The war on drugs as a war on the nonhuman

Koram, Kojo and Guardiola-Rivera, Oscar (2024) The war on drugs as a war on the nonhuman. In: Arvidsson, M. and Jones, E. (eds.) International Law and Posthuman Theory. Abingdon, UK and New York, U.S.: Routledge, pp. 244-257. ISBN 9781032044040.

Abstract

International law’s claim to universality rests on its self-appointed position as one of the markers of relations between humans. As a result, it seeks to cohere itself upon a defined category of what qualifies as the human. However, the writings of scholars such as Anthony Anghie, Ntina Tzouvala, or Peter Fitzpatrick point to an alternative source for coherence for the law, arguing that the law, unable to provide a fixed image of the human, binds itself together through an opposition to an imagined negation of the human. Far from being a neutral instrument of statecraft, the law is heavily indebted to Eurocentred notions of humanity, which read ‘certain physical characteristics, usually skin colour’ or inconsistent "nature" as not merely physiognomic differences but framework standardising indications of varying intellectual, moral and even spiritual-material (in)capacity between populations ( Fitzpatrick 1992 : 65). The imposition of such framework upon the world, with international law being one of the tools in this imposition, determined new hierarchies of categorization, governing the lives of both humanity and nature. While this was true of the colonial past, it is also true so the so-called post-colonial present. From "just war" doctrine to the framing and practice of the war on drugs this framing merges spectacular ways of seeing, appearing, and speculation with law-making violence aimed against existents seen as non-human.

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