People Make the World: A Conversation with Georges Abi-Saab

In Representations of the Intellectual, Edward Said paints a portrait of the public intellectual. Part description and part aspiration (and maybe a little autobiography as well), he represents the intellectual as an outsider, a subversive whose role is to challenge the status quo by “speaking truth to power.” While this statement was probably never intended as more than a catchy slogan—truth is power in itself just as deceit can be as well—it does say something about the intimacy Said demands between the intellectual and resistance. To illustrate, as a Palestinian scholar, he railed against the brutal Israeli occupation of Palestine, against zionist ethno-chauvinism, and against domination more widely; likewise, as a professor of literature, he rallied against cognitive and ideological obfuscations.

Said was particularly disdainful of mercenary intellectuals—those who followed the herd and commodified their intellectual work in exchange for status, influence, or invitations to boards, consultancies, and other baubles. By contrast, he valued intellectuals who acted as “insurgents”, characters who not only critique existing systems of power but who are courageous enough to use their knowledge to destabilise them and, as he wrote, “may the personal cost be damned.” This idea resonated deeply with the previous generation of critical Third World international legal scholars, including Mohamed Bedajoui, Taslim Olawale Elias, and, the subject of this essay and podcast, Georges Abi-Saab. Intellectual insurgency—or guerrilla legality as Abi-Saab termed it—is evident throughout his intellectual trajectory, particularly his role in introducing a Third World perspective to the discourse on international law. Indeed, Abi-Saab’s scholarship and praxis reveal the same courage and commitment that Said praised.

In a podcast Omar Kamel and I recorded with the eminent Egyptian jurist, we explored the intersections between Said’s notion of the intellectual and Abi-Saab’s own contributions to international legal scholarship. With his vast experience as both scholar and subversive, Abi-Saab offered us valuable insights into what resistance means in international law, particularly in a context where that law serves to perpetuate the dominance of the West over the Global South (as much of the TWAIL corpus evinces).

When rooted in Third World perspectives, the intellectual must navigate a fraught relationship with power, seizing it with both hands while being cautious never to hold it too tightly. Abi-Saab worked in institutions such as the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the World Trade Organization (WTO), bodies well known for reinforcing imperial predation via the global legal order. Yet, Abi-Saab resisted nevertheless, using his position within these institutions to challenge the biases as an intellectual insurgent is expected to do.

Similarly to the theme of our episode, Abi-Saab reflected on resistance in his concluding remarks at TWAIL Cairo. As he observed, Third World intellectuals often find themselves operating “behind enemy lines,” working in institutions and structures that are hostile to their perspectives, not to mention to their very identity. Rather than rejecting these institutions altogether, Abi-Saab advocates for guerrilla legality, participating with the aim of subverting the dominant logics. His role in cases such as Tadic and his time at the Appellate Body of the WTO are exemplary of the way Third World intellectuals can shift the debate toward more equitable outcomes. It is a balancing act, he tells us, and Third World scholars must “play the long game,” working within the system to achieve incremental reforms, all while retaining a critical perspective on the biases and oppressive structures at play. 

To some degree, the history of TWAIL is consistent with this account of resistance, with its interlocutors damning international law for its biases against the Third World yet retaining a “critical faith” in its potential. Like TWAIL, Abi-Saab is wary of giving too much ground to opposition. In response to one of our questions about the evolution of international legal critique, he was rather uncharitable toward the decolonisation movement or, for that matter, toward TWAIL itself. He delivered the familiar nihilism charge, excoriating TWAIL for making a meal out of colonialism and failing to proffer anything creative or constructive. We were reminded of Professor Bedjaoui’s critique (or dismissal) of TWAIL, delivered during a brief exchange with TWAIL scholars in Paris. Like Bedjaoui, Abi-Saab was of an earlier generation, one that recognised the imperial roots of international legal doctrines, but still sought to use them toward the goals of statehood and self-determination, however biased and imperially determinative the framework happened to be. To Abi-Saab, the “only thing worse than a world with international law is a world without it.”

We admit, we were left bemused by his realism. I wrote about the “double-consciousness” of TWAIL scholars and the movement’s paradox in respective articles: we condemn its Eurocentric foundations but hang on for dear life. I borrowed the concept of double-consciousness from WEB Du Bois, who recognised the agency and strength of the dominated; living on both sides of the oppression line, they come to see far more than those lashing the whip or dropping multi-tonne bombs over residential neighbourhoods. Yet, Du Bois was never content with just seeing more than the oppressor. To him, the value of double-consciousness was “second-sight”: the world of the oppressor “only lets [the oppressed] see himself through the revelation of the other” but double-consciousness has a multiplying effect, allowing the oppressed to cast their eyes beyond the veil of domination. We felt this was missing from Abi-Saab’s intervention. If international law is built on the oppression of negatively racialised bodies, if imperial powers continue to spurn international law to achieve their exploitative aims, does it not behove Third World legal scholars to deploy their second-sight to guide us toward an epistemology that doesn’t seek affirmation from within but to rewrite the rules altogether? Epistemic liberation and epistemic imagination are, perhaps, the next frontiers for resistance in critical international legal scholarship.

Georges Abi-Saab’s intellectual journey exemplifies the role of the Third World jurist as an intellectual insurgent. He is deeply committed to social justice and rejects outright the unchecked and unequal power structures that control international legal institutions. His legacy is a testament to the power of the intellectual to engage with while resisting the systems that govern our world, efforts that have inspired three generations of Third World scholars to imagine new possibilities for international legal justice. Perhaps the next step is to revisit the epistemology upon which the system is founded and to finally liberate ourselves from the predatory ontology that flows from it. 

Maybe then, international law will be capable of preventing a genocide.

You can listen to the podcast here (apple) and here (spotify). You can also view the videocast here (youtube).

Photo by Amir Hanna on Unsplash