An auto-critique of TWAIL’s historical fallacy: Sketching an alternative manifesto

Sreejith, S. G. (2017) An auto-critique of TWAIL’s historical fallacy: Sketching an alternative manifesto. Third World Quarterly, 38 (7). pp. 1511-1530. ISSN 01436597

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Abstract

Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) has been impactful in international law scholarship. However, many of its epistemic approaches, especially its active historicising, have often turned counterproductive to its objective of securing freedom for the peoples of the Third World. Moreover, pursuing the colonial past through weighty polemics has rendered TWAIL a discourse that engenders anti-Western sentiments. Further, TWAIL’s dialectic means of resistance and opposition to a past-influenced present ingrained in international law and systems, which are at the disposal of the West, have the reverse effect of dialectically imposing a Western otherness on TWAIL. Hence, an alternative manifesto is sketched, which, while it disagrees with the exclusion of the West in social production, refuses to privilege the West through a Hegelian dialectic of otherness. The alternative manifesto proposes an alternative dialectic wherein the otherness is a ‘universal’ in the self-consciousness of the subjects. It is a dialectic of inclusion and open participation. The article also attempts to situate the new dialectic in international law.

Item Type: Article
Keywords: International law | TWAIL | Historicism | Dialectic | Alternative Manifesto
Subjects: Social Sciences and humanities > Social Sciences > Development
JGU School/Centre: Jindal Global Law School
Depositing User: Mr Sombir Dahiya
Date Deposited: 10 May 2022 05:49
Last Modified: 10 May 2022 05:49
Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2016.1217737
URI: https://pure.jgu.edu.in/id/eprint/2956

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