The Making of International Lawyers
Critical approaches to international law scholarship are sometimes hide-bound by reality and dismissive of idealism. Such work resembles the hermeneutics of suspicion. Eve Sedgwick explained that such approaches can be paranoid, as attempts to exclude fantasy from scholarship merely drive it underground. This chapter draws on psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott’s concept of the transitional object to think about how objects could mediate between reality and fantasy in international law pedagogy. The chapter calls for a creative reinvigoration of the discipline in which international lawyers could share a ‘sample of dream potential’ without making claims on reality. Objects, like props in children’s plays, help us connect with one another in spontaneous ways that can surprise us into looking at the world differently. This enlivening of the creative and cultural life of our discipline is an act of self-care, not an attempt to change the world.