with Ntina Tzouvala
When? Wednesday, 26.06. at 12 pm
Where? Rotes Café, Ihnestraße 22, Berlin
We will stream the talk with Ntina, who will join us online, in the @rotescafeberlin at FU Berlin
Abstract: In this talk, I will argue that racialised thinking and racialising practices are central to the contemporary international legal order, and I will do so by centring the question of Palestine. In particular, I will focus on arguments concerning jus in bello, jus ad bellum and the law of statehood articulated since October 2023. These fields already incorporate racialised and statist elements (thereby structurally disadvantaging Palestinians). However, I will show that legal arguments by (many) Western international lawyers exaccerbate these racialised and racialising elements and sideline the impact of Third World efforts to remake international law alongside more equitable lines in the 1960s and 1970s. In other words, I argue that Palestine can help us understand the racialised structure of international law but also the role of concrete legal argumentation in deepening or challenging this structure.