The story of the modern state can be told in several ways. However, the most glaring problem we face when attempting any sort of genealogical reconstruction of its origins is that we often speak through the language that is bequeathed to us by modernity, thus inhibiting any sort of sustained critique. This is evident in the ways we speak about nodal foundational modern concepts such as sovereignty. Rather than inquiring whose sovereignty, we need to critically re-examine the concept itself. In telling a story that accounts for concepts like sovereignty, we can also think through the possibility of a politics without sovereignty and the implications that such a politics would have on liberatory politics. Telling the story of modern sovereignty would illuminate the ways in which sovereignty is the product of a distinctly Eurocentric metaphysical imagination. The question before us, then, is as follows: what are the metaphysical assumptions that make the concept of sovereignty thinkable in the first place? Second, can we think about a politics without sovereignty? (Read More)
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