ABSTRACT
Chapter 1 explains the methodology and terminology of legal performativity that I employ throughout this book. The notion of legal performativity articulated here borrows from numerous theorists, but mainly from Judith Butler and Michel Foucault. Foucault’s notions of discourse and power aid in understanding legal models, their limitations, and the other powers at work upon Indigenous peoples as subjects of international legal discourse. Butler’s theories of performativity aid in explaining the performative enactment of Indigenous peoples’ subjectivities to claim FPIC, as well as how the continuous re-citation of terms in citational-chains enables, over time, terms of subjection change and potentially lead to insurrectionary action. Together, their theories about subject construction aid in explaining how it is that autochthonous communities performatively enact as Indigenous peoples to claim human rights, how that involves inscribing legal discipline on oneself and one’s community, why that is troubling, and why legal scholars – who are themselves disciplined and involved in reproducing legal discourse and discipline by creating its subjects – have difficulties seeing that.
