It's just past midnight. One of those moments I should be going to bed, but not quite
ready yet... one of those moments I could finish off a paper I'm writing, but not quite got the braincells to read anything else any more... so I guess I'll just write about my day.
Went to bed pretty late/early last night, at around 2am, working on the paper due next week. I'm not sure if it's a good or bad thing, but once I get started doing research, I just read on and on and on, and don't feel like stopping. And for a short paper of 2000 words in length, I've got some 70 footnotes that total to around 3500 words alone! And I'm not even finished yet. I guess I have what is called 'footnote fetish'... almost every single sentence I qualify my arguments or refer to similar and contrasting arguments with a footnote. So a typical example would be this:
It is such a perspective of a “millenist, triumphalist, upbeat”[1] liberal international society that echoes concerns of a return of standards of civilisation under the liberal label.[2] Indeed, a “facile universalism”[3] of standards in the international system would overshadow the political, economic, social and historical idiosyncrasies of our “multicultural (as opposed to cosmopolitan)” international society".[4]
Anyways, I only managed a few hours of sleep before I had to get up just before eight to go to work. I had to turn back home almost immediately after leaving home because somehow the circular lock on my bike came off and started to make embarrasingly loud noises against the wheel as I cycled.
I was somewhat sleepy, but the sun was out and shining wonderfully like an early day in spring. And somehow I always feel so 'energetic' and excited about going to work, even if it's just one day in the week.
As I arrived, a couple of boxes were spread over the floor, and my colleague excitedly told me about the 'goodies' and books that a number of sponsors have sent us. About time, since for the last couple of months we've be trying to solicit ('beg') for sponsorship and for whatever people can spare to support the event on HIV/AIDS we're organising. Luckily, we got a positive response from UNESCO, which sent us two big boxes of information packages. My colleague nonchalantly opened one, and started to show me the wonderful things that were inside the info packs... Between it all was a little foil package, and I curiously removed it.
My colleague saw the expression on my face, like the expressions of so many other people who realised what it was that I was holding, and burst out laughing. It was a condom, not just any condom, but a female condom, with on the back vivid pictures and careful instructions showing how to put it on (or in?). The rest of my co-workers came, and each were equally surprised and burst into laughs as I was. So now together with the latest collection of contraceptives, we also a bunch of red ribbons, a number of lollies with 'Safe Sex' printed on them. And still to come is another big batch of condoms. We have so much that my boss asked whether we'd like to take some home with us... without thinking too much, I said no. Well... I guess taking them home will be a waste, since the chances of them being used in the near future is... (lower than) slim : /
Come mid-April, when our guests start to arrive from all over Europe, we'll be standing at the door welcoming them with our huge supply of condoms and other 'accessories', and say: "Welcome to Holland"!
[1] José E. Alvarez, ‘Do Liberal States Behave Better? A Critique of Slaughter's Liberal Theory’, 12 European Journal of International Law 183 (2001), 189. At 192 Alvarez talks of the “oppressive voice of neo-liberal hegemony”. Much of this ”liberal triumphalism” can be traced back to Francis Fukuyama’s seminal declaration that “with the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government” history was at an end: Gerry Simpson, ‘Two Liberalisms’, 12 European Journal of International Law 537 (2001), 539; and also Susan Marks, ‘The End of History? Reflections on Some International Legal Theses’, 3 European Journal of International Law 449 (1997) and Gerry Simpson, ‘Democratic Liberalism in International Legal Theory’, 15 Australian Yearbook of International Law 103 (1994). See also Alex Mills and Tim Stephens, ‘Challenging the Role of Judges in Slaughter’s Liberal Theory of International Law’, 18
[2] Fidler (1984) speaks of “the standard of civilization [having been] reincarnated n the standard of liberal, globalized civilization”: 411. Anghie (1999), similarly writes that “the civilizing mission may be reconstructed in the contemporary vocabulary of human rights, governance and economic liberalization” (80). Simpson (2001) distinguishes between ‘classical Charter liberalism’ which emphasises “tolerance diversity and openness together with an agnosticism about moral truth” (539), and ‘liberal anti-pluralism’, which is a profound form of “illiberal conformitarianism” that views original Charter conceptions of sovereign equality as “an absurdity” (541). Koskenniemi (2002), 54-67, outlines that the origins of the ‘liberal project’, with human rights as “the fundamental objects of protection by international law”, took root at around the same time as European expansion in the late 19th Century.
[3] Thomas Carothers, ‘Empirical Perspectives on the Emerging Norm of Democracy in International Law’, 86 American Society of International Law Proceedings 261 (1992), 262-264.
[4] Gong (1984), 244.
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