The Faustian Pact in International Law

by Edwin Bikundo

Overview

The book provides an original and captivating perspective on international law and Giorgio Agamben’s work. The manuscript is profoundly aesthetic-textual in its approach, as exemplified in its deft and insightful close readings of drama (Goethe’s Faust), prose fiction (Melville’s Bartleby and Benito Cereno) and lyric, be it devotional (Laudes Regiae, Handel, ‘The Lord is a Man of War’) or otherwise (Edwin Starr’s ‘War’, Boy George’s ‘War Song’). Attentive to language, plot, theme and characterisation, these readings not only read the texts in question, but they also read them anew, yielding fresh, innovative, and unique cultural legal interpretations.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781474455671
Publisher:	Edinburgh University Press
Publication date:	01/31/2026
Series:	Edinburgh Critical Studies in Law, Literature and the Humanities
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

Edwin Bikundo is Senior Lecturer at the School of Law at Griffith Universityin Brisbane, Australia. His teaching and research interests focus on international and comparative law and critical legal theory. Edwin has written a number of journal articles and is author of International Criminal Law: Using or Abusing Legality? (Routledge, 2014).

Table of Contents

Introduction: Goethe’s Faust, Giorgio Agamben, and International Law

1. ‘Behold, I tell you a mystery’: Tracing Faust’s Influences on Giorgio Agamben to and from International Law

2. Reading Faust into International Criminal Law’s Metaphorical References to the Devil

3. What is Real about Experimental Norms? Thinking with Giorgio Agamben about Medical Trials

4. Carl Schmitt as a Subject and Object of International Criminal Law: Ethical Judgement In Extremis

5. Saving Humanity from Hell: International Criminal Law and Permanent Crisis

6. Artificial Islands, Artificial Highways and Pirates: An East African Perspective on the South China Sea Disputes

7. Follow your Leader – I Prefer Not to: Models for Non-violent Resistance in Giorgio Agamben via Herman Melville

8. The President’s Two Bodies: A Study in Applied Political Theology

9. People, Politics and Populism in International Criminal Law

10. War! What is it Good For? Law, Violence, the ‘Laudes Regiae’ and Laudatory Reggae

Editorial Reviews

International law as political theodicy - via Faust and Agamben - is rendered new and strange in Edwin Bikundo’s bracing book on the intimacies of law and violence.

Gerry Simpson