'Fantasies of No Value': Prof Andrew Lang, LRIL Annual Lecture

In-person

This lecture invites us to reconsider the international legal foundations of the post-Cold War global economic order in the light of that order’s contemporary troubles. If, as Davies has suggested, the form of liberalism characteristic of the late 20th century sought above all to ‘disenchant’ market governance, this process of disenchantment gave rise to projects of global economic integration organised around what we can think of as ‘fantasies of no value’. This lecture shows how such fantasies shaped the nature and operation of post-Cold War international economic law, offering the promise and possibility of creating legal infrastructures for global markets even in the absence of shared values. It argues that the tumult and instability of the current period is, in part, the legacy of such fantasies, and symptomatic of the falsity of their promise. The question posed is whether it is possible to imagine an anti-hegemonic politics of value for contemporary global economic conditions.

Professor Andrew Lang is Chair in International Law and Global Governance at the University of Edinburgh. Professor Lang's research focusses broadly on the role of international legal processes in the constitution of global markets, and on the co-constitution of global regulatory and economic orders. His current monograph project with OUP, Architectures of Credibilisation, examines the role of credibility and credibilisation in the configuration of 'interoperable' regulatory architectures over the last four decades.

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