International Law, Empire, and the Relative Indeterminacy of Narrative
International Law, Empire, and the Relative Indeterminacy of Narrative
This chapter describes some key patterns of historical narrative in the Western tradition, such as progressivism, providentialism, cyclical history, ‘history proper’, and existentialist history, and stresses their suitability for political and legal uses. The chapter in particular describes how histories and metanarratives constituted an essential tool for Western scholars and international lawyers to frame colonial and imperial projects, and occasionally also anti-imperial critiques, throughout modern history. It is argued that most historical narratives operated as flexible and powerful rhetorical devices and allowed their proponents to articulate various and conflicting political and legal claims. Yet the chapter also points out that the normative ambivalence of narratives was limited. Not all of them were characterized by the same degree of semantic openness and contributed to imperial or counter-imperial projects in the same manner.
Keywords: Narrative, metanarrative, cyclical history, progress, providence, contextualism, existentialism, ambivalence
Oxford Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .
