Ghosts of International Law
The Figure of the Foreign Fighter in a Cultural Perspective

Employs an inter-disciplinary methodology in retracing the cultural history of the Western foreign fighter.

Alberto Rinaldi (Author)

9781009358361, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 19 December 2024

266 pages
23.5 x 15.9 x 2.1 cm, 0.53 kg

Heroes and villains, idealists and mercenaries, freedom fighters and religious fanatics. Foreign fighters tend to defy easy classification. Good and bad images of the foreign combatant epitomize different conceptions of freedom and are used to characterize the rightness or wrongness of this actor in civil wars. The book traces the history of these figures and their afterlife. It does so through an interdisciplinary methodology employing law, history, and psychoanalytical theory, showing how different images of the foreign combatant are utilized to proscribe or endorse foreign fighters in different historical moments. By linking the Spanish, Angolan, and Syrian civil wars, the book demonstrates how these figures function as a precedent for later periods and how their heritage keeps haunting the imaginary of legal actors in the present.

Introduction
1. The Spanish Civil war and the legacy of Nineteenth Century adventurers
2. The return of the mercenaries: The 1976 Luanda trial in context
3. Enemies of humanity or freedom fighters? The Jihadist combatant in the Syrian Civil war
Back to the Future
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Public international law [LBB]