Queerly Troubling International Law's Vision of “Peace”

Queering international law involves dreaming. It requires stepping outside the framing presumptions of “normal” to reveal and challenge heteronormative underpinnings hierarchies power value that sustains. Reclaiming nomenclature queer from its history as a term insult dehumanization, theory interrogates normative framework naturalizes privileges heterosexuality binary regime gender. In reclamation, “queer” gestures toward affirmative assemblages new meanings emancipatory imaginaries. law, has been used in many different ways. For some, queerly troubling expanding existing normal be more inclusive lives, can often seen field human rights law. As life-giving inclusion is those barely on margins, without changing terms this approach risks leaving heteronormativity intact may even buttress it, with legal recognition same-sex marriage. others, queering fundamental critique regimes that, together, regulate our relations each other planet. The objects theory's structural are conceptual foundations which rely organizing principle helps normalize inequality, poverty, exploitation, violence. One example “civilizing mission” justified colonialism continues animate present norms. Teemu Ruskola argues his seminal critique, rhetoric attributed masculinity (Western) sovereign states cast “deficient” sovereignty non-Western variously deviant masculinities which, together their civilizational racial attributes, “penetration.” My “troubling” law's account peace takes then outlines some alternative imaginaries suggested by activism.