Placing International Law: White Spaces on a Map

Leiden Journal of International Law

Volumn 16, Issue 1, 2003, Pages 1-35

  Nesiah, Vasuki ^a  

^a International Centre for Transitional Justice   (United States)

Author keywords

International Court of Justice; self determination; terra nullius; territory; uti possidetis

Indexed keywords

EID: 34248045804     PISSN: 09221565     EISSN: 14789698     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0922156503001006     Document Type: Article

References (130)

1. B. Parry, Conrad and Imperialism: Ideological Boundaries and Visionary Frontiers (1983), 38.
2. Western Sahara, Advisory Opinion of 16 October 1975, (1975) ICJ Rep. 12.
3. Frontier Dispute (Burkina Faso v. Republic ofMali), Judgment of 22 December 1986, (1986) ICJ Rep. 554.
4. J. Conrad (1946).
5. As Edward Said has noted, ‘The Orient was… not Europe's interlocutor, but its silent other’. E. Said, ‘Orientalism Reconsidered’, in Francis Barker, Peter Hulme,Margaret Iverson and Diana Loxley (eds.), Europe and Its Others (1985), 14-27.
6. Here I want to point to those places as inhabiting the interior space of the self as much as the exterior geography of territory. See also Johnson and Garber (1987).
7. Also conveyed through the more tangential connotations of ‘placing’ through allusions to the domestic setting, to placing table settings, laying out place mats.
8. Note the following as just a few of the many discussions of the relationship between race, gender, and empire: C. Achebe (1978) ‘An Image of Africa’, Research in African Literature, (1978) 9, 1-15; A. Blunt and G. Rose, ‘Women's Colonial and Postcolonial Geographies’, in A. Blunt and G. Rose (eds.), Writing Women and Space (1994); A. JanMohammed, ‘The Economy of Manichean Allegory: The Function of Racial Difference’, in Henry Louis Gates, Jr (ed.), Colonialist Literature. ‘Race,’ Writing and Difference (1986); E. K. Sedgwick, BetweenMen: English Literature andMaleHomosocial Desire (1985); M. L. Pratt, Imperial Eyes: TravelWriting and Transculturation (1991); M. Torgovnick, Gone Primitive: Savage Intellects,Modern Lives (1990).
9. The tropes and metaphors of colonialism have an uncanny accuracy in describing the gendered, racialized classed battles at home. In fact the ‘othering’ of the colonial world has itself involved the transference of domestic tensions and vice versa. For instance, there has been a lot of concrete historical work on how struggles over gender and sexuality athometheninformed and shaped the character of colonial intervention, and similarly how the notions of manhood developed in the racialized and polarized colonial encounter were pulled back home to shape and inform the domestic debates. See Sedgwick, Pratt, Torgovnick etc., Note the following as just a few of the many discussions of the relationship between race, gender, and empire note 9.
10. For instance the evil associated with the whiteness of the ivory trade and so on: see Parry, The tropes and metaphors of colonialism have an uncanny accuracy in describing the gendered, racialized classed battles at home. note 2.
11. Western Sahara, ‘Politics and Space/Time’ note 3, at 36.
12. ‘Politics and Space/Time’.
13. ‘Politics and Space/Time’.
14. ‘Politics and Space/Time’…, at 37.
15. ‘Politics and Space/Time’…, at 38.
16. ‘Politics and Space/Time’…
17. The dissonance between the formal positing of scale as the object of inquiry and the deployment, negotiation and contesting of scale through the process of inquiry is not unique to ICJ adjudication of the territorial disputes of the Western Sahara case. For instance, in Case Concerning the Temple of Preah Vihear (Merits) we see an administrative and centralized conception of sovereignty defined through the opposition of the national to the local. The Court argues that Thai local administrators’ acts of sovereignty over the temple area cannot ‘negativate’ the acts of the Thai central government; thus even if the former evidenced acts of sovereignty, if the latter did not then territorial sovereignty is denied. Temple of Preah Vihear (Cambodia v. Thailand),Merits, Judgment of 15 June 1962, (1962) ICJ Rep. 6.
18. Even when disputes call for recourse to principles of equity, these are accommodated and brought in conformity with a declaratory rather than constitutive analysis of rules governing territory in international law: ‘Astructured and predictable system of equitable procedures is an essential framework for the only kind of equity that a Court of law that has not been given competence to decide ex aequo et bono, may properly contemplate’. R. Jennings.
19. H. Lefebvre, The Production of Space (1991).
20. Felix Driver, ‘Geography's Empire: Histories of Geographical Knowledge’, in Stephen Daniels and Roger Lee (eds.), Exploring Human Geography: A Reader (1996).
21. Western Sahara, ‘Geography's Empire: Histories of Geographical Knowledge’ note 3, at 39.
22. ‘Geography's Empire: Histories of Geographical Knowledge’.
23. Felix Driver traces the institutionalization of geography during the late nineteenth century; seeDriver, ‘Geography's Empire: Histories of Geographical Knowledge’. note 23.
24. Yet the penchant for mappable territory, for determinate boundaries and fixed categories is not unique to the colonial experience. It is, I suggest, part of a broader approach that enables, and emerges from, an administrative paradigm of territory. Thus in the Case Concerning Sovereignty Over Certain Frontier Land the ICJ seeks again to pinpoint territorial classification at the time of the boundary commission. The answer has to be either the Netherlands or Belgium: the ‘facts’ sought by the inquiry already presupposes that they will reveal that it is one of the two but not both. Similarly, in the Legal Status of Eastern Greenland case, the Court had to decide between the Danish and Norwegian claim rather than give legal recognition to the fact that the region had historical ties to both countries, PCIJ 1933. In adjudicating between the United States (which was ceded title to Spanish territories in 1898 by the Treaty of Paris) and the Netherlands in the 1928 Island of Palmas case, the Permanent Court of Arbitration had to negotiate a similar problem in determining the claims of Spain and the Netherlands respectively, 2 UN Rep. Int'l Arab Awards 829.
25. Driver, Yet the penchant for mappable territory, for determinate boundaries and fixed categories is not unique to the colonial experience. note 23, 343.
26. Conrad, Yet the penchant for mappable territory, for determinate boundaries and fixed categories is not unique to the colonial experience. note 5, 250.
27. Yet the penchant for mappable territory, for determinate boundaries and fixed categories is not unique to the colonial experience., 254.
28. Driver, Yet the penchant for mappable territory, for determinate boundaries and fixed categories is not unique to the colonial experience., note 23, 340.
29. Yet the penchant for mappable territory, for determinate boundaries and fixed categories is not unique to the colonial experience…
30. Yet the penchant for mappable territory, for determinate boundaries and fixed categories is not unique to the colonial experience…, 340-41, 342.
31. Yet the penchant for mappable territory, for determinate boundaries and fixed categories is not unique to the colonial experience…, 249.
32. As Judge Petron says in his Separate Opinion, ‘The question of whether the territory was terra nullius at the time of colonization is thus without object in the context of the present case.’ Then he says again, ‘In view of the foregoing, I find it pointless and consequently inappropriate for the Court to answer the first of the two questions put’. his Separate Opinion Judge de Castro says that given the very concrete problem that was posed to the Court., at 113, 114.
33. On this score Antonio Cassese suggest that the Court ‘simply took a stand between the two schools of thought that fought a… battle at the beginning of this century in the legal literature. They first espoused the view that the so-called colonial protectorates that applied between colonial power and the indigenous population were international treaties proper. As a consequence, the legal title of the colonial power could not be classified as original by virtue of conquest or occupation but was derivative from the agreement establishing the protectorate. The second school of thought argued that colonial protectorates were merely legal fictions designed to camouflagethe reality of colonial conquest,which constitutes the sole and veritable title to territorial sovereignty over dependent peoples.’ A. Cassese, ‘The International Court of Justice and the Right of Peoples to Self-determination’, in V. Lowe and M. Fitzmaurice (eds.), Fifty Years of the International Court of Justice (1996), 360.
34. Judge Gros criticizes the Court for replying to ‘problems which it raises itself rather than to that which is submitted to it’, Having said that, since the Court has decided to give a reply to the first question, and since our rules do not permit an abstention, I have voted with all my colleagues that the Territory was not Nullius before colonization’., at 77.
35. Judge Gros criticizes the Court for replying to ‘problems which it raises itself rather than to that which is submitted to it’., at 31-33.
36. Judge Dillard commends the majority opinion for making a definitive legal statement about the right to self-determination saying that ‘the present opinion is forthright in proclaiming the existence of the right in so far as the present proceedings are concerned’. Judge Gros criticizes the Court for replying to ‘problems which it raises itself rather than to that which is submitted to it’., at 121.
37. Judge Dillard's Separate Opinion urges that ‘there is nothing in the jurisprudence of the Court which can support the proposition that it would be presumptuous on its part to so interpret the questions as to give them a contemporary legal significance by invoking the larger context in which they are framed. By so locating the questions in the contemporary setting of the decolonization process the Court has thus, in my opinion, countered the view that the question invited an answer of a purely “academic” or historical character.’ Judge Dillard commends the majority opinion for making a definitive legal statement about the right to self-determination saying that ‘the present opinion is forthright in proclaiming the existence of the right in so far as the present proceedings are concerned’., at 117.
38. Cassese, Judge Dillard's Separate Opinion urges that ‘there is nothing in the jurisprudence of the Court which can support the proposition that it would be presumptuous on its part to so interpret the questions as to give them a contemporary legal significance by invoking the larger context in which they are framed. note 38, 360-61.
39. Conrad, Judge Ammoun elaborates on the problematicness and colonial embeddedness of terra nullius as a concept and as a historic legacy. note 5, at 247.
40. Judge Ammoun elaborates on the problematicness and colonial embeddedness of terra nullius as a concept and as a historic legacy.
41. Judge Ammoun elaborates on the problematicness and colonial embeddedness of terra nullius as a concept and as a historic legacy…, at 258.
42. See generally A. Roberts (ed.), Conrad and Gender (1993).
43. Sexuality is not merely ametaphor of imperial passion. In fact colonial exploration was often accompanied by a certain sex tourism as well; RobertWai suggests that this sexualized travelling is captured in the familiar image of se(a)men traveling from port to port across the world.
44. Note that these twonarratives are not exhaustive ofmodes of heroic travel; for instance, even the colonial era saw extensive travel by women in a variety of roles: free-spirited adventurers seeking to escape the confines of home and hearth, women seeking spiritual fulfilment from ‘eastern mysticism’, Christian missionaries, philanthropists, doctors, nurses, teachers, companions and spouses of male colonial administrators, prostitutes selling their services in different ports of call, early feminist internationalists, peace activists, advocates of socialist internationality, etc. See A. Blunt, Travel, Gender and Imperialism: Mary Kingsley andWest Africa (1994); K. Jayawardena, TheWhiteWoman's Other Burden:WesternWomen and South Asia During British Rule (1995); M. L. Pratt, Imperial Eyes: TravelWriting and Transculturation (1991).
45. I refer to a channelling of the discursive landscape so as to look to administrative relationships as the locus formeaningful territorial relationships.
46. Western Sahara, I refer to a channelling of the discursive landscape so as to look to administrative relationships as the locus formeaningful territorial relationships. note 3, at 41.
47. I refer to a channelling of the discursive landscape so as to look to administrative relationships as the locus formeaningful territorial relationships., at 41-42.
48. I refer to a channelling of the discursive landscape so as to look to administrative relationships as the locus formeaningful territorial relationships…, at 41.
49. I refer to a channelling of the discursive landscape so as to look to administrative relationships as the locus formeaningful territorial relationships…, at 43.
50. I refer to a channelling of the discursive landscape so as to look to administrative relationships as the locus formeaningful territorial relationships…, at 76.
51. However, ‘separateness’ does not translate into a denial of ties with Morocco and Mauritania. Note the Separate Opinion of Judge Forster, who says that there were ties analogous to ties of sovereignty and that actually the difficulty of access to the Sahara desert is proof not refutation of those ties ‘because in that context you would expect its actual outside signs to be more attenuated’. I refer to a channelling of the discursive landscape so as to look to administrative relationships as the locus formeaningful territorial relationships…, at 103.
52. Conrad, However, ‘separateness’ does not translate into a denial of ties with Morocco and Mauritania. note 5, at 257.
53. Judge de Castro says that ‘the Saharawas inhabited by tribes considered “wild” by theMoroccans’., at 149.
54. Conrad, Judge de Castro says that ‘the Saharawas inhabited by tribes considered “wild” by theMoroccans’., note 5, at 256.
55. Geographical science and environmental determinism have had a symbiotic relationship. In the context of Africa, thiswas overlaid on the broader ideological legitimation, technologies of knowledge and power that was a part of the imperial enterprise. Peet notes that the European geographers of that period, such as Semple, Mackinder and Ratzel, did ‘legitimate the expansional power of the fittest’ through that marriage of environmental determinism and geographical science (see Peet quoted in ofDriver, Judge de Castro says that ‘the Saharawas inhabited by tribes considered “wild” by theMoroccans’., note 23, 344).Naturalizing ‘nature’ and indeed, flattening community into ‘nature’, they advanced the idea that ‘nature’ determined the bounds (including territorial boundaries) of community and even the character of community.
56. Western Sahara, Geographical science and environmental determinism have had a symbiotic relationship. note 3, at 164.
57. Geographical science and environmental determinism have had a symbiotic relationship., at 153.
58. Here Conrad is celebrating the explorers of Africa who ‘in a scientific spirit’ recorded ‘the geographical ignorance of its time’. Conrad, Geographical science and environmental determinism have had a symbiotic relationship., note 5, at 256.
59. Some recognition of this is hinted at in Judge Forster's Separate Opinion.He says that if Africa were required to be a ‘carbon copy of European institutions,., on that basis the entire African continent would have to be declared terra nullius’, Western Sahara, Here Conrad is celebrating the explorers of Africa who ‘in a scientific spirit’ recorded ‘the geographical ignorance of its time’. note 3, at 103.
60. The portrayal of the Saharan people as irreducibly ‘other’ evokes another dimension of the gender subtext in Conrad's image of the emaciated white man and the black woman. Is the emaciated whiteman gesturing to a stereotype of the gayman who has no desire for women? Is thewoman in this story so irreducibly other that an actual meeting is unlikely? This is perhaps the stance of Conrad himself, whose own distance from the other is intricately related to the fact that hewas able to resist the impulse towards booty and plunder.He seems to intimate that intimacywith the other can make you lose your ‘self’; the boundaries are blurred and crossed, and in this sense intimacy is the precondition for brutality towards self and other. I am reminded here of Parry's discussion of Heart of Darkness andMarlow's criticism of Kurtz for having toomuch intimacy with the other; a heroism that is ‘high-minded’ and deals ‘humanely’ with the other is one that retains its sense of self, and can maintain a healthy distance. Marlow, like Conrad, retains that distance; Kurtz, on the other hand, becomes so immersed in the other through his sexual relationship with a native woman, but also his desire for ivory, that he loses his grip on that distance. He loses himself and spirals headlong into his passion for possession. In this context the narrative of exoticization, of the colonized as irreducibly ‘other’, can actually constrain the appeal of the narrative of possession,while in other cases exoticization may entice one towards possession (see also J.W. Griffith, Joseph Conrad and the Anthropological Dilemma (1995), where he discusses similar issues regarding ‘going native').
61. Western Sahara, The portrayal of the Saharan people as irreducibly ‘other’ evokes another dimension of the gender subtext in Conrad's image of the emaciated white man and the black woman. note 3, at 32.
62. The portrayal of the Saharan people as irreducibly ‘other’ evokes another dimension of the gender subtext in Conrad's image of the emaciated white man and the black woman., at 36 (emphasis added).
63. Judge Ammoun on the other hand says that ‘In any case, if the Western Sahara found itself cut off from external political power, this would certainly seem to be the effect of colonization… This was generally the policy of colonization.’ Ammoun goes on to elaborate on the commonality between the Saharwi and theirMoroccan compatriots. Western Sahara, The portrayal of the Saharan people as irreducibly ‘other’ evokes another dimension of the gender subtext in Conrad's image of the emaciated white man and the black woman., note 3, at 84, 85.
64. Territorial integrity is not the only motif of modern statehood that inhabits the problematic terrain of this dual legacy; later in this article I discuss how boundaries, the compulsive mapping of lines delineating territory, carry a similar burden in conceptualizing statist conceptions of territory. Some of the themes discussed here are revisited and elaborated in that context. See section 3.1.2.
65. See M. H. Edney, Mapping an Empire: The Geographic Construction of British India, 1765-1843 (1997);D. Ludden, ‘History Outside Civilisation and theMobility of Southern Asia’, (1994) 17 1 South Asia, 1.
66. See P. Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought in the ColonialWorld: A Derivative Discourse? (1986).
67. This follows Parry's reading of Kurtz and Marlow in Heart of Darkness. While it is undoubtedly true at one level that Ammoun intends and is very plausibly read as offering a searing critique of themajority, it is also true that his conceptualization of territory goes hand in hand with themajority opinion.
68. Conrad, This follows Parry's reading of Kurtz and Marlow in Heart of Darkness. note 5, at 259.
69. Western Sahara, This follows Parry's reading of Kurtz and Marlow in Heart of Darkness. note 3, at 169.
70. The total frontier was approximately 1,300 km long.
71. Frontier Dispute, The total frontier was approximately 1,300 km long. note 4, at 554.
72. Frontier Dispute., at 569.
73. Frontier Dispute.
74. P. Carter, ‘Spatial History’, in B. Ashcroft, G. Griffiths and H. Tiffen (eds.), The Post-Colonial Studies Reader (1995), 375.
75. Western Sahara, Language and Colonial Power: The Appropriation of Swahili in the Former Belgian Congo note 3, at 64.
76. Language and Colonial Power: The Appropriation of Swahili in the Former Belgian Congo., at 44.
77. Language and Colonial Power: The Appropriation of Swahili in the Former Belgian Congo., at 68.
78. Language and Colonial Power: The Appropriation of Swahili in the Former Belgian Congo…, at 145.
79. The principle of uti possidetis is itself linked to the denial of the possibility of terra nullius. In a 1992 boundary arbitration between Colombia and Venezuela, the chamber noted these links: ‘This general principle offered the advantage of establishing an absolute rule that there was not in law in the old Spanish America any terra nullius; while there exist many regions which have never been occupied by the Spaniards and many unexploredoruninhabitedbynon-civilized nations, these regionswerereputedtobelonginlawtowhichever of the Republics succeeded to the Spanish province to which these territories were attached by virtue of the old Royal ordinances of the Spanish mother country. These territories, although not occupied in fact were by common consent deemed to be occupied in law from the first hour by the new Republic’. UNRIAA, Vol. I, p. 228; see also L. Henkin, O. Schacter and H. Smit, Basic Documents. Supplements of International Law (1993), 332-3.
80. Conrad, Heart of Darkness, 143, Signet Classic edition of 1902 as represented in the electronic University of Virginia edition (at http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/).
81. His rapacious desire to possess is recall in that famous passage fromHeart of Darkness thatMarlow recounts: ‘“my intended, my ivory, my station, my”-everything belongs to him’, Heart of Darkness., 116.
82. Arendt has argued that men like Kurtz were ‘superfluous men’ spat out by their own societies by the institutions and social dynamics of capitalism at home; H. Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), 69. Their colonial exploits may have figured as a route back into European society, dreaming as Kurtz dreamt of coming back to Europe and having kings meet him at railway stations’. Heart of Darkness, 148. See also H. Hawkins, ‘Conrad and the Psychology of Colonialism’, in R. C. Murfin, Conrad Revisited: Essays for the Eighties (1985), 80-81.
83. In the postcolonial context too, the dual goals of uti possidetis persist, i.e., it defines relationship to territory, as well as relationships between alternative contenders to territory. In his Separate Opinion, Judge Abi-Saab describes this dual purpose as ‘first, a defensive purpose towards the rest of the world, in the form of an outright denial that there was any land without a sovereign (or terra nullius) in the decolonized territories, even in unexplored areas or those beyond the control of colonizers; secondly, a preventive purpose: to avoid or at least minimize conflict occurring in the relationships among the successors, by freezing the carved-up territory in the format it exhibited at the moment of independence.’ Frontier Dispute, Arendt has argued that men like Kurtz were ‘superfluous men’ spat out by their own societies by the institutions and social dynamics of capitalism at home; note 4, at 565, 661-2, para. 13.
84. M. N. Shaw, The British Yearbook (1996), 74.
85. Frontier Dispute, The British Yearbook note 4, at 565.
86. Frontier Dispute.
87. See Henkin et al., Frontier Dispute. note 92, 255, 327.
88. OAU Res. 16(1); also quoted in opinion of Frontier Dispute, Frontier Dispute. note 4, at 564, 565.
89. Frontier Dispute, OAU Res. note 4, at 584.
90. Frontier Dispute., at 566.
91. The Court inquires into how the principle of uti possidetis ‘has been able to withstand the new approaches to internationallawas expressed inAfrica,where the successive attainment ofindependenceandthe emergence ofnewStateshavebeen accompanied by a certain questioning of traditional international law’., at 567.
92. Thus they go on to say that ‘The essential requirement of stability in order to survive, to develop and gradually to consolidate their independence in all fields has induced African states judiciously to consent to the respecting of colonial frontiers, and to take account of it in the interpretation of the principle of self-determination of peoples’. The Court inquires into how the principle of uti possidetis ‘has been able to withstand the new approaches to internationallawas expressed inAfrica,where the successive attainment ofindependenceandthe emergence ofnewStateshavebeen accompanied by a certain questioning of traditional international law’…
93. Thus they go on to say that ‘The essential requirement of stability in order to survive, to develop and gradually to consolidate their independence in all fields has induced African states judiciously to consent to the respecting of colonial frontiers, and to take account of it in the interpretation of the principle of self-determination of peoples’., at 662.
94. See S. R. Ratner, ‘Drawing a Better Line: Uti Possidetis and the Borders ofNew States’, (1996) 90American Journal of International Law 590.
95. Conrad, ‘Drawing a Better Line: Uti Possidetis and the Borders ofNew States’ note 5, at 254, 253.
96. Thus he condemns those instrumentally minded ‘pertinacious searchers of El Dorado who climbed mountains, pushed through forests,swamrivers,floundered in bogs, without giving a single thought to the science of geography’. ‘Drawing a Better Line: Uti Possidetis and the Borders ofNew States’., at 249.
97. This emergeswith clarity in theWestern Sahara case (see section2.2 above).Howevereveninthedeliberations in the Frontier Dispute case there is a return to such topographic factors.
98. Such boundarieswere not an essential criterion for nationhood and international legal and political institutions, as in the creation of the state of Israel. Yet this direct engagement with the uncertainty of boundaries stands against a background discourse of determinate boundaries. Thus when we are explicit about uncertain boundaries, this is also presented as involving exceptional circumstances,most particularly, perhaps, in saying that the sate in question is so strong that boundaries become irrelevant for it. All the other criteria for statehood are fulfilled so definitively that insisting on boundaries in that context is considered to be some old-fashioned rigidity. For instance the US permanent representative's defence of the state of Israel in the UN is quite striking in its ‘flexibility’ regarding the formal criteria for statehood. The formulation eases the territorial requirement in these cases but maintains it as a background norm.
99. Conrad, Such boundarieswere not an essential criterion for nationhood and international legal and political institutions, as in the creation of the state of Israel. note 5, at 256.
100. Against the spectre of ‘natural’ or permanently fixed borders, Martii Koskenniemi speaks in contrast of the ‘wonderful artificiality of states’. M. Koskenniemi, ‘National Self-determination Today: Problems of Legal Theory and Practice’, (1994) 43 International Comparative Law Quarterly 241 at 22. It is indeed true that all borders may be arbitrary in the abstract, and therefore carry the potential for progressive change; however, this potential is in itself no safeguard against the entrenched injustices created by particular borders. Thus we need to keep pressing the really difficult questions about what processes of inclusion and exclusion are enabled or deterred by a particular line. Thus my own interest is in looking at the tensions internal to claims to a ‘better line’. In the same article, Koskenniemi sees the recognition that law has given to uti possidetis as proof that the ethical conception of international law cannot overrule the sociological, or in his words ‘the strong support that the law gives to uti possidetis in the delineation of territorial rights seems a clear recognition of this reality’. However, he also cites other aspects of international law to say that the reverse cannot be done either, in fact, ‘either seems fully able to trump the other’ (24).
101. Conrad, Against the spectre of ‘natural’ or permanently fixed borders, Martii Koskenniemi speaks in contrast of the ‘wonderful artificiality of states’. note 5, at 251.
102. Against the spectre of ‘natural’ or permanently fixed borders, Martii Koskenniemi speaks in contrast of the ‘wonderful artificiality of states’.
103. In this opinion the Court is also engaged in the difficult task of harnessing vocabularies that are zoned onto contrasting worldviews; thus on the one hand it speaks of boundaries in terms of precision and objective criteria, on the other hand it speaks of oral traditions etc.
104. See section 2.3 above.
105. Appadurai, who speaks of territorial nationalism per se as a failure of the imagination. Speaking of contemporary nationalisms (especially as contrasted with the territorial state as such), it may well be that, as Appadurai says, ‘Territorial nationalism is thealibiof thesemovementsandnotnecessarily theirbasicmotive or final goal.’ Rather than operating according to a ‘sense of sacred territorial patrimony’, the latter ‘can be simply idioms and symbols aroundwhich many groups come to articulate their desire to escape the specific state regime that is seen as threatening their own survival’. Formany contemporary nationalistmovements, ‘images of a homeland are only a part of the rhetoric of popular sovereignty and do not necessarily reflect a territorial bottom line… Although many anti-state movements revolve around images of homeland, soil, place, and return from exile, these images reflect the poverty of their (and our) political languages rather than the hegemony of territorial nationalism.’ Appadurai, this opinion the Court is also engaged in the difficult task of harnessing vocabularies that are zoned onto contrasting worldviews; thus on the one hand it speaks of boundaries in terms of precision and objective criteria, on the other hand it speaks of oral traditions etc. note 117, 165, 161, 166.
106. Conrad, Appadurai, who speaks of territorial nationalism per se as a failure of the imagination. note 5, at 251.
107. Appadurai, who speaks of territorial nationalism per se as a failure of the imagination.
108. Or at least this may be yet another instance that illustrates the relation between the ‘form’ of spatial representations and their substantive political implications.
109. In fact,Hannah Arendt has argued that ‘bureaucracy’ functioned as a pre-eminent device for ‘political organization’ under colonialism, integrally linked with territorial expansion. ‘Bureaucracy was the organization of the great game of colonial expansion in which every area was considered a stepping-stone to further involvements and every people an instrument for further conquest.’ Arendt saw ‘race’ and bureaucracy as the two modalities of colonial expansion: Arendt, Or at least this may be yet another instance that illustrates the relation between the ‘form’ of spatial representations and their substantive political implications. note 94, 65.
110. Note broader resonance with Foucault here.
111. The phrase is that of Judge Abi-Saab, Frontier Dispute, Note broader resonance with Foucault here. note 4, at 661.
112. The phrase is that of Judge Abi-Saab., at 569.
113. The phrase is that of Judge Abi-Saab., at 607.
114. In fact, as I argued, even the naturalization of the categories of territorial representation as objective is itself a representation that is interpretive and instrumental; as I argued in the previous section, in this case the naturalization of the notion of determinate boundaries itself subscribes to particular conceptions of an administrative state.
115. The Court repeatedly finds that a clearmapping of territory remains elusive. Even when it has a description of a location that ‘might be thought’ to offer a ‘firm and reliable’ guide, its investigations suggest that ‘paradoxically’ it was that particular mapping ‘which is the least authoritative’. When certain maps ‘give an impression of precision’ they soon find that ‘that precision is nowhere warranted’, Frontier Dispute, fact, as I argued, even the naturalization of the categories of territorial representation as objective is itself a representation that is interpretive and instrumental; as I argued in the previous section, in this case the naturalization of the notion of determinate boundaries itself subscribes to particular conceptions of an administrative state. note 4, at 613, 630.
116. The Court repeatedly finds that a clearmapping of territory remains elusive., at 584.
117. Atminimum these are not just problems about how to demarcate an ‘administrative entity’ frommaps that refer to ‘topographic elements’, but about the assumptions regarding the precision that can be expected from colonial authorities, the comprehensiveness of the knowledge that can be attributed to theGeographic Service etc.; The Court repeatedly finds that a clearmapping of territory remains elusive…, at 611, 606 and 609.More significantly,however, each of these cartographic questions denote larger political assumptions, projections, and interpretations of the history and sociology of colonialism.
118. A fact recognized even by the colonial authorities; thus in one administrator criticizes an official map of the French Geographical Service as containing ‘gaps and many inaccuracies’., at 585-6.
119. For example For instance, the Court frets over the interpretation of a letter of the governor-general of FrenchWest Africa regarding changes in the delimitation between French Sudan and Niger., at 591.
120. Or even the ambiguities arising from ‘successive copying’ of maps; For example For instance, the Court frets over the interpretation of a letter of the governor-general of FrenchWest Africa regarding changes in the delimitation between French Sudan and Niger…, at 635.
121. The Court repeatedly grapples with distinctions between what ‘appeared on themaps’ and what ‘existed on the ground’; Or even the ambiguities arising from ‘successive copying’ of maps; For example For instance, the Court frets over the interpretation of a letter of the governor-general of FrenchWest Africa regarding changes in the delimitation between French Sudan and Niger…, at 582-7 and 610.
122. The question of the ‘neutrality of their sources’; The Court repeatedly grapples with distinctions between what ‘appeared on themaps’ and what ‘existed on the ground’; Or even the ambiguities arising from ‘successive copying’ of maps; For example For instance, the Court frets over the interpretation of a letter of the governor-general of FrenchWest Africa regarding changes in the delimitation between French Sudan and Niger…, at 584.
123. Noting that ‘the case file shows inconsistencies and shortcomings’, the Court despairs that it cannot access ‘a large body’ of documentation ‘from the FrenchWest Africa administration’ that is likely to be ‘dispersed among several countries’; The question of the ‘neutrality of their sources’; The Court repeatedly grapples with distinctions between what ‘appeared on themaps’ and what ‘existed on the ground’; Or even the ambiguities arising from ‘successive copying’ of maps; For example For instance, the Court frets over the interpretation of a letter of the governor-general of FrenchWest Africa regarding changes in the delimitation between French Sudan and Niger…, at 587.
124. C.Watts, ‘Heart ofDarkness’, in J. H. Stape (ed.), TheCambridge Companion to JosephConrad (1996), 52. Ironically, it is this very portrayal of the colonial encounter that has brought his harshest critics. Thus Achebe argues that Conrad presents ‘Africa as a metaphysical battlefield devoid of all recognizable humanity, into which the wandering European enters at his own peril’. ‘Maidens, Maps and Mines’., 53.My own reading of it is closer to that of Parry and others in suggesting thatConrad'swriting both ‘exposes and colludes’ in the colonial project. See Parry, My own reading of it is closer to that of Parry and others in suggesting thatConrad'swriting both ‘exposes and colludes’ in the colonial project. note 2, 38.
125. Note Conrad's fear of engulfment reflected in his maintaining his distance, his criticism of Kurtz and the Lord Jim for their intimacy with local women, itself symptomatic of how they have ‘lost’ themselves in the colonial encounter (see Griffith, Note Conrad's fear of engulfment reflected in his maintaining his distance, his criticism of Kurtz and the Lord Jim for their intimacy with local women, itself symptomatic of how they have ‘lost’ note 68). See also the discussion of geographical passion in section 2.2 above.
126. Parry, Here Judge Dillard is particularly concerned with a tendency that would ‘identify “legal” with deference to secular authority’. note 2, 4.
127. Here Judge Dillard is particularly concerned with a tendency that would ‘identify “legal” with deference to secular authority’., 12.
128. For instance, each of the protagonists in the Western Sahara case, including the Court itself, legitimates its own position precisely by suggesting that their discussion of territory is removed from politics, that it is grounded in historical fact, geographical data, and legal rules, in contrast, of course, to the alternative position.
129. Duncan, For instance, each of the protagonists in the Western Sahara case, including the Court itself, legitimates its own position precisely by suggesting that their discussion of territory is removed from politics, that it is grounded in historical fact, geographical data, and legal rules, in contrast, of course, to the alternative position. note 86, at 233.
130. For instance, each of the protagonists in the Western Sahara case, including the Court itself, legitimates its own position precisely by suggesting that their discussion of territory is removed from politics, that it is grounded in historical fact, geographical data, and legal rules, in contrast, of course, to the alternative position.