought of dialectical thinking, that makes it difficult to relate affirmatively to progressive practices in international law. To develop an alternative understanding of international legal practice that defies the perimeters of possibility of linguistic structuralism, this essay draws on scholarship loosely related to new materialism.
期刊介绍：
The objective of Transnational Legal Theory is to publish high-quality theoretical scholarship that addresses transnational dimensions of law and legal dimensions of transnational fields and activity. Central to Transnational Legal Theory''s mandate is publication of work that explores whether and how transnational contexts, forces and ideations affect debates within existing traditions or schools of legal thought. Similarly, the journal aspires to encourage scholars debating general theories about law to consider the relevance of transnational contexts and dimensions for their work. With respect to particular jurisprudence, the journal welcomes not only submissions that involve theoretical explorations of fields commonly constructed as transnational in nature (such as commercial law, maritime law, or cyberlaw) but also explorations of transnational aspects of fields less commonly understood in this way (for example, criminal law, family law, company law, tort law, evidence law, and so on). Submissions of work exploring process-oriented approaches to law as transnational (from transjurisdictional litigation to delocalized arbitration to multi-level governance) are also encouraged. Equally central to Transnational Legal Theory''s mandate is theoretical work that explores fresh (or revived) understandings of international law and comparative law ''beyond the state'' (and the interstate). The journal has a special interest in submissions that explore the interfaces, intersections, and mutual embeddedness of public international law, private international law, and comparative law, notably in terms of whether such inter-relationships are reshaping these sub-disciplines in directions that are, in important respects, transnational in nature.
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