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What Is Twail?, Makau W. Mutua
What Is Twail?, Makau W. Mutua
Makau Mutua
The piece seeks to conceptualize the insurgent movement in international law known as Third World Approaches to International Law. Driven by scholars from the Third World, TWAIL rejects the traditional tenets and assumptions of traditional international law and argues for a re-imagination of the law of nations to purge it of racial and hegemonic precepts and biases to create a truly universal corpus that embraces inclusivity and empowerment. The movement turns away from the imperialist and colonialist foundation of international law. It argues that international law must be devoid of oppression, exploitation, and domination. The piece is among the first …
Mary L. Dudziak's Exporting American Dreams: Thurgood Marshall’S African Journey (Book Review), Makau Mutua
Mary L. Dudziak's Exporting American Dreams: Thurgood Marshall’S African Journey (Book Review), Makau Mutua
Makau Mutua
This review of Mary Dudziak’s hugely important book contends that the author conflates the struggle for civil rights in the United States with the struggle for black majority rule in Kenya. While the two struggles are linked by white domination and the quest for blacks to free themselves from that domination, the book fails to interrogate and contextualize the limitations of equal protection norms for minorities in two vastly different political milieus. Dudziak does not problematize Thurgood Marshall’s blind insistence that the independence Kenyan constitution accord the economically dominant and oppressive white minority in colonial Kenya the same equal protections …
Jeremy I. Levitt's Africa: Mapping New Boundaries In International Law (Book Review), Makau Mutua
Jeremy I. Levitt's Africa: Mapping New Boundaries In International Law (Book Review), Makau Mutua
Makau Mutua
This is a review of Jeremy Levitt’s edited collection of chapters in Africa: Mapping the Boundaries of International Law, which is an impressive work to the dearth of scholarship on Africa’s contribution to the normative substance and theory of international law. The book explicitly seeks to counter the racist mythology that Africans were tabula rasa in international law. In his own introduction to the book, Levitt makes it clear that “Africa is a legal marketplace, not a lawless basket case.” The eight contributors to the book are renowned scholars who make the case that Africa is not stuck in pre-history …
An Apology For A Pathological Brute (Reviewing Tim Jeal, Stanley: The Impossible Life Of Africa's Greatest Explorer (2007)), Makau Mutua
Makau Mutua
This is a review of Tom Jeal’s Stanley: the Impossible Life of Africa’s Greatest Explorer. Although perhaps the most carefully researched of the many books of Stanley, the book suffers from its zealous attempt to absolve Stanley of his inhumanity in spite of the most extensive historical evidence of the abominations that he committed against Africans. Instead, Jeal sets out to humanize a historical monster who paved the way for many pogroms committed by the colonial hegemons in Africa. Even deep flaws of character, including self-denial, that were so evident in Stanley are either explained away or excused. The book …