The map and international law's stifled visual discourse

Abstract

Traditional accounts of international law cast the map as a passive narrator of its divisions, violence, and predilections, leaving its place in international legal discourse under-explored and under-theorised. This paper seeks to reframe the map as a particular and contingent technology designed to enact and entrench hegemonies within international law, whilst itself enjoying a quiet monopoly over the discipline's limited visual discourse. It contends that the map, as one of international law's visual conduits, dominates its imagination without adequate critique. With the support of a case study of mapping practices in the West Bank, this paper suggests that the ubiquitous 'world picture' stifles radical and transformative images conducive to global justice. Against this backdrop, it explores routes to alternative visual imaginaries, such as ‘deep’ and ‘participatory’ mapping, through which international law might better accommodate the layered socio-spatial realities of the modern world, state and city.