Emily Kate Jones

This chapter thinks through international law and posthuman theory by way of practice of ‘posthumanist commoning’. It explores the posthumanist and the commoning dimensions of particular legal and political collective actions at hand. It does so by telling the story of the ‘insurgent lake’ of Rome - the ‘lago bullicante’. Bullicante is an archaic Italian term that signifies both ‘to boil’ (bollire) and ‘to get agitated’ (agitarsi). The ‘lake that boils and gets agitated’ refers to the artificial/natural lake that was accidentally created in 1992, when an underground parking lot was illegally constructed and inadvertently hit an aquifer, thereby flooding the construction site and nearby area, creating a one-hectare large lake in the heart of the city. With the lake, an insurgent political subjectivity emerged to resist and care for its preservation. Both the subjectivity and the struggle are articulated and practiced in non-liberal, non-individualistic, and in-human (or more and less than ‘human’) terms, thereby giving rise to a distinctive mode of ‘becoming common’. Drawing on the lago bullicante, I argue that this mode of ‘posthumanist commoning’ enacts particular practices of ecological resistance, refusal and reparation. The transversal alliances forged within networks of transnational resisting collectives help exploring how posthuman theory can inform international law. It does so by availing methods of reconfiguring the categories of the human, the land and its living ecology, while also revealing critical blind spots and methodological/conceptual limitations of both posthuman theory and international law.

This chapter thinks through international law and posthuman theory by way of practice of ‘posthumanist commoning’. It explores the posthumanist and the commoning dimensions of particular legal and political collective actions at hand. It does so by telling the story of the ‘insurgent lake’ of Rome - the ‘lago bullicante’. Bullicante is an archaic Italian term that signifies both ‘to boil’ (bollire) and ‘to get agitated’ (agitarsi). The ‘lake that boils and gets agitated’ refers to the artificial/natural lake that was accidentally created in 1992, when an underground parking lot was illegally constructed and inadvertently hit an aquifer, thereby flooding the construction site and nearby area, creating a one-hectare large lake in the heart of the city. With the lake, an insurgent political subjectivity emerged to resist and care for its preservation. Both the subjectivity and the struggle are articulated and practiced in non-liberal, non-individualistic, and in-human (or more and less than ‘human’) terms, thereby giving rise to a distinctive mode of ‘becoming common’. Drawing on the lago bullicante, I argue that this mode of ‘posthumanist commoning’ enacts particular practices of ecological resistance, refusal and reparation. The transversal alliances forged within networks of transnational resisting collectives help exploring how posthuman theory can inform international law. It does so by availing methods of reconfiguring the categories of the human, the land and its living ecology, while also revealing critical blind spots and methodological/conceptual limitations of both posthuman theory and international law.

Assembling a series of voices from across the field, this book demonstrates how posthuman theory can be employed to better understand and tackle some of the challenges faced by contemporary international law. With the vast environmental devastation being caused by climate change, the increasing use of artificial intelligence by international legal actors, and the need for international law to face up to its colonial past, international law needs to change. But in regulating and preserving a stable global order in which states act as its main subjects, the traditional sources of international law - international legal statutes, customary international law, historical precedents and general principles of law - create a framework that slows down its capacity to act on contemporary challenges, and to imagine futures yet to come. In response, this collection maintains that posthuman theory can be used to better address the challenges faced by contemporary international law. Covering a wide array of contemporary topics - including environmental law, the law of the sea, colonialism, human rights, conflict, and the impact of science and technology - it is the first book to bring new and emerging research on posthuman theory and international law together into one volume. This book's posthuman engagement with central international legal debates, prefaced by the leading scholar in the field of posthuman theory, provides a perfect resource for students and scholars in international law, as well as critical and socio-legal theorists, and others with interests in posthuman thought, technology, colonialism and ecology.