Figures of the Sovereign: Concepts and Stories from the Life of Power

Catalog description

The sovereign is a person, institution, or a people where sovereignty – often understood as “the supreme authority in a given territory” – resides. How does the sovereign display its marks and perform or exercise its supreme authority? How is it questioned or undermined? These are matters of political imagination and public contestations no less than of legal definitions and conceptual distinctions. This is also where the problematization of the very idea of sovereignty may begin. We will study these questions by following the sovereign’s language, time, impunity, and unruly subjects. Our stories, images, and concepts will be drawn from a variety of sources: early modern (Machiavelli, Hobbes), modern (Schmitt) and contemporary political theory (Honig, Butler, Sawyer); modern literary fictions (Melville, Kafka); journalistic essays on autocrats, abroad and at home (Snyder, Gessen); and anthropological accounts of “stateless societies” (Clastres, Graeber).