POSTHUMAN FEMINISM AS A THEORETICAL AND METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH TO INTERNATIONAL LAW

Abstract

This chapter foregrounds questions of methodology, showing how posthuman feminism can be used as a theoretical and methodological approach in international law. It sets out some fundamentals about what posthuman feminism is and does and what methods international legal scholars and practitioners working with posthuman theory - feminist and otherwise - use. Two arguments are pursued in the chapter. First, it is argued that posthuman theory is both a discursive-linguistic and a material mode of analysis. This is not a novel argument, yet it serves as timely a reminder against the incidental forgetting of a fundamental part of the theoretical and methodological design. Second, the chapter moves on to argue that - and show how - posthuman feminism can help international legal scholars and practitioners employ new ways of seeing and sensing the contemporary world: to cut the frames of analysis differently, and to probe international law’s categories in new ways to reconsider and reconfigure dichotomic and hierarchical notions of oppression, exclusion and predatory violence toward more inclusive and less violent ends. For these purposes, posthuman feminism avails a navigational tool for anyone seeking to make the world a better place, in our own time, as international lawyers or otherwise.