This chapter critically evaluates the phenomenon of counterstorytelling in the context of international economic law. The intellectual origins and conceptual assumptions of the narrative turn in legal thought are surveyed, before counterstorytelling is discussed—a style of narrative jurisprudence that emerged primarily in the context of critical race theory, and whose power inheres in its mythbusting potential. Counterstorytelling is illustrated with reference to the past, present, and future of international economic law, focusing respectively on: Adom Getachew’s historical account of the New International Economic Order in Worldmaking after Empire; the diagnostic of the current backlash against economic globalization in Lynn Nottage’s play Sweat; and efforts to forecast the trajectories of neoliberal capitalism.
Beyond History and Boundaries: Rethinking the Past in the Present of International Economic Law