Angels, Virgins, Demons, Whores: Moving Towards an Antiracist Praxis by Confronting Modern Investment Law Scholarship

Abstract

Racism is not a natural phenomenon. Historically, it was socialised into global existence through intentional acts that have become embedded parts of the international legal order and domestic social systems. Rejecting racism and developing alternative antiracist approaches similarly require intentionality. One area of concern for scholars is how our linguistic and framing choices perpetuate or reproduce racialised hierarchies. In this article, I employ I. Bennett Capers’s ‘Reading Black’ methodology to interrogate racialised narratives embedded in four contributions to modern international investment law debates. The purpose is not to condemn the individual authors but to identify how the socialisation and structures of racism continue to affect our scholarship. Premised on the belief that countering implicit, racialised biases is a normative good, I examine how it can also facilitate better scholarship. I offer suggestions that researchers and journals can take, individually and collectively, to develop antiracist praxes.

Keywords: antiracist praxis; critical race theory; implicit bias; investment law; racism