Anamika Misra

Research project

Project title: Making the Human in International Humanitarian Law

Description of the project: My project analyses the relationship between technology and imperialism in producing the category of the ‘human’. It brings together Black feminist theories of the human with critical science and technology studies and the doctrine of international humanitarian law.

Current conversations about the relationship between international humanitarian law and technology are concerned with questions about human agency and control over of emerging weapons technology for the purpose of inflicting force, both lethal and non-lethal. Such a conception of the relationship between technology and law is rooted in western humanist epistemology and takes for-granted the figure of the human and notions of agency.

My project instead demonstrates that who we understand as the human and what is widely recognised as humanity are both products of colonialism. Consequently then, the use of force through various means of warfare as authorised and limited by the law is inextricably influenced by this colonial production of humanity. By unsettling these conceptual assumptions which underlie the field of international humanitarian law, my aim is to uncover the different modes of how force has been used to demarcate the boundaries of humanity and the ways in which that can shift the conversation of law and technology away from a conception of human agency entrenched in Western epistemology.