The Scandal of Enlightenment and the Birth of Disciplines: Is International Law a Science?

Abstract

AbstractToday’s mainstream international law scholarship (MILS) is concerned primarily with the issue of its scientificity. This brings us to the larger epistemological questions of linear modernity, narratives of circular progress, role of colonisation and rejection of pre-science. International law is not a self-contained regime as it draws insights from all the other disciplines that were born after the Enlightenment. This article makes a psychological investigation using Nandy’s psycho-political framework under the third world approaches to international law (TWAIL). It also sees, as a case in point, the invasion of modernity via late capitalism into tribal life as modernity’s apology for the “third” disenchantment. International Law’s evolutionary scientificity, therefore, has been examined through psychology and mythology in the post-colonial world.