International law, literature and interdisciplinarity

This article analyses the relationship between international law and literature from the point of view of its form of expression. Using insights from Deleuze and Guattari’s analysis of Kafka’s oeuvre as a ‘minor literature’, it argues that stylistic conventions of international law present a serious barrier to the full development of the truly revolutionary potential of international law. International law is situated in proximity to minor literature. Therefore, the constraints imposed on the use of language by the discipline of international law produce particularly distorting results within international law scholarship. These distortions reflect the need to open the language of international law up to new uses that allow for the precedence of expression over content, as in a minor literature.