Passion and Ambivalence

Tracing our current preoccupation with nationalist, ethnic, and religious conflict to the “cultural Modernist” revolutions of the early twentieth century, this volume draws on cultural studies, postcolonial theory, and psychoanalysis to offer a radical reinterpretation of contemporary international law’s origins.

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Ethnic, nationalist, and religious conflicts and debates about international intervention have been central global preoccupations of the past hundred years. Such debates, this volume argues, were first framed in their modern form during the interwar period, when a “Modernist break” (akin to that in literature, philosophy, and the arts) transformed the way such conflicts were viewed. Internationalists began to cast identity-based claims — whether those of anti-colonialists or European separatists — not only as mortal dangers to international order but as indispensable to its revitalization. Drawing on cultural studies, postcolonial theory, and psychoanalysis — with case studies ranging from 1930s Ethiopia to 1990s Jerusalem — this volume looks at both the origins and legacy of these debates, offering a radical reinterpretation of modern internationalism.