The Critical Subject and The Subject of Critique in International Law and Technology

The University of Manchester Legal Research Paper Series No. 23/12

Geoff Gordon, Rebecca Mignot-Mahdavi, Dimitri Van Den Meerssche, 'The Critical Subject and The Subject of Critique in International Law and Technology' (2023) AJIL Unbound, American Society of International Law (Forthcoming)

10 Pages Posted: 30 May 2023

See all articles by Geoff Gordon

Geoff Gordon

T.M.C. Asser Instituut

Rebecca Mignot-Mahdavi

Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po) - Sciences Po Law School - Ecole de Droit de Sciences Po

Dimitri Van Den Meerssche

University of London - Queen Mary - Department of Law; European University Institute, Department of Law (LAW)

Date Written: May 2023

Abstract

The making of legal subjects has long been a crucial terrain for critical theory, also in relation to international law, where both emancipatory promises and expressions of power or discipline are tied to how subjects are recognized and enacted. International law’s modes of subject-making have therefore been an important site of aspiration, struggle, and critique. While some have celebrated the rise of the individual on the stage of international law, the liberal ideal of legal and political subjectivity lingering in these celebratory accounts has been confronted by different strands of feminist, postcolonial, and Marxist critique. With proliferating use of digital technologies in practices of (global) governance, the making of legal subjects has taken novel forms. Big data manufacture subjects in ways that spark new legal anxieties and destabilize or problematize established patterns of critical engagement. In data-driven practices that we will describe, subjects are no longer exclusively enacted as abstract autonomous entities or classified along stable criteria (of difference or enmity). Sustained by tools of pattern recognition and technologies for the “unsupervised uncovering of correlations,” nascent forms of global governance by data produce subjects as transient clusters of attributes and data points within transient clusters of attributes and data points—bundles of vectors within vectors, only tentatively and temporarily tied together. In this essay, we map out how this mode of subject-making has become prevalent in different domains of international legal practice. We trace these dynamics to changes in the exercise of state sovereignty and the technoscopic regimes—assemblages for information flow, processing, retention and surveillance—that states rely on.

Keywords: International law, technology, subject, critique, global governance, algorithmic governance, technoscopic regimes

Suggested Citation

Gordon, Geoffrey and Mignot-Mahdavi, Rebecca and Van Den Meerssche, Dimitri, The Critical Subject and The Subject of Critique in International Law and Technology (May 2023). The University of Manchester Legal Research Paper Series No. 23/12, Geoff Gordon, Rebecca Mignot-Mahdavi, Dimitri Van Den Meerssche, 'The Critical Subject and The Subject of Critique in International Law and Technology' (2023) AJIL Unbound, American Society of International Law (Forthcoming), Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4461196

Geoffrey Gordon

T.M.C. Asser Instituut ( email )

P.O. Box 30461
2500 GL The Hague, 2517JN
Netherlands

Rebecca Mignot-Mahdavi (Contact Author)

Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po) - Sciences Po Law School - Ecole de Droit de Sciences Po ( email )

13 rue de l'Universite
Paris, 75007
France

Dimitri Van Den Meerssche

University of London - Queen Mary - Department of Law ( email )

Mile End Road
Mile End
London, E1 4NS
United Kingdom

European University Institute, Department of Law (LAW) ( email )

Via Boccaccio 121 (Villa Schifanoia)
Firenze
Italy

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