| Popis: |
In a world where racism runs riot, what is the role of international law? Human rights instruments like the United Nations’ International Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination are paradigmatic of the conventional response, directing states to avoid racially discriminatory behavior and promote policies in keeping with colorblind diversity. Is it possible, however, that in its reproduction of the twentieth century’s fight for civil rights and cultural pluralism, the contemporary understanding of global racism has become outdated? As counterintuitive as it might seem, might international law be a part of the problem? In The Right to Exclude: A Critical Race Approach to Sovereignty, Borders, and International Law, Justin Desautels-Stein offers a historical account of how certain rules of international law produce structures of racial hierarchy, rather than simply limit them. The intellectual fulcrum for this production, Desautels-Stein argues, is not the proverbial villain hiding behind the curtain. It lies instead in the ideological structures of sovereignty and property, and more specifically, in the right to exclude that is shared in those twinned precincts, and the border regimes that result. Applying critical race theory to contemporary problems of migration, nationalism, multiculturalism, decolonization, and self-determination, Desautels-Stein expounds a theory of “postracial xenophobia,” a structure of racial ideology that justifies and legitimates a pragmatic account of racialized foreignness, a racial xenos. |
