Abstract/Summary

This chapter investigates the existence and efficacy of counterstorytelling in the field of international economic law. Section II surveys the intellectual origins and conceptual assumptions of the narrative turn in legal thought. Section III critically appraises the shortcomings and strengths of counterstorytelling, a style of narrative jurisprudence that emerged primarily in the context of critical race theory, and whose power inheres in its myth-busting potential. Section IV illustrates the force of counterstorytelling in the context of the past, present, and future of international economic law, focusing respectively on: Adom Getachew’s historical account of the New International Economic Order in Worldmaking After Empire; the diagnostic of the current backlash against economic globalisation in Lynn Nottage’s play Sweat; and efforts to forecast the trajectories of neoliberal capitalism.