Faustian Pact in International Law

Edwin Bikundo is Senior Lecturer at the School of Law at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia. His teaching and research interests focus on international and comparative law and critical legal theory. Edwin has written a number of journal articles and is author of International Criminal Law: Using or Abusing Legality? (Routledge, 2014).

• Introduction: Goethe’s Faust, Giorgio Agamben, and International Law1. ‘Behold, I tell you a mystery’: Tracing Faust’s Influences on Giorgio Agamben to and from International Law2. Reading Faust into International Criminal Law’s Metaphorical References to the Devil3. What is Real about Experimental Norms? Thinking with Giorgio Agamben about Medical Trials4. Carl Schmitt as a Subject and Object of International Criminal Law: Ethical Judgement In Extremis5. Saving Humanity from Hell: International Criminal Law and Permanent Crisis6. Artificial Islands, Artificial Highways and Pirates: An East African Perspective on the South China Sea Disputes7. Follow your Leader – I Prefer Not to: Models for Non-violent Resistance in Giorgio Agamben via Herman Melville8. The President’s Two Bodies: A Study in Applied Political Theology9. People, Politics and Populism in International Criminal Law10. War! What is it Good For? Law, Violence, the ‘Laudes Regiae’ and Laudatory Reggae

International law as political theodicy - via Faust and Agamben - is rendered new and strange in Edwin Bikundo’s bracing book on the intimacies of law and violence.