Painting by Sabri Al Qurashi, 2010. Photograph by Alexandra S. Moore.
Cultural Renditions of Guantánamo and the War on Terror
Abstract: This essay examines the Guantánamo Bay detention facility as a site and subject of intellectual and cultural production which can address aspects of the war on terror foreclosed by law and politics. The essay begins with prisoner Abu Zubaydah’s recent petition to the US Supreme Court and arguments there about state secrets privilege to shield evidence of the CIA’s Rendition, Detention, and Interrogation (RDI) program (2002–2009) from disclosure. Drawing on Bonnie Honig’s theory of democratic deliberative processes and “public things,” the essay then turns Read More »RECENT BLOG POSTS
International Law: A Novel, by G. (reviewed by a protagonist)
This essay is part of a symposium on Gerry Simpson’s The Sentimental Life of International Law. All contributions to the symposium can be found here. [I]rony [is employed] as a defense, . . . especially against the expression of intense affect . . . – M.H. Stein (1985) G.’s aspiration in his splendid new book[1] appears to be to rewrite international law as a vast novel, much as (another) G. sought to rewrite world history as a vast novel two centuries ago, in his Read More »Barbarian International Law
This essay is part of a symposium on Gerry Simpson’s The Sentimental Life of International Law. All contributions to the symposium can be found here. Gerry Simpson has written what he is pleased to describe—tongue firmly placed in cheek—in the alternative as “the most useless book in the history of international law,” presumably saving any timid would-be-readers the trouble of checking for themselves. What the intrepid rest of us do get instead are six chapters showcasing in typical Simpsonian fashion what is possible in writing Read More »A Style for the Human Heart
This essay is part of a symposium on Gerry Simpson’s The Sentimental Life of International Law. All contributions to the symposium can be found here. The Sentimental Life of International Law approaches anew “our age-old longing for a decent international society” (1). In search for such decency, the book critiques international law’s disciplinary constitution by means of what it “forbids its practitioners to do.”[1] This inquiry is driven by an existential unease over the strictures international law places on our engagement with the ineffable violence Read More »International Law and the Longing to Garden
This essay is part of a symposium on Gerry Simpson’s The Sentimental Life of International Law. All contributions to the symposium can be found here. Gerry Simpson’s The Sentimental Life of International Law is a book for re-envisioning ways to think and feel against the grain of international law. A plea for practitioners of international law to become more responsive to their own political longings, the book defamiliarizes the depoliticizing routines of international law in order to re-enliven a sense of imaginative possibilities even within Read More »Reflections on The Sentimental Life of International Law
This essay is part of a symposium on Gerry Simpson’s The Sentimental Life of International Law. All contributions to the symposium can be found here. Having read several times Gerry Simpson’s 2015 article in the London Review of International Law by the same name, it was an absolute pleasure and delight to read this book. Behind every piece of writing is an author, a person with sentiments, thoughts, and unique experiences. And behind every reader is likewise a person with sentiments, thoughts, and unique experiences. Read More »
