The International Law Cosmology
International law developed progressively in the intersections of “quiet” and “loud” moments. Mistake not, the quiet and the loud do not split practitioners and scholars, respectively, into two sides of the spectrum. In this scheme of things—of the quiet and the loud—everyone, who is a member of the invisible college of international law by way of willing, thinking, talking, acting, deciding, doing, or pretending to be performing any or all of the above, is deemed to be part of international-law-making. Each one of the above is thus in the intersections of the quiet and the loud. But does that inclusion do justice to the formation of an acoustic intersectionality as a narrative tool or means of un-concealment for a thingified force as international law? Can the story of international law be told that simplistically?
Certainly not! Yet, the intersectional space between quietness and loudness has great potential to “disclose” international law in a Heideggerian sense. Quietness is due to stillness—absence of phenomena, due to which a silence pervades. Quietness and the resulting silence, or vice versa, is a waiting in anticipation—for the “clearing” to happen—for chaos to disturb the zero-entropy. And, chaos doesn’t happen, they are made by the states who are in iterative cooperation—a tiny bit of individual or collective self-interest is all what it takes. Then entropy takes hold and evolution begins or continues.
Entropy is action. Action is voice, noise, and loudness. In entropy, the universe of international law teems with sounds of change. The mood of the sound varies—anxiety, resistance, compromise, resilience, and prophesies. In this chaotic and neurotic order, sound and loudness are the only truth; variations are subjective particulars. After entropy, there will be cooling. All the subjective particulars unite in an uncanny conciliation, and leads to structure-formation. And, international law expands in universality.
Again, a stillness, quietness, and entropy again … The cosmic narrative of international law is an endless cycle.
Quietness and the First Entropy
Like in the cosmic story, it all started with a darkness—a darkness that’s synonymous with blissful ignorance. It was not an ignorance of what international law was (no lack of self-awareness), but where it was, and amid what (a sort of temporal unawareness). The unabashed conviction of being a law of the sovereigns, in abject ignorance of the rising and expanding positivist universe, forged a heavenly darkness around. Then some obscene utterances were heard in the horizon — “it is not a law”. And came over it was a deep sense of betrayal by the world of jurisprudence which international law expected would be its ever-sustaining force. The quietness that was sustained by a false pride was broken; entropy ensued … “International law is law—it is, it is, it is—because …”. Loud assertions, claims, and rhetoric resounded across the horizon. Amid many conflicting narratives, over a self-imposed sense of legalism, through comity, common interest, and collective will, international law evolved, initially in slow-motion, and then through formal individual and collective promises.
The Second Entropy
An era passed, both the skeptics and the defenders lost their vigor—things became “post-ontological”. Quietness permeated the universe, until a cross-section, which until then had a nonchalant approach to the epistemic battle that raged on the jurisprudential battle field, spoke: that-which-is is a that-which-is-not—international law is only power and politics. They held, norms are derivations of patterns, they don’t produce obligations, and most of the time they coincide with preferences and pursuits of sovereigns. And the other end of the spectrum retorted, that which are called patterns are norms only. The very absence of anarchy is existence of a normative order.
The logomachy continued, and states practiced international law—they remained interest-oriented, yet aligned their actions as closer to the normative structure as possible. The realists celebrated their victory and formalists theirs.
Quietness set in and quietude followed. International law remained relevant during this evolutionary calmness—it was invoked in fora and the invocations found articulations in classrooms.
Cataclysmic Sounds and the Third Entropy
Then, there was an auditory cue, noises of a dramatic tension … off stage cries … distant thunder of hooves … battle cries. Existential crisis loomed … is this an apocalypse? Horizon resounded with shrieks: “decay”, “death”, “deconstruction”, “postmodernism”, “indeterminacy” … the horizon trembled, and became louder than ever. Oracles pronounced the doom of the city, the death of international law. From the positivist quarters, there was downpour of anxieties. Realists chuckled and owned the disorder—this is our chaosmos! Constructivist camps beheld a mythopoesis and went on to become part of it. The loudness swelled to its peak …
Grand narrative structures fell and little and newfangled narratives entered—all sounds. Their texts were auditory—and they gifted imageries of a new world. Counter factual narratives became a new style, and a rage among the youth—many became revisionist historians—NAIL, TWAIL, FWAIL … Has the Oppenheim’s “master historian” finally arrived with stories of the particulars? Utopians too reappeared with renewalist schemes and blueprints of a moral order. The age of loudness continued with no sign of attenuation.
A decade passed … pages of law reviews became theatres of conflicting emotions. Subjects spoke a deconstructive and renewalist langue, imagining a new—at times inchoate, at times nascent—international law. Yet certain formalist corners held tightly to the doctrinal classicism of international law. Their doctrines—what they deemed to be the gospel of truth—might have become rings of rhetorical contestation, yet doctrines were frameworks and, at times of low, necessary Standard Operating Procedures. The formalists too spoke—their language was not a language of reassurance against odds— “all is well”—but theirs was the language of nonchalance. Remember, they were not Neros fiddling, but they were Sisyphuses on task—and they lived authentically.
On the loud side, everyone spoke; none was left out. After all, everyone became a consociate, a companion in human condition, and had the right to speak. The modernists, the classicists, revisionists, the formalists … even the realists spoke. For the first time, realist voices were intermixed with modernists. Why should they not when everyone was rebuilding the world?
Then sounds started to subside. No new international law had risen out of the loudness. But the universalism of international law began to witness cracks on it. No macrocosmic legalism replaced the fallen normative structure. Subjects—tangible and intangible—of international law sought refuge in the fragments. They built self-contained regimes on the fragments. The subsequently risen identity of particularism was comforting and was widely embraced. But particularism went beyond disciplinary-particulars (specialized branches—fragments) and they became local/domestic imaginations: n-international law, y-international law, and z-international law. It was not just a holism that was the outcome; the outcome was my international law and your international law.
Quietness came over after prolonged loudness. Practice of international law continued formally as my claim, your claim, and their claim—but there was no our claim. Yet, the claims contested before a consecrated and transcendental universality which was more of virtue signaling than submission. The epistemological dictums that “international law is domestic” and “international law is no longer international” tempted to break the quietness, but they did not. Perhaps that they were uncontestable truisms or that subjects of international law normalized the particular and embraced the absurd resilience—and they got a comic relief. An epistemic humility pervades the once loud spaces.
What next? Will there be another episode of loudness? Or has the cycle ended? Bizarre world-events are not prompting enough to trigger sounds and loudness thereof. God save the world from an end-of-the-loudness thesis, or let it come—at least we can debate: make noise or speak our voices on the thesis.
The author is Vice Chancellor at Nirmala Devi University, Sikkim. He can be reached at sreejitth@gmail.com
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