Toward Dystopian Futures? Legal History, Postcoloniality and Critique at the Dawn of the Anthropocene

Abstract

The aim of this article is to explore certain controversies that concerns climate change within a framework of critique influenced by recent methodological debates on the history of International Law. In recent years, the likely beginning of a new geological era known as the Anthropocene has been receiving considerable attention from historians. Its main assumption, one which humanity's activities on Earth since the Industrial Revolution is equivalent to a telluric force, ultimately resonates in historiographical theory and acquires a global appeal. First, it is argued that the Anthropocene holds intrinsic connections with the formation of modern international society. Through an anachronistic lens, postcolonial literature's inputs to the history of International Law forecloses forms of colonialism and imperialism as problematic dimensions of present concerns of international legal thought and global justice. In conclusion, the article contemplates an estimation of the viability of progressive teleology of history by making a case for the validity of expanding the horizons of expectations in order to account for less optimistic readings of the future.