On the Uses of Foucault for International Law

Abstract

This symposium concerns the utility of the work of the French philosopher and social theorist, Michel Foucault (1926–84), for international law as an academic discipline. It almost goes without saying that there are several different ways to approach this question ofutility. We want to introduce the symposium by sketching just a few of the different avenues by which one could approach the question of Foucault's utility for theorizing international law. One dominant understanding within the extant legal literature on Foucault is essentially to ask after his own legal-theoretical credentials. This approach is based on the seemingly straightforward and widely shared presupposition that if his ‘work offers no plausible account of law, why should legal scholars take him seriously? If we seek to bring Foucault into law, must we not first seek to bring law into Foucault?’1Here, a precondition to being taken seriously within the discourse of law is precisely the plausibility of one's fidelity to existing conceptions of what lawis. Somewhat solipsistically, then, from this perspective, one must first adduce a plausible theory of law in order to be taken seriously within law.