Tzanakopoulos: The Master's Tools and the Master's House: Marxist Insights for International Law

Antonios Tzanakopoulos (Univ. of Oxford - Law) has posted The Master's Tools and the Master's House: Marxist Insights for International Law (in The Oxford Handbook of International Law in Europe, Anne van Aaken, Pierre d'Argent, Lauri Mälksoo, & Johann Justus Vasel eds., forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

Audre Lorde wrote a text in 1979 to which she gave the title: ‘The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House’. In it, she argued that using the tools of racist patriarchy to examine the fruits of that very same racist patriarchy would only allow the narrowest parameters of change, if any. This is, in a way, the predicament faced by any Marxist approach to (international) law. This chapter traces the impact of Marxist thought on international law by focusing on structural aspects of international law, grouping them under the structure of the (international) legal relation, aka ‘the legal form’ (section III); the content of the legal relation with particular emphasis on interpretation (section IV); and the justification of the legal relation through ideology (section V). The chapter traces that impact without aspiring to be comprehensive; but aspiring to avoid as much as possible the jargon that tends to alienate (pun intended) non-specialist (in Marxism!) readers, thereby rendering the debate esoteric.