Newer is Truer: Time, Space and Subjectivity at the Bandung Conference

To critical scholars of international law, the demands of the newly independent states represented at the Bandung Conference can appear somewhat less than radical. If analysed not only in terms of their substance but also in terms of their (narrative) form, however, these demands take on a far more revolutionary aspect. This chapter mobilises Bakhtin’s concept of the chronotope to focus on the relationship between time and space, as constructed by the delegates at Bandung. They made use, the chapter argues, of certain chronotopic devices in order to narrate – and constitute – a particular kind of international legal subjectivity for their states. In doing so, they made a rhetorical-political move against the superpowers and their allies, collectively the source of the two most important threats to the subjectivity of African and Asian states: colonialism and the Cold War. With this move, the delegates sought to challenge the identity of these powerful states as international law’s archetypal subjects, and in their stead to position their own states – international law’s newest subjects – as also, and for that reason, its truest.