Targeting, Gender and International Posthumanitarian Law and Practice: Framing the Question of the Human in International Humanitarian Law
Australian Feminist Law Journal 44:1 (2018)
18 Pages Posted: 2 Jul 2018 Last revised: 10 Jan 2020
Date Written: June 27, 2018
Abstract
Focusing on targeting law and practice in contemporary high-tech warfare, this article brings international humanitarian legal scholarship into conversation with posthumanist feminist theory for the purpose of rethinking international humanitarian law (IHL) in terms of the posthuman condition. I suggest that posthumanist feminist theory – in particular Rosi Braidotti’s scholarship – is helpful to the IHL scholar for understanding and describing high-tech warfare that recognises the targetable body’ as both material and digital. Posthumanist feminist theory, moreover, avails us of a much-needed critical position from which to reframe the question of what the ‘humanitarian’ aim in IHL is: who, and what, can the ‘human’ of this humanitarianism be? This article sets out the framework for a posthumanitarian international law as an ethicalnormative order worthy, as Braidotti puts it, of the complexity of our times.
Keywords: International Humanitarian Law, IHL, Posthumanist Theory, Intellgient Warfare, Artificial Intelligence, AI, Rosi Braidotti
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