Publisher Description

In a world in which racism and xenophobia are endemic, what is the role of international law? To the extent international rules are thought to have any relevance at all, the typical approach characterizes international law as on the side of racial justice. Human rights instruments like the United Nations' International Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination are paradigmatic, offering the world international agreements in which governments aredirected to avoid racist behavior and promote antiracist action. In The Right to Exclude, Justin Desautels-Stein goes against the grain and asks whether certain rules of internationallaw might actually produce structures of racial hierarchy, rather than work to limit them. The intellectual fulcrum for this production, Desautels-Stein argues, lies in the ideological structures of sovereignty and property, 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 theoryof "postracial xenophobia", a structure of racial ideology that justifies and legitimates a pragmatic account of racialized foreignness, a racial xenos.

Author Biography

Justin Desautels-Stein is Professor of Law at the University of Colorado and is the Founding Director of Colorado University's Center for Critical Thought. His work concentrates on the history of legal thought, with special emphases on the United States and International Relations. His most recent books include The Jurisprudence of Style: A Structuralist History of American Pragmatism and Liberal Legal Thought, and a co-edited volume withChristopher Tomlins, Searching for Contemporary Legal Thought. Professor Desautels-Stein holds graduate degrees from Harvard Law School, The Fletcher School at Tufts University, and the University of North Carolina at ChapelHill.

Table of Contents

IntroductionPart I Liberalism and the Racial Subject1: Imperium and Dominium2: The Racial Xenos3: Nations of Daylight, Children of the NightPart II International Law's Modern Racial Ideology4: Modern Racial Ideology as Naturalizing Juridical Science5: The Promise of International Migration Law6: Decolonization and the Ambivalence of Self-Determination7: On the Ideological ThresholdPart III Postracial Xenophobia8: Multiculturalism, Nationalism, Pragmatism9: On the Inevitability of Racial Borders

Long Description

In a world in which racism and xenophobia are endemic, what is the role of international law? To the extent international rules are thought to have any relevance at all, the typical approach characterizes international law as on the side of racial justice. Human rights instruments like the United Nations' International Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination are paradigmatic, offering the world international agreements in which governments are directedto avoid racist behavior and promote antiracist action. In The Right to Exclude, Justin Desautels-Stein goes against the grain and asks whether certain rules of international law might actually produce structures of racial hierarchy, rather than limiting them. The intellectual fulcrum for this production, Desautels-Stein argues, lies in the ideological structures of sovereignty and property, the right to exclude that is shared in those twinned precincts, and the border regimes that result. Applying critical race theory to contemporaryproblems 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.

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