Queering Governance and International Law

International law is brought into existence by actors from a variety of perspectives--international lawyers, state representatives, bureaucrats, and organizations--and as such, international law is riddled with contradictions. It is violent and violating, reducing complex lives and histories to "good" (lawful) and "bad" (criminal) bodies subject to protection, praise, or punishment. And yet it has potential to be a means of hope, resistance, and justice for victims, survivors, and oppressed communities.

In Queering Governance and International Law, Caitlin Biddolph examines the international legal space through queer, feminist, and postcolonial lenses. In doing so, she queers governance and international law, exposing the gendered and sexualized meanings behind legal concepts like violence, and critiquing legal status quos so that more transformative, liberatory, and queerer paths to justice might be dreamt and manifested within and beyond international law. Using as a case study the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), Biddolph traces the cis-heteronormative underpinnings of legal violence, and identifies ways that violence can be resisted and international law subverted to dismantle the very gendered and racial hierarchies it has reinforced.