7 - Uncanny Law

Summary

This chapter uses Freud’s understanding of the uncanny to interrogate the ambivalent relationship between managerial governance and juridico-political government. It suggests that managerial infra-law can appear uncanny from an international legal perspective: it looks like law, it sounds like law, but its documents, statements, speeches, and dialogues are empty words and dead letters. Infra-law is uncanny because it is inarticulate. The chapter refrains from using this insight to nostalgically affirm juridico-political government. On the contrary, international lawyers’ attempts to abject management (in Julia Kristeva’s sense) are symptomatic of deeply rooted problems within juridico-political systems. The chapter argues that juridical authority stifles law’s responsiveness and ability to articulate grievances against the status quo. The chapter uses this insight to argue for a version of legal advocacy capable of articulating complaints against the injustices of security measures. The force of law, on this model, derives not from its own authority but from the anger generated by injustice. Law can shift its horizon of responsiveness, the discussion concludes, by learning to listen to those whose security is sacrificed to collective security, and to articulate their complaints.