Wanted Dead & Alive: Modern Law, Universality and the Colonial Exception

32 Pages Posted: 16 Nov 2016

See all articles by Tayyab Mahmud

Tayyab Mahmud

Seattle University School of Law - Center for Global Justice

Date Written: November 15, 2016

Abstract

The ubiquitous exclusion/inclusion binary is not a helpful frame to measure the depth and reach of constitutionalism and human rights. Inscription of the law over subjugated bodies and spaces continues to subscribe to an enduring grammar of modernity’s engagement with alterity. This grammar is not one of exclusion, but, rather, forms a three-pronged matrix engagement: engulfment/exception/subordination. The Other is not “discovered,” left out or left alone — excluded from operations of constitutional regimes, and then gradually incorporated as a rights-bearing subject. The Other is always-already engulfed in operations of modern law, placed in zones of exception, and positioned in states of subordination.

Keywords: Modernity, Colonialism, Racism, Diego Garcia, Magna Carta, Exile, Imperialism

Suggested Citation

Mahmud, Tayyab, Wanted Dead & Alive: Modern Law, Universality and the Colonial Exception (November 15, 2016). Wisconsin International Law Journal, Vol. 33, No. 3, 2015, Seattle University School of Law Research Paper No. 16-24, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2870051

Tayyab Mahmud (Contact Author)

Seattle University School of Law - Center for Global Justice ( email )

901 12th Avenue, Sullivan Hall
P.O. Box 222000
Seattle, WA n/a 98122-1090
United States

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