Ghosts of International Law: The Figure of the Foreign Fighter in a Cultural Perspective

Summary, in English

The book explores the figure of the foreign fighter from a socio-cultural standpoint. It does so by analysing the attempts made by national and international lawmakers to systematize this non-state actor through formal legal categories over the last century. The book rests on the assumption that law is first and foremost a social and cultural construct, embodying the fears, desires, and fantasies of its creators. While such fears, desires, and fantasies are constantly tried to be expelled from the law, they keep returning in the form of images of the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ foreign combatant. The noble adventurer, the left-wing intellectual, the racist mercenary, and most recently the jihadist terrorist, are some examples of the wide range of figures that lawmakers refer to in order to legislate on foreign fighters. Those figures, it is here contended, have an imaginative potential and emotional charge. They lie at the back of legal arguments, ideological positions, and courts’ judgments. They form an ambivalent repertoire which is revived and used to characterize the rightness or wrongfulness of foreign fighters’ causes. Reconnecting early twentieth century debates on foreign volunteers with the most recent events of the Syrian civil war, the book provides with an exhaustive account of the figure of the foreign fighter, and how its heritage keeps haunting the imaginary of legal actors in the present.

• Författare: Alberto Rinaldi
• Avdelning/ar: Juridiska institutionen
• Publiceringsår: 2023
• Språk: Engelska
• Dokumenttyp: Bok
• Förlag: Cambridge University Press
• Ämne: Law
• Nyckelord: Public international law; Folkrätt
• Aktiv: Inpress