Abstract
This paper makes a two-fold contribution: First, it historicizes international punishment through select colonial illustrations and acknowledges in broad brush strokes its myriad manifestations across time. Second, it suggests that punishment is an enduring trope of world politics evident in its continuing complicity with asymmetries of power manifest in a neo-colonial international present. To accomplish this objective, the chapter takes recourse to two distinct registers: first, select literary voices from the global south that chronicle these political moments with an unmistakable moral clarity; and second, a Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) perspective on international punishments. These narratives also provide an opening to rethink and rehabilitate our current notions of political justice in international society.
Panel: Norm Violation, Sanctions, and the Punitive Use of Force