ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes how aesthetic methodologies are making claims on international law through a detailed discussion of Cameron Rowland’s Depreciation, a conceptual artwork which seeks to dis/locate colonial concepts of property and broader living legacies of Anglo-American colonialism. The chapter argues that attention to the differentiation between matter, as that which is-not-yet but has the potential to take legal form, and material, as matter which possesses ‘active’ legal form vis-à-vis its attainment of meaning through legal interpretation, is needed to expand knowledge of the ways that law is actively being shaped by artists. The chapter engages with more established international legal debates on reparation and other forms of reparative justice to demonstrate that paying attention to intra-actions – and the distinction between law’s matter and material which they reveal – presents opportunities to address ‘new’ and historic injustices of Anglo-American colonialism. Insisting upon the potentiality of this approach, the chapter joins the call for international legal theorists to ‘queer’ legal ethics through meaningful engagement with principles found in posthuman theory, to rethink how we conceive of ‘responsibility’ as an ethical and political stance in the context of settler societies and to always orient toward matter in our pursuits of justice.
