Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law
| Published date | 01 May 2006 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.2006.00593_2.x |
| Author | Sundhya Pahuja |
| Date | 01 May 2006 |
The ¢nal two contributions to the collection focus on Morocco. Nathaniel
Berman’s‘The Appeals of the Orient’ is a historical perspective on France’s coloni-
sation of Morocco and associated images portraying gendered desires, whereas
Ruba Salih’s ‘Toward an Understanding of Transnationalism and Gender’ (chap-
ter 8) is a contemporary social anthropological perspective on migrant Moroccan
women. The former is perhaps the most complex contribution to the collection.
Berman looks at the ‘War of the Ri¡’ between France and the Moroccan Ri¡an
Rebels in 1925, and uses an interpretative frame to relate French images of the
colonised world to notionsof international legal orderassociated with them.Ber-
man’s interpretative frame uses ¢rst the language of desires to look at how these
images relate to sexual and gender desires and the‘appeal of the Orient’, and sec-
ondly the language of law to understand the relationship between colonialism
and its place in legal history. Responses to the warby French culturaland political
writers outside the domain of international law are assessed for the desire to
seduce, conscript and ‘explode’ embodied within them and the Ri¡an leader’s
(Abd el-Krim) desire to disorient. Berman concludes that desire is inescapable
and can be used to promote positive alliances and projects. Salih’s essay uses the
example of migrant Moroccan women to show how access to global mobility is
gendered. She writes:‘The conditions for moving transnationally are not always
available towomen, or are limited or framed within a setof normativeand cultu-
rally gendered rules. . .as globalisation stimulates a reformulation of time, space
and mobility, the political and soci al ¢elds on which gender and human r ights
must be analysed are becoming transnational.’ (p 231). The anthropological per-
spective epitomises the aim of the collection by re£ecting on international
women’s human rights law not only from an alternative discipline but also from
a transnational angle as oppos ed to the prevalent nationa l/international inte rface.
With sucha wide range of topics analysed from such a widevariety of angles, it
will be di⁄cult for a reader to appreciate all of the contributions equally, but
undoubtedly there i s something here for everyone with an interest in domestic,
internationa l or European human right s law and gender. For the collection to
achieve its aim, the challenge is perhaps to read and consider the perspectives
furthest from your own in terms of subject area and discipline. Such an openness
will allow the reader to truly re£ect on the ¢eld of women’s international human
rights ‘fromoutside’, just as Knop suggests we should in her introduct ion.
Bryony Poynor
n
Antony Anghie,Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International
Law
,Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005, xxii þ378 pp, hb d60.00.
Within the ¢rst three words of the foreword toAntonyAnghie’s remarkable new
book, the reader is alerted to the fact of its ‘challengi ng’ nature. A challenge is
posed, according to James Crawford, not only by Anghie’s argument that an
‘underlyingpattern of subordination anddomination’ can be found to be repeated
n
Universityof Manchester.
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486 rThe Modern LawReview Limited 2006
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