Introduction: The universalizing narratives of international law and their binary contestations 1

Abstract

Whilst the modern and cosmopolitan project driving international law since the eighteenth century has been the object of very extensive criticisms, the idea of universality that supports it has rarely been systematically unpacked. With an emphasis on the binaries that accompany the invocation of the idea of universality in international legal discourses, this book sheds a new light on how the idea of universality plays out in international legal discourses and how it provides a site of contestation. Its chapters particularly examine how binaries informing the idea of universality constitute, enable, and delimit a space for contestation of international law in international legal discourses.