Re-Situating Utopia

Nicholson, Matthew

doi:10.1163/9789004401204

Re-Situating Utopia

Nicholson, Matthew

Authors

Dr Matthew Nicholson matthew.c.nicholson@durham.ac.uk
Associate Professor

Abstract

In Re-Situating Utopia Matthew Nicholson argues that international law and international legal theory are dominated by a ‘blueprint’ utopianism that presents international law as the means of achieving a better global future. Contesting the dominance of this blueprintism, Nicholson argues that this approach makes international law into what philosopher Louis Marin describes as a “degenerate utopia” – a fantastical means of trapping thought and practice within contemporary social and political conditions, blocking any possibility that those conditions might be transcended. As an alternative, Nicholson argues for an iconoclastic international legal utopianism – Utopia not as a ‘blueprint’ for a better future, operating within the confines of existing social and political reality, but as a means of seeking to negate and exit from that reality – as the only way to maintain the idea that international law offers a path towards a truly better future.

Citation

Nicholson, M. (2019). Re-Situating Utopia. Brill Academic Publishers. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004401204

Book Type	Monograph
Acceptance Date	Sep 6, 2019
Online Publication Date	Nov 11, 2019
Publication Date	Nov 11, 2019
Deposit Date	Sep 12, 2019
Publicly Available Date	Nov 11, 2020
Series ISSN	2452-2058
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004401204