Reflections on a Teach-In Walk-Out

Abstract

Karl Marx wrote that ‘the philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways’, whereas ‘the point is to change it’. Are international legal scholars exposed to the same charge? Have they too placed theory before the demands of real-world emancipatory practice? The author explores these questions, and shows how Marx’s concerns about the philosophers indeed have resonance in the field of international law. At the same time, however, she observes that the problem is not with theory per se, if by theory is simply meant academic enquiry. Rather, it is with theory of a particular kind. Against this background, she discusses some of the ways in which academic enquiry can be itself a form of emancipatory practice, some of the features of what she refers to as transformative scholarship. In developing her account, she highlights the point that those who seek social transformation need not only to transcend the limitations for which Marx criticised certain kinds of philosophy (‘idealism’). They also need to avoid the antithetical pitfalls for which, much later, Frankfurt School theorist Adorno criticised certain modes of politics (‘actionism’).