Deconstructing Self-Determination in International Law

Sovereignty, Exception, and Biopolitics

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The right of peoples to self-determination seems well-settled and covered extensively in the scholarly record. Yet old Trotsky’s question – of whom is this right and to what? – haunts the self-determination literature. Somehow almost every work on it begins with an expression of puzzlement. This right turns out to be elusive, underdefined in its scope and content, paradoxical in almost every aspect. This book mobilises all powers of critical legal theory and modern philosophy to take the bull by its horns. Instead of ironing out the paradoxes, it aims to finally give them a proper explanation based on the concept of exception.
Copyright Year:
2023
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978-90-04-68026-5
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17 Jul 2023
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978-90-04-54113-9
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26 Jul 2023
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Przemysław Tacik, Dr. phil. (2014), Dr. iur (2016), Jagiellonian University in Kraków, is Assistant Professor at that university and Director of Nomos: Centre for International Research on Law, Culture and Power. He has published extensively on law and philosophy, including A New Philosophy of Modernity and Sovereignty. Towards Radical Historicisation (Bloomsbury 2021).
Acknowledgements

Introduction

i It Is What It Is Not: Introductory Critical Perspectives on the Right of Self-determination of Peoples
 i.1 What Can Critical Legal Theory Bring to the Study of Self-determination?
 i.1.1 Plaidoyer for Theory in International Law

 i.1.2 Critical Legal Thinking as a Paradigm for International Law

 i.1.3 Critical Legal Thinking and Self-Determination of Peoples


 i.2 Critique of Opening Gestures vis-à-vis Self-Determination
 i.2.1 The Conceptual Vastness of Self-Determination

 i.2.2 How Could an Internally Contradictory Right Be Effective?

 i.2.3 Strategies of Defining


 i.3 Right to Self-Determination of Nations as a State of Exception within International Law
 i.3.1 Agambenian State of Exception: Suspension at the Heart of the Law

 i.3.2 The Right of Nations to Self-Determination as the State of Exception in International Law: Theoretical Outline

 i.3.3 The Right of Nations to Self-Determination as the State of Exception in International Law: Beyond Agamben


 i.4 War and Spiral: Two Symptomal Lectures
 i.4.1 War and Self-Determination

 i.4.2 The Spiral of Self-Determination


 i.5 The Self-Determination Triangle: Nation, Sovereignty, International Law
 i.5.1 The rsd as a Suture between the Domestic and the International

 i.5.2 The Biopolitical Underside of National Self-determination

 i.5.3 Ideologies of Secession


 i.6 Conclusions


ii A Critical Genealogy of the Right of Nations to Self-Determination
 ii.1 Histories of Self-Determination: against Continuity

 ii.2 Revelation of a Conceptual Knot: from 18th to the First World War
 ii.2.1 The American and the French Revolutions: a Release of Self-Determination Force

 ii.2.2 The Simmering Pot: on the Way to Self-Determination

 ii.2.3 The Theory of Marxism and Self-Determination


 ii.3 Yes, but … Self-Determination as a Trap and a Misunderstanding: 1914–1945
 ii.3.1 The Practice of Marxism and Self-Determination

 ii.3.2 The Wilsonian Version

 ii.3.3 Self-Determination in the Interwar


 ii.4 This Time Properly? Self-Determination in the Cold War
 ii.4.1 The UN Charter

 ii.4.2 The Golden Era of Self-Determination as Decolonisation

 ii.4.3 The Classic Corpus of icj Jurisprudence on Self-Determination

 ii.4.4 Paradoxes of Decolonisation


 ii.5 Liberal Reconfiguration: 1989–2008
 ii.5.1 Self-Determination under Reconstruction

 ii.5.2 The Post-socialist Wave of Self-Determination

 ii.5.3 Theory and Practice of Self-Determination in the Liberal Era


 ii.6 Confusion of Post-liberal Times: Revelation of an Aporia
 ii.6.1 The Kosovo Case: Hiatus of Self-Determination Revealed

 ii.6.2 The Post-Kosovo Conondrum


 ii.7 Conclusions: Historical Incoherence of Self-Determination


iii Self-Determination between Legal Fictions and Reality
 iii.1 The Nation, the People, the Void

 iii.2 What Self Is Determining?

 iii.3 The Gentle Art of Suturing: Nations, States and uti possidetis

 iii.4 The Legal Status of the Right of Nations to Self-Determination
 iii.4.1 Right and/or Principle

 iii.4.2 Content and Status


iv The Right to Self-Determination as a State of Exception in International Law
 iv.1 The Content of the Right of Nations to Self-Determination
 iv.1.1 External versus Internal Self-Determination: Tales of a False Symmetry

 iv.1.2 The Pale Scare: Secession as a Form of Self-Determination

 iv.1.3 An Ideal for Daylight: General Right to Secession

 iv.1.4 The Crowning Exception: Remedial Secession

 iv.1.5 Inconspicuously Constructed Normality: Internal Self-Determination and Its Corollaries

 iv.1.6 Conclusions: Secession and the Non-applicability of the Right to Self-Determination


 iv.2 Governance of the Exception: Enforceability of the Right of Peoples to Self-Determination
 iv.2.1 Paradoxes of rsd’s Enforceability

 iv.2.2 Before ‘Exercising’ the rsd: Fight in the Extra-legal Zone

 iv.2.3 After ‘Exercising’ the rsd: Recognition as Governance


 iv.3 A Special Case of a Special Right: the rsd of Indigenous Peoples
 iv.3.1 The Exceptional Position of Indigenous Peoples

 iv.3.2 Self-Determination of Indigenous Peoples


v Paradoxes of the Right of Nations to Self-Determination: a Critical Reappraisal
 v.1 Popular Sovereignty v. State Sovereignty

 v.2 Nationalism v. International Law

 v.3 Self-Determination v. Territorial Integrity

 v.4 Domestic Law v. Secession

 v.5 Self-Determination: Law v. Fact

 v.6 Self-Determination v. The Right to Democratic Governance

 v.7 Self-Determination v. Representative Government: the Meaning of People’s Consent

 v.8 Individual v. Collective Rights of Self-Determination

 v.9 Creatio Continua: Is Self-Determination Perpetual or One-Off?


Conclusions

Bibliography

Index

The book is addressed principally at academic libraries, scholars in international law, critical legal theory and political philosophy as well as practitioners of international law (judges, lawyers, diplomats, teachers).
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