On Sovereignty and Other Political Delusions

Description

Global forces are eroding the ability of states to exert sovereign control over their populations, territories, and borders. Yet when dominated subjects across the world dream of freedom, they continue to conceive of it in sovereign terms. Sovereign freedom haunts the imagination of oppressed ethnic minorities, popular masses ruled by foreign powers or homegrown tyrants, indigenous peoples, and individuals chafing under customary or governmental restrictions. On Sovereignty and Other Political Delusions draws on political theory and on two case studies – the encounter between Anglo-American settlers and Native American tribes, and the search for Jewish sovereignty in Palestine – to probe the allure of the idea of sovereign freedom and its self-defeating logic. It concludes by shifting its sights from political to economic sovereign power and by pursuing intimations of non-sovereign freedom in the contemporary age. FC Half title Theory for a Global Age Title Copyright Contents Series Editor’s Foreword Acknowledgments Introduction 1 The Sovereignty Concept 2 Foundational Violence and the Politics of Erasure 3 The Search for Sovereign Freedom Conclusions and Extrapolations Notes Bibliography Index