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116 AJIL Unbound 1 (2022)

handle is hein.journals/ajilunbo116 and id is 1 raw text is: doi:10.1017/aju.2021.72 INTRODUCTION TO THE SYMPOSIUM ON QUEERING INTERNATIONAL LAW Grainne de Btirca* What can the range of ideas and perspectives within queer theory bring to the study and practice of international law? The essays in this symposium address that question in a variety of ways. Some of them focus on issues of gender and sexuality which might be thought of as the core focus of queer theory, such as the coherence of the concept of gender identity, the limits and potential of human rights law-reform efforts by LGBTIQ+ advocates, and the widening of notions of kinship in the law of reparations. Several other essays range beyond these questions of gender and sexuality to consider the implications of bringing queer perspectives to bear on a broader range of issues within international law and practice, such as the consequences of the consensus rule within the World Trade Organization (WTO), how to organize an academic conference in the field of international law, and the vision of peace within international law. While the essays do not set out to define queerness or to stipulate what questions queer theory should ask of international law, they nevertheless offer a variety of reasons why queer theory might generate interesting inquiries, suggest directions for research and practice, and illuminate issues of power and conformity across the field of international law. Dianne Otto, of Melbourne Law School, describes how the term queer, originally used as an insulting and derogatory term for what was deemed unacceptably different, has been rescued and reclaimed as a lens through which to observe and critique the way certain power relations and inequalities in society are naturalized. For Damian Gonzalez-Salzburg, of Birmingham Law School, queerness refers to a deliberately shifting notion which implies being at odds with the normal, the legitimate, the dominant .. . the normative.1 He suggests that queer theory offers a deconstructive strategy aimed at de-naturalising traditional conceptions of gender, sexuality, and kinship.2 Queer commitments, according to Odette Mazel of Melbourne Law School, are radical and disruptive, intended to expose and problematize normalized relations of power and privilege in the institutional structures and systems in which we live and operate.3 Berenice Schramm of Bah~esehir University together with her co-authors Manon Beury, Lena Holzer, and Juliana Santos de Carvalho at the Graduate Institute of Geneva, add a further layer by referring to the way queer theory has shed light on international law as a performative discourse, which has served to reify and legitimate specific representations of the social and political world through legal concepts and categories.4 Queer thinking, as Mazel and Otto describe it, aims to destabilize not only such categories, hierarchies, binaries, and understandings of what is normal, but also the systems-including law-that enshrine and institutionalize them. * Florence Elinwood Allen Professor of Law, NYU School of Law. Damian Gonzalez-Salzburg, Queering Reparations Under International Law: Damages, Suffering, and (Heteronormative) Kinship, 116 AJIL UNBOUND 5 (2022). 2 Gonzalez-Salzburg, supra note 1, citing NIKI SULLIVAN, A CRITICAL INTRODUCTION TO QUEER THEORY 81 (2003). 3 Odette Mazel, Queer urisprudence: Reparative Practice in International La, 116 AJIL UNBOUND 10 (2022). 4 Berenice K. Schramm, Manon Beury, Lena Holzer & Juliana Santos de Carvalho, Doing fzueer in the Everyday ofAcademia: Reflections on Qeerng a Conference in International Lan, 116 AJIL UNBOUND 16 (2022). © Griinne de Bnrca 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The American Society of International Law. This is 1 an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecomrnons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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