transnational agreements.

the conventions and international agreements that have the purpose to ensure the international recognition of fundamental human rights (such as the geneva convention) are mostly framed in the terminology pertaining to the anachronistic dominance of nation-states and wars between nation-states. "terrorism" perpetrated by groups that do not have nation-states behind them is not or hardly covered by these documents, and hence almost by definition illegitimate. the "humane treatment" of the perpetrators is not legally enforced.

the nation-state is clearly becoming ever more obsolete in the light of multinational corporations that defy national boundaries. this leads to a different public consciousness, in which the relation between hegemon and subaltern cannot be framed in terms relating to the nation-state paradigm. what we are seeing today is that the Left takes up a sympathy for these non-national subaltern subjects (palestinians, illegal immigrants, national minorities), whereas the right sticks to the nation-state paradigm, and thereby deems the violence committed on behalf of these minorities illegitimate (or even considers it an act of terrorism - a term that bears the illegitimacy within itself and preemptively rules out sympathy). within this framework, state violence appears as a legitimate reply. the Left currently engages in the conflicts that occur and are phrased within the terms belonging to the nation-state paradigm by placing itself in a dialectic in which the right defends the state, and the left tries to defend minorities from the right and its institutions. this dialectic knows little progress (as michel serres recognized, dialectics seldom do), for leftist activists are interpellated as terrorists (or at least, as dangers to the order of the state), and willfully encounter this interpellation with a hatred of police (in the young radical left) and such. this situation remains problematically inert.

in order to advance in this dialectic, the Left will need to rephrase the terms of the debate. when international agreements (or not international, but universal, for the term international implicitly refers to the old paradigm) speak in terms of universality rather than nationality, or try to establish new boundaries and modes of belonging that are not construed in relation to the nation-state paradigm, the non-national minorities will be granted solid ground from which they can claim their so desired rights. this new terminology might be better suited to deal with contemporary conflict situations (the guantanamo case and the indefinite detention there clearly show the old agreements are not effective in each modern situation), and might blow up the nation-state system from within, by forcing nation-states to recognize that their institutions are, by and large, anachronistic.

who will be the subjects signing these agreements currently remains unclear.