(UN)chartered Territories: The Paragon of Global Governance (Inside Out)
| Author | Lizzy Willmington |
(UN)chartered Territories: The Paragon of Global Governance
(Inside Out)
Lizzy Willmington*
I. INTRODUCTION
Guidance is offered across a confusing and chaotic landscape of international
law and global orders across the pages of legal articles, books, judgments and
documents. They map out and define what constitutes the hegemonic
understanding of the international legal institution today. This guidance
requires an inexhaustible quantity of resources to maintain and reproduce
itself. The pedagogy of international legal entities is endless and cyclical,
requiring definition and redefinition for one to achieve a superior
understanding of the complexities of the institution. When considering these
factors it is useful to envisage them through geographic and cartographic
language, through the metaphors of maps, cartography and space. This
motivates a visual conceptualisation of the terrain of international law and how
it is constituted through position, scale and space. In this Article, I will explore
the metaphor of the map and pay particular attention to the role of the
cartographer as ‘expert’ 1 in this process of mapping. My analysis of global
governance and the role of international law within this will draw on concepts
of critical legal geography and cartography.
Annelise Riles’ The Network Inside Out2 explores a new form of decentralised
global governance instituted in the 1990s. Using her text I will develop the
concepts of cyclical legitimisation and the consequences of achieving
institutional standards rooted in aesthetic formalism. Linking Riles’ analysis of
what happens when the brackets and quotations are taken out of an
international document and when entities are put into a map, I will explore the
process of concretisation and fact production in global governance using an
* Lizzy Willmington is currently studying an MA in International and Comparative Legal
Studies at SOA S, University of Lon don and received a BA in H istory of Art from Univ ersity of
Leeds. I would like to th ank the Feminist Theory Wr iting Group for the ir thoughtful
suggestions and reviews.
1 David Kennedy, ‘Challenging Expert Rule: The Politics of Global Governance’ (2005) 27
Sydney Law Review 5, 6.
2 Annelise Riles, The Network Inside Out (University of Michigan Press 2000).
76 (UN)chartered Territories: The Paragon of Global Governance (Inside Out)
www.soaslawjournal.org
aesthetic and formatting technique (bracketing) found in Derrida’s ‘The
Parergon’.
Using Damrosch, Henkin, Murphy and Smit’s International Law: Cases and
Materials3 I will explore how the privileged hegemonic map of international law
is made and maintains its visibility. Through a close reading of Introduction to
the Study of International Law4 and borrowing approaches from Riles and the
methodologies as explored in critical legal geography and cartography, I
demonstrate how even seemingly subtle texts are in need of critique in order to
make visible the background levels of construction.
In approaching my understanding through these concepts, I will focus on the
spheres and boundaries of the ‘hyper-visible’ and ‘invisible’5 and how this
defines our understanding of where and how inter national law happens. By
investigating whom the cartographer is and his or her role, I will explore the
impact and importance this position has in defining international law.
II. TAKING ANOTHER LOOK AT THE MAP: HOW WE ARE
GUIDED AROUND THE INTERNATIONAL LANDSCAPE
When you arrive somewhere new the first thing you seek is a map. A need for
orientation around an unknown territory prompts the desire for guidance. At
first the map fulfils a function; it helps navigate you and highlights landmarks
of importance. Maps are an abstract representation of the unfamiliar, yet are
themselves physical representations using the familiar and the identifiable. It is
assumed that an ‘expert’ or cartographer (or expert cartographer), in creating a
replica, has made partially visible a territory which wo uld otherwise be too
grand for one to comprehend. However, through critical geographical analysis
we are encouraged to consider how this map has been constructed, by whom
and with what effect. As with all knowledge, there are specific modes of
knowledge production, coupled with specific intentions and outcomes. Within
each discipline boundaries are created and learned. An understanding of what
is inside (and therefore included), and outside (and therefore excluded) is
taught. This produces opposing spheres of what is accepted and normal, and
what is not; what is understood to be true, and what is not. Through critical
engagement, it is possible to gain a more contextual understanding of the
3 Lori Fisler Damrosch, Louis Henkin, Sean D Murphy an d Hans Smit (eds), International Law:
Cases and Materials (Thomson Reuters 2009).
4 Lori Fisler Damrosc h, Louis Henkin, Sean D Murphy and Hans Smit, ‘In troduction to the
Study of International Law’ in Lori Fisler Damrosch, Louis Henkin, Sean D Murphy and Hans
Smit (eds), International Law: Cases and Materials (Thomson Reuters 2009) xv-xvii.
5 Zoe Pearson, ‘Spaces of International Law’ (2008) 17 Griffith Law Review 489, 494.
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