38.2 (7) TEMPROSA.DOCX38.2 (7) TEMPROSA.DOCX (DO NOT DELETE) 286 BERKELEY JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW 1/16/2021 12:59 PM [Vol. 38:2 the rhetor counters with the formal definition of statelessness, returning to a reasoned analysis of the law and other policy concerns of the State. 310 This leads to a third point. The other danger of categorization is that it can take on "a blurry, circular shape" as humans do not form categories in clean boxes and on objective processes. 311 Categories tend to follow or develop ahead of a particular policy concern. 312 At the time of the 1954 Statelessness Convention, the category of "stateless person" followed from the international community's policy concern about protecting people who did not enjoy State human rights protection. 313 However, as I have argued, the resulting definition is deficient and lacks a protection-oriented focus. International law enables States to decide on statelessness on their own accord 314 and to incorporate countering ideologies. The rightless (a stateless person in the Arendtian sense) 315 has become a referent in the rhetorical discourse. In sum, the policy choices of States become evident through statelessness determinations, and operate alongside ideologies that animate the law and the decisions of State agents. IV. A CALL: REVISIONING STATELESSNESS IN INTERNATIONAL LAW The international community should and could revision statelessness in international law. This revisioning should address the inherent limitations and embedded ideologies in the definition of statelessness. The goal of the 1954 Statelessness Convention is to protect the people who would otherwise be unprotected. For States to further that goal, international law's definition of statelessness needs to be revisioned. I offer a framework introducing some possibilities, though I note that this framework does not solve all problems related to statelessness and has tentative moving parts. However, my hope is that this will further the conversation about the inadequacy of the concept of statelessness in international law and begin the process of revisioning statelessness in our statist world, inviting the reader to debate and identify alternative ways of looking at statelessness. Notably, my approach is to 'revision' the statelessness definition. It is not merely to revise the definition, neither a total re-envisioning that so violently 310. Id. 311. See Lucille Jewel, Old-School Rhetoric and New-School Cognitive Science: The Enduring Power of Logocentric Categories, 13 LEGAL COMM. & RHETORIC: JAWLD 39, 44 (2016). 312. See Oliver Bakewell, Research Beyond the Categories: The Importance of Policy Irrelevant Research into Forced Migration, 21 J. REFUGEE STUD. 432, 436 (2008). 313. See 1954 Statelessness Convention, supra note 16, at preamble; UNHCR, Expert Meeting, supra note 100, at 2. 314. Cf. Tamas Molnar, Remembering the Forgotten: International Legal Regime Protecting the Stateless Persons - Stocktaking and New Tendencies, 11 US-CHINA L. REV. 822, 847 (2014). While Molnar accepts that international law's definition is a categorization, he asserts that it is a "coherent, logically closed legal architecture." 315. This is also reminiscent of Giorgio Agamben's take on stateless persons as having bare life. For Agamben, a stateless person exists in a state of exception. See AGAMBEN, supra note 241, at 9.