¹ Revolution and emancipation are analogous words, the former referring to political organization, the second linked more closely to personal expression, and both suggesting not merely some right to do or utilize something, but the ability to act in opposition to some other set of desires.Google Scholar

² Rupture, therefore, may play into either an actual revolutionary break, or some sort of reform or retrenchment into some already existing ordered system.Google Scholar

³ Rupture, as configured here, is thereby universal in mobilization, though capable of being genealogically traced through historical moments, and always given content in relation to a specific “material” context.Google Scholar

⁴ I am thankful to Rob Knox for pointing out the importance of clarifying the relationship between strategy and tactics. See generally Fanon, Frantz, The Wretched of the Earth (1961).Google Scholar

⁵ See generally Badiou, Alain, Theory of the Subject (2006); see also Badiou, Alain, St. Paul: the Foundations of Universalism (1996). My reading of Badiou, however, is mediated through a host of other dispositions, which there is not sufficient space here to delineate. While Badiou derives his political framework from the Maoist tradition, my own reading is mediated through authors such as the cultural critic, Slavoj Zizek, and the Marxist theologian, Robert Boer, as well as the broader literary traditions of Critical Legal Studies (e.g. CLS, Peter Fitzpatrick, Duncan Kennedy), New Approaches to International Law (e.g. NAIL, David Kennedy), and new left voices in international law (e.g. China Mieville, Akbar Rasulov).Google Scholar

⁶ See Marx, Karl & Engels, Friedrich, The Manifesto of the Communist Party ch. 1 (1848).Google Scholar

⁷ See generally Haskell, John & Mamyluk, Boris, Capitalism, Communism… and Colonialism? Revisiting ‘Transitology’ as the Ideology of Informal Empire, 9 Global Jurist 1293 (2009) (discussing the material impact of multiple “shock therapies”).Google Scholar

⁸ See Hirschman, Albert, The Passions and the Interests 80 (1997).Google Scholar

⁹ See Haskell & Mamyluk, supra note 7, at 5 (discussing this notion in greater detail as the “economization of progress”).Google Scholar

¹⁰ See generally Hont, Istvan, Jealousy of Trade (2006).Google Scholar

¹¹ See Voltaire, On the Church of England, in Philosophical Letters: Voltaire 26 (Ernest Dilworth ed., 1961).Google Scholar

¹² See Koskenniemi, Martti, Legal Cosmopolitanism; Tom Franck's Messianic World, 35 N.Y.U. J. Int'l L. & Pol. 486 (2003).Google Scholar

¹³ See generally Mieville, China, The Commodification Form Theory of International Law: An Introduction, 17 LJIL 271 (2004).Google Scholar

¹⁴ See generally Skouteris, Thomas, Notions of Progress in International Legal Discourse (2010).Google Scholar

¹⁵ See Berman, Nathaniel, In the Wake of Empire, 14 Am. U. Int'l. L. Rev. 1515, 1523 (1999).Google Scholar

¹⁶ See Foucault, Michel, Nietzsche, Genealogy, History, in The Foucault Reader 76 (Paul Rabinow ed., 1984).Google Scholar

¹⁷ See generally Berman, supra note 15; see also Kennedy, Duncan, A Critique Of Adjudication (1998) (celebrating an attitude of perpetual indeterminacy).Google Scholar

¹⁸ See Laclau, Ernesto, On the Names of God, in Political Theologies in a Post-Secular World 137 (Hent de Vries & Lawrence Sullivan eds., 2006).Google Scholar

¹⁹ Might we not say that this fall into Christian mysticism is idolatry (and ideology) at its purest—professing a distaste for illusory, self aggrandizing images, the contemporary mystic nevertheless sees divine ineffability only in context of relationships among subjects within a system, rather than seizing upon and naming the First Cause of that given system itself. In this sense, the tendency to mystify the grounding of society deviates attention from the material coordinates at play, and thereby diminishes the possibilities of agency.Google Scholar

²⁰ See generally Chiesa, Lorezno, Subjectivty and Otherness: A Philosophical Reading of Lacan (2007).Google Scholar

²¹ Id. Google Scholar

²² See Schmitt, Carl, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty 7 (2005). Over the last two decades, Schmitt has become an increasingly important figure, within political philosophy and theoretical literature in international law and international relations. In addition to being part of the focus of a series of European Society of International Law workshops, scholars such as Tracy Strong have translated and provided commentary on a growing number of Schmitt texts. But see Bartleson, Jens, A Genealogy of Sovereignty (1995) (tracing these themes back to the Machiavellian era).Google Scholar

²³ See Schmitt, Carl, The Concept of the Political 27–28 (1996).Google Scholar

²⁴ See generally Laclau, supra note 18.Google Scholar

²⁵ See Laclau, Ernesto, Emancipation(s) 34 (1996); see also Koskenniemi, Martti, The Gentle Civilizer of Nations: The Rise and Fall of International Law 1870-1960 504 (2004). The critique of pragmatic technocracy, what Koskenniemi describes as the “police in the temple.” in favor of some larger socio-political (theological) set of principles is also transmitted through darker traditions. See e.g. John P. McCormick, Carl Schmitt's Critique of Liberalism: Against Politics as Technology (1999).Google Scholar

²⁶ See generally Kennedy, David, The Dark Sides of Virtue: Assessing International Humanitarianism (2005).Google Scholar

²⁷ See Berman, Nathaniel, Legalizing Jerusalem, or, Of Law, Fantasy, and Faith, 45 Cath. U. L. Rev. 823 (1996) (arguing the gateway into progressive politics and law requires one embrace a love of nationalism mixed with liberal cosmopolitanism).Google Scholar

²⁸ See Laclau, supra note 25.Google Scholar

²⁹ The particular phrasing of this idea comes out of a conversation with Rob Knox.Google Scholar

³⁰ This perhaps helps explain the curious move by critical historians of international law, such as Antony Anghie, who enter the argument with guns firing, claiming the vocabulary and practices of international law are enmeshed in the workings of Western imperialism, but end up reaffirming those very targeted coordinates, now disciplined of their dangerous excesses.Google Scholar

³¹ See Badiou, supra note 5, at 10–11.Google Scholar

³² See generally Butler, Judith, Laclau, Ernesto & Zizek, Slavoj, Contingency, Hegemony and Universalism: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left (2000) (in particular, Zizek's essays).Google Scholar

³³ See generally Brown, Wendy, Why We Are Civilized and They Are the Barbarians, in Political Theologies, supra note 18, at 298; see also Marks, Susan, False Contingency, 62 CLP 1 (2009).Google Scholar

³⁴ See generally Koskenniemi, supra note 25. That they may have chosen to push their activities towards imperialistic ventures does not necessarily negate the structural dimensions of their activism.Google Scholar

³⁵ See generally Chiesa, supra note 20.Google Scholar

³⁶ Usually privileging “culture” over economic organization, and discounting the cohesiveness of the existing political landscape via words such as “fragmentation.”Google Scholar

³⁷ Might we not see this as some bastardized version of Fukuyama's “end of history?”Google Scholar

³⁸ The critical camp's historical approach that privileges gaps over origins thereby misses the importance that historical foundations maintain in politico-legal theory—namely, while a survey of gaps seeks to be inclusive, a study of origins, or forced choices, emphasizes the logic that governs any subsequent inclusion.Google Scholar

³⁹ See St. Paul, 1^st Corinthians 1:20-28 (New Kings James Version).Google Scholar

⁴⁰ See generally Badiou, Alain, Being and Event (2007).Google Scholar

⁴¹ See Badiou, supra note 5, at 77–78. Here, we should see that the illumination of the violence of any given system is not actually a useful critique. Violence always sustains the boundaries of a given symbolic order, and carries no normative weight per se. The challenge, therefore, is not the danger or longing for some form of pacifist utopia, but rather seizing on the reality of both blindness and political antagonism as fundamental to human systems of authority, and which necessitates the old Leninist maxim: freedom for whom, and to do what?Google Scholar

⁴² Id. at 42–43, 59.Google Scholar

⁴³ Selections from St. Paul, 1^st Corinthians 4 (New King James Version).Google Scholar

⁴⁴ See generally Boer, Robert, Criticism of Heaven: On Marxism and Theology 335 (2009).Google Scholar

⁴⁵ See Derrida, Jacques, Force of Law: The “Mystical Foundation of Authority”, 11 Cardozo L. Rev. 919, 967–973 (1990)Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Here, it is important to distinguish this conception of truth from the Kierkegaardian “leap of faith” at two levels of difference. First, the Kierkegaardian “leap of faith” is ultimately an individual act, which distinguishes itself by its separation from the community at large, and advances a personalized ethos of not only otherworldly, but also post-death salvation. One's community, for Kierkegaard, is limited to Jesus Christ, as the personal savior of an atomized humanity, and the past and future generations that received salvation through the blood of the Lamb. Second, following from the prior conception of salvation, the leap of faith envisioned by Kierkegaard is filled with uncertainty towards the reward of salvation, and which is mediated through the Scriptures and meditation. Though the spirit of self-critique is not to be lost in undertaking a more Catholic conception of truth, it deviates strongly in respect to both its understanding of the subject (needing to venture into the wilderness of the private sphere of home, but also thoroughly and positively engaged in a community) and the substance and conditions of salvation (otherworldly in its ability to speak to the Real and propose an impossibility, but focused on the material conditions structuring the widest meanings of existence).Google Scholar

⁴⁷ See generally Badiou, supra note 5.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ See e.g. Sands, Philippe, Lawless World: America and the Making and Breaking of Global Rules (2005).Google Scholar