To end a book is to perform a paradoxical act. There is always a follow-up to the conclusion, a post-history to the post-history of the end. It is impossible to trace a definite point in time, to say, “This is where it all culminates. Before, there were only dispersed chapters, now there is conclusion, closure and full stop.” And yet, just like “books and other narratives … really do begin,” they really come to an end. To end is to cut off, to make an incision in time. No matter what will follow, from now on what came before is to be seen as a lead-up to this point. As Chekov famously (and allegedly) instructed: “If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off.” This instruction can also be turned around: it is the going off at last that gives the rifle’s introduction a purpose. In hindsight, the end is implicated in the beginning; it is this end that leads us back to that beginning. Just like “the beginning of a story … will … also have to be the story of a beginning,” the end of a story will also have to be the story of an end.

Chapter two deals with the impossibility to account for the rise of a rule of customary law. I was once more confronted with this problem when I read the ILC Report on the identification of rules of customary law. The report contains a courageous attempt to develop a methodology to identify such rules in an objective way. However, along the way, many of the age-old problems regarding the existence and rise of rules of customary law reappear. The impossibility of grounding a method for customary law, I argue, has to do with the repetitive nature of this body of law. Rules of customary law only exist in and through restatements that present them as already valid. To get a better grasp of the kind of repetitive logic that drives customary law, I compare it to the logic of repetition at work in Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. In both cases, what is essential is and must remain absent; it is nevertheless made operative through acts of repetition and representations. Yet, customary law is also radically different as it employs what Kierkegaard called "repetition forward," a form of repetition that comes with change and transformation over time.

Chapter four discusses the Tallinn Manual as a "restatement" of international law. The restatements in the Tallinn Manual were deemed necessary because specific positive law was lacking. Yet, they were also presented as neutral reproductions of rules already in existence. This led me into the recurring topic of this book: the dialectical relation between repetition and something that is absent, unattainable or unspeakable. However, in this chapter, I add another dimension to the analysis of repetition in international law. After all, the restatements occur in a very specific format, the manual. Through a comparison between the Tallinn Manual, consumer manuals and manuals of etiquette, I try to get a better grip on the inherent tensions that come with restatements of international law in the form of a "manual."

Chapter six grew out of my curiosity about a term that appears in the preamble of the ICC Statute: unimaginable atrocities. If the court is indeed called to fight "unimaginable atrocities," how is it possible that considerable parts of the same statute are devoted to spell out and, in great detail, how these crimes should be defined? The chapter combines my curiosity about the ICC Statute with my questions about the use of film in legal education. Following Shoshana Felman, I argue that the ICC Statute should be read as pointing to the limits of what can be articulated in legal language. The unimaginable or unspeakable cannot, by definition, be captured in legal categories. However, it is possible to suggest what it means for something to be unimaginable. This is where art, including film, can play a role. The biggest part of the chapter is devoted to films that use reenactments to show what it means not to be able to fully articulate and understand historical trauma. The films, I argue, function as a reminder of the importance of the term used in the ICC preamble: the unimaginable atrocities that point to the limits of what law can articulate and achieve.

Chapter five is the most programmatic of all. It grew out of uneasiness about my role as coach of teams participating in international moot court competitions. These competitions claim to bring litigation practice into legal education. However, although I see the value of mooting, I increasingly felt that these competitions were neither reflecting practice nor what academic training should be about. The chapter is an attempt to articulate my uneasiness as well as to come up with an alternative. It contains a critique on international moot court competitions, based on a comparison between two traditions of rehearsing in European theatre. The first understands rehearsing as mimicking an ideal model as closely as possible. Most existing international moot court competitions, I argue, fit this tradition. The second is the Brechtian tradition, which understands rehearsing as experimenting an echo of Kierkegaard’s notion of "repetition forward." In the last part of the chapter, I rethink international moot court competitions along Brechtian lines. Instead of training students to outperform others according to pre-fixed criteria, I seek to develop a moot noncompetition, which brings students and staff together in a common experimental environment where the boundaries of litigation are probed.

Chapter three starts from the surprise I felt when I first read a Security Council resolution. What does it mean to begin a resolution by recalling, reiterating, reconfirming or recognizing previous resolutions? In order to make sense of such beginnings, I compare preambles of Security Council resolutions to prologues in theatre plays as well as to preambles in Babylonian codes. Acts of recalling, I argue, are radically different from the decision that follows. The decision constitutes a cutoff in time, a break with the past and a pointer to the future. Decisions, in other words, present a new beginning, a lack of continuity. To recall, reiterate, recognize or reaffirm is to do the opposite: to indicate that resolutions have begun well before they were adopted. In that sense, acts of recalling seek to fill the gap that is created by a beginning, not unlike prologues do. However, preambles to Security Council resolutions cannot escape the dialectics of repetition. They do not innocently present the past as it is, but rather retake it in light of what is to follow. This means they come with their own breaks and gaps, which are filled by yet further acts of repetition.

Chapter one starts from my embarrassment when teaching sources of international law. Following conventional wisdom, I inform students that international law is grounded on a limited set of sources. However, at some point, I also have to explain that it is possible for new sources of international law to emerge. How is this possible, given that international law is grounded on a limited set of sources? I try to deal with this uneasiness by comparing discourses on sources to rituals that prevail in what I call "cyclical societies," organized around the belief in the eternal return of transcendental ideas, acts or events. To apply sources, I argue, is to perform a double act of repetition. First, historically contingent events are turned into manifestations of pregiven and repeatable categories. Second, sources are used as placeholders for something that will always escape positive international law: the foundational categories that underlie the sources of law. These foundational categories, I argue, work somewhat like celestial Gods in cyclical societies: Most of the time they stay dormant and aloof, but they can always be called upon in exceptional times.

To begin a book is to perform a paradoxical act. There is always a lead-up to the beginning, a history before the history of the start. This book, for example, grew out of my experiences with problems and puzzles in international law over the past few years – or longer. It began when I first looked up the text of a Security Council resolution. I expected to find decisions and recommendations, in line with the formal powers and mandate of the Council. And indeed, I found all of these things. However, I was most of all struck by something else: the lengthy preamble of the resolution, which extensively recalled, reiterated, reaffirmed and recognized previous resolutions. What was going on here? What does it mean to begin a resolution by calling upon the past, by reaffirming and recognizing your own previous work? This book began when I was coach of a team of students for an international moot court competition. I had been coaching and supervising moot court teams for a couple of years and, while I truly enjoyed the experience, there was also always a yawning uneasiness about it. During the competition there was little to no room for the critical and reflexive attitude that I try to foster in the rest of my teaching. Instead, I largely followed the format of the competition during the preparatory sessions, mostly focusing on the strategic use of international law in order to win a case. Increasingly, I started to wonder whether there might be different, more reflexive and experimental ways to rehearse international law. This book began when I first saw Rithy Panh’s documentary films on the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge. I was especially moved by the reenactments of traumatic experiences that were shown on screen. Watching these reenactments gave me a different sense of one of the core concepts of the Statute of the International Criminal Court: “unimaginable atrocities.” Panh’s films made me wonder whether the pictured reenactments might have something important to say about that which the International Criminal Court labels as “unimaginable” and others as “unspeakable.”