40645079

Polis, Cosmopolis, Politics
Author(s): R. B. J. Walker
Source: Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, Vol. 28, No. 2, Politics Revisited (Mar.-May 2003),
pp. 267-286
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Alternatives 28
(2003),
267-286
Polis,
Cosmopolis,
Politics
R. B.
J.
Walker*
Most debates about our collective futures remain in thrall to the
polis,
or at least to some
vaguely
remembered and
creatively
reimagined
ideal of the
polis expressed
in modern statist claims to
political community
and
identity
-
especially
to the
community
of
blood that we call the nation and the
community
of law that we
engage
as citizens. Some are content to declare or assume that this
is what there is. Canonical traditions and
grand
theoretical asser-
tions erase our sense of historical
contingency.
All
ontological
axi-
ological,
and
epistemological possibilities
are delineated in the
stroke of an
assertion,
in the
sovereign
act of discrimination and
authorization. Hobbes
gave
us what remains the most
elegant
mod-
ern account of how such an assertion
might
be achieved
through
the modern
sovereign
state. Kant
gave
us an
altogether
smoother,
deeply
ambivalent,
but no less
troubling,
account of how it
might
be achieved once modern
subjects
learned to rule
themselves,
to
minimize
politics
and maximize ethics. Other
philosophers,
and
political
economists,
then
taught
us how to
forget
about what was
involved in these declarations of modern
possibility,
these affirma-
tions of the
necessary
freedom of the modern
subject, allowing
us
to
go looking
for,
or
escaping
from,
politics
in,
say,
the
market,
civil
society, history, representation,
and the
personal.
While claims
about where and what
political
life is
supposed
to be have now
been
sharply
contested over
many
centuries,
we now
keep catching
ourselves
affirming
the natural
necessity
of the modern
polis by
reproducing
the
sovereign
state's own
self-affirming
account of
how it is both natural and
necessary,
and all other alternatives are
impossible,
even if in some sense
they might
be desirable.
Most would nonetheless insist that this
self-proclaimed
natural
necessity
is a historical
achievement,
and
perhaps
even a rather
fragile
one at that. It is this historical achievement that
supposedly
distinguishes
us from those
living
in tribes and
empires,
even from
*SPIRE,
Keele
University,
Keele,
ST5
5BG, UK,
r.b.j.walker@keele.ac.uk
267
268
Polis,
Cosmopolis,
Politics
those
governed by despotic sovereigns
rather than
enlightened
democrats. Once historical
contingency
and
diversity
enter the
analysis, opportunities
for
critique
and
creativity
in discussions of
political possibility
increase. Hobbes
may
have
thought
that the
modern
sovereign
state,
a
rereading
of the
polis
as a timeless
spa-
tial fix for all
contingencies,
was the
only option.1
Others
may
have
thought
his account could
only
be the
beginning
of a much
longer
story,
whether of
universalizing perfectibility
or
nationalizing
intensity.
But in one form or
another,
many
have come to think
that this is the
problem
to be overcome: that whatever its merits or
its
necessities,
the modern
polis
can no
longer
be our
political
home
-
or at least our
only political
home. Whatever its
upsides
and
freedoms,
this home has
brought
us interstate wars and is at
the source of
many
of our most intractable
problems.
Hobbes's
gamble
that the modern
sovereign
state,
though undoubtedly
dan-
gerous,
was the best of all
possible
alternatives,
the
only possible
option
one could
freely
choose in a modern world of
supposedly
free and
equal
individuals,
has become much too
risky.
In
any
case,
many
now insist that the claims of the modern state on either our
multiple
identities or our
obligations
are less and less
persuasive
as
we
engage
with claims about
globalization,
multiculturalism,
inter-
national human
rights,
humanitarian
(or
preemptive)
interven-
tion,
and a renewed
willingness
to
speak
about
empire.
This insistence has
given
renewed
vitality
to claims about cos-
mopolitanism.2
Such claims now take
many
forms. This
may
be a
positive sign.
Yet while there are
many good
reasons to be
sympa-
thetic to claims made
by
those attracted to various kinds of cos-
mopolitanism,
in some
very important respects cosmopolitanism
must be read as a constitutive
aspect
of the
problems
that
many
of
those attracted to
cosmopolitanism
seek to address. In its most
familiar forms
especially, cosmopolitanism
works
well,
within the
permissible
discourses of the modern
sovereign
state,
and works
precisely
so as to entrench the statist accounts of
political possibil-
ity
and
impossibility.
The
underlying
reason for this is
perhaps
fairly
obvious. Whether we think of the
polis
in the context of
Plato's
privileging
of universal
nouns,
and thus of
Being
over
Becoming,
or in the context of the loss and
recovery
of a bounded
political space
in relation to
Hellenic,
Holy
Roman,
and other
empires,
or of the
relationship
between the claims of the modern
sovereign
state and the structures of the
interstate/global
order
that have enabled the
sovereign
state to make its claims to
supreme
authority,
our
understanding
of
political possibilities
within the
polis
has been constituted
through
various accounts of the neces-
sity
of some sort of
universality.
R. B.
J.
Walker 269
Thus we find it
easy enough
to work with a sense of the com-
plementary
or dialectical
relationship
between
particular
and uni-
versal read as
polis
and
cosmopolis,
and to
accept,
for
example,
that the tension between some forms of
globalization
and the
claims of
particular
states has been around since at least fifteenth-
century Europe.
But it is also obvious
enough
that this common
sense of
complementarity
is at odds with a common sense of radi-
cal dualism that
pits polis
and
cosmopolis
as
opposites.
This dualism
encourages
some to
speak
about the eternal return or imminent
decline of the
state,
thereby encouraging
an
apparently
endless
struggle
between a
pessimistic
or defeatist tradition of
political
realism and an
optimistic
or naive tradition of
political
idealism. It
encourages
a
framing
of
historical, ethical,
and
political destiny
as
a
grand
trek from one to the
other,
from
polis
to
cosmopolis, espe-
cially
from nationalism to some other kind of
global/human
iden-
tity.
And if these dualistic alternatives are
judged
to be unsatisfac-
tory,
then it is
always possible
to draw comfort from an affirmation
that
something very
much like the modern statist
imagination
of
the
polis, perhaps
informed
by
a
cosmopolitanism
that can ensure
the
permanent primacy
of internationalism over nationalism and
of multilateralism over
unilateralism,
remains the
primary
condi-
tion under which we can now think about
political possibility
at all.
It is not
entirely
clear where one situates the moment at which
the
sway
of an
intrinsically
unstable hierarchical resolution of the
proper
relation between
universality
and
particularity gave way
to
an also unstable modern insistence on a world of free and
equal
subjects.
In
political
terms,
things
become clearer sometime
between Machiavelli and Hobbes. Machiavelli took a stand for
earth,
or at least
Florence,
against
heaven. Hobbes
simply
assumed
that the world must conform to an abstract codification of free and
equal
individuals. What we see in such writers is not an assertion of
the
way things
are,
the
contradictory
claims that have been fused
into the more
dangerous
absurdities of
political
realism,
but some
quite profound struggles
with the
problem
of the
proper
relation-
ship
between
universality
and
particularity, given
the
collapse
of
imperial
and
theological
hierarchies. In
general
terms,
what we see
is the usual
story
of a
literally
heroic
attempt
to find
universality
in
particularity:
the
story
of the
emergence
of the modern
subject,
the
story
of a modern international
system
in which some kind of
universality might
be able to sustain
particularistic
states within
which
universality might
be realized in the freedoms of democratic
citizens.
Crucially,
this
story
of a
relationship
between
universality
and
particularity
was worked out within a
very specific
site
-
variously
270
Polis,
Cosmopolis,
Politics
identified as
Europe, capitalist modernity,
or the West
-
with a
fairly
well defined
outside,
one that
might
at some
point
be
brought
inside,
whether as the
colonized,
the Third
World,
the
immature,
the
undeveloped,
and so on. It was worked out
especially
in rela-
tion to four
key
sites: the modern
individual,
the modern
state,
the
modern states
system,
and the world that
lay beyond,
or
behind,
the modern states
system.
Each of these four sites still
provide
our
crucial
boundary problems,
our difficulties of
ensuring
a clear line
of demarcation between those
subjectivities
that have sustained the
hope
that
unity
and
diversity
can indeed be resolved in a
specific
modern
subject.
Two
things
need to be said about this resolution.
First,
it was a
resolution of
extraordinary conceptual elegance,
with all the aes-
thetic
economy
that can be mustered from
suturing
the
great
chasm between the finite and the infinite in a line of zero width.
Instead of a world we
vaguely
remember and
castigate
for
worrying
about the number of
angels dancing
on the head of a
pin,
we have
become used to a world that dances on
razors,
on the
edge
of the
state,
on the
edge
of the modern
subject.
This is the
(spatial)
line
that Hobbes turns into the
magical (temporal)
instant in which we
shift from mere nature
(which
he had
already
constructed as a
pro-
jection
of modern
subjectivities
onto a
space
that was both out
there and back
then)
to modern
authority, thereby giving
an
account of the
authority
of modern
authority.
It is also the line that
is
expressed
in Schmitt's account of the
sovereign
that decides the
difference between norm and
exception.
We know this line well.
Hobbes's
gamble
on a
groundless ground
has more or less
paid
off.
Schmitt's insistence on the limits of a liberal
politics prone
to think
of itself as limitless continues to disturb modern
aspirations
for
progress
and
emancipation.
Nevertheless,
and
second,
this was a
resolution that was
always
underachieved. The lines are never
straight,
never all in one
place,
never
static;
and the decision to
draw them here or there is never uncontested. Machiavelli's won-
derful sense of the
contingency
of all
politics
has never been
quite
erased,
though
it has been
kept
under control on more or less
Hobbesian terms.
Once we
engage
with the
story
of modern
subjects,
it is often
easier to be
swept up
less
by
the sheer
elegance
of this resolution
of the
competing
claims of
universality
and
particularity
in a
spe-
cific
subject,
the
magical
ambition for autonomous
subjectivities
strung
out in territorial
space,
than
by
various narratives about the
difficulty
of
creating
order out of difference and
diversity.
Even the
great hope
of liberal
modernity
that it has
finally
been able to
achieve the best of all
possible
worlds,
the best
way
of
balancing
the
R. B.
].
Walker 271
competing
claims of
universality
and
diversity
in a
pluralistic system
of secured
citizens/nations,
have seemed
increasingly fragile
in the
face of renewed violence on a
global
scale. The
balance,
it
seems,
is still unstable. Individuals
appear
to be
multiple, competitive,
fractious. States seem much the same
way.
The states
system
is too
pluralistic,
and therefore violent. Too
many
nonmoderns outside
the centers of "civilization" can still be framed as the barbarian. In
all
cases,
the
problem
is read as
multiplicity
and the solution as
unity.
Hence the attractions of some sort of
cosmopolitanism,
some
kind of
universality
that
might
more
effectively
enable the modern
state to achieve the
promises
of an internationalist
modernity
or
even
supplant
internationalism with
something
even better.
Predictably,
however,
as soon as the ambition for certain kinds
of
cosmopolis
is mobilized to solve the
problem
of modern
subjec-
tivity
within a
sovereign
state within a
system
of modern states
sup-
posedly encompassing humanity
or the
world,
it is countered
by
various claims that the modern state is
really
the
only option
because it
expresses
the
only plausible
modern
way
of
reconciling
the
equally plausible
claims of both
universality
and
diversity.
It is
in this context
that,
for
example,
we can
appreciate
the force of
the version of Kant's
cosmopolitanism republicanism
that has
given
rise to recent claims about
peace among
democracies,
of article
2,
paragraph
7 of the UN Charter
asserting
the
primacy
of domestic
jurisdiction,
and of
multiple struggles
for self-determination.
The
power
of both
political
realism and statist forms of cos-
mopolitanism
as
they get expressed
in discourses about the inter-
national thus derives not from their accurate
portrayals
of the
way
things
are but from their normative insistence that
modernity,
modern
subjects,
modern
states,
and so on are
appropriately
framed
neither in terms of
universality
nor of
multiplicity,
but of a
specific
relationship
between these
competing
claims. It is a
relationship
that is
ultimately
resolved in an account of a
subject
that is at once
multiple, specific,
individual,
and
(at
least
potentially)
universal,
human,
rational. This is the
story
of our
split identity
as modern
subjects, beings
who are in
principle
both
particular
(as citizens)
and universal
(as humans),
with
priority
in the final
political
instance
assigned
to the former and
priority
in the final ethical
instance
assigned
to the latter.
It is in this context
especially
that one can see the limits of
any
attempt
to work on the basis of a modern
framing
of an
opposition
between the
polis
and the
cosmopolis,
rather than of some under-
standing
of their co-constitution as the limits of modern
political
possibility/impossibility.
That
opposition already
defines the
logic
of the modern
system
of
states,
a
system
that while often described
272
Polis,
Cosmopolis,
Politics
in a
language
of
multiplicity
(the
international
anarchy
or the
parochial
nationalism that
generates
a desire for
unity, peace,
and
some sort of
community
of
humankind) quite precisely expresses
a
specific
account of the
proper
-
necessary
-
relationship
between
unity
and
diversity.
This
relationship
involves a
single
international
system
and
many
states,
a
system expressing varying
claims to uni-
versality,
whether in the name of
Christendom,
Europe,
or moder-
nity,
and
many
states
expressing specific
cultures, nations,
and
citizenships.
While it
may
be obvious that modern
political
life is constituted
through
a
specific
and
very elegant
account of the
relationship
between
universality
and
diversity,
it is not
always
so clear that this is
a
very specific
and in
many ways quite
odd account of how this rela-
tionship
must be articulated. It is
not,
most
significantly, organized
through
a
logic
of hierarchical
subordination,
though
of course
there are
always suspicions
that
patterns
of
inequality
threaten to
take us
away
from a modern states
system
to some kind of
empire
or
that the
experiences
of most
people living
in the era of "the inter-
national" have been determined more
by
hierarchies and coloniza-
tions than
by sovereign equalities
and self-determinations. It
is,
rather,
organized
as a
system
of insides and outsides
distinguished
by
fine but intense lines that
merely
mark the
border,
the
supposed
limit of what
really goes
oa
elsewhere,
at the
center,
in the com-
munity,
the
society,
the
polity,
the
singularity
that
aspires
to uni-
versality.
Here we
recognize
the basic
logic
of modern
subjectivity
written
large
in the
language
of modern states.
Moreover,
while modern
political
life is constituted
through
a
specific
account of the
relationship
between
universality
and diver-
sity,
our
major
intellectual traditions
encourage
us to think in
terms of either
unity
or
diversity, especially
insofar as
they
situate
themselves in relation to an inside or an outside. This division of
intellectual labor allows for some
quite
distinct
readings
of what
cosmopolitanism might
involve.
Consider,
for
example, only
some
of the more obvious sites from which one is often invited to think
about
cosmopolitanism.
We
might
start from the
individual,
both
in the form that invites us to
ignore
the state in favor of the market
and the form that invites us to
imagine
a
harmony
of individual
ethics,
republican
virtu,
and universal
reason,
and move on to
claims about a common
humanity.
We
might
start from the
city
and
move on to
cosmopolitan modernity.
We
might
start from a
society
or a culture and move on to a world
society
or a world culture. We
might
start from the state and move on to a world without
states,
once
again ending up
with a common
humanity,
or world
order,
or
perhaps
it should indeed be a world
empire.
We can start from the
R. B.
/.
Walker 273
forms of
capitalism
that are embedded in state formations to forms
that have somehow made these formations redundant in the
process
of
globalization.
We can start from
politics
and end
up
with
ethics,
for
despite
Machiavelli,
despite
a modern world constitu-
tively
torn between
political
ethics and
private
ethics,
we still are
enjoined
to believe that
politics
is the
problem
and ethics is the
solution. Or we can start from one
parochial
culture and move on
to other
cultures,
no doubt
running
into
problems
of orientalism
and colonialism
along
the
way.
All of these sites are
open
to stories
about a move from
particular
to
universality. They
all work as
metaphors
of the
high
road from the
many
to the
one,
even
though they
are enabled
by
a
logic
of modern
subjectivity
that
already
tells us where and what the
proper relationship
between
the
many
and the one must be.
These narratives are
firmly
entrenched in established academic
disciplines.
There are the
disciplines
of the inside
-
paradigmatically,
political theory
and
sociology
-
and the
disciplines
of the outside
-
paradigmatically,
international relations
(framed
as the
spatial nega-
tion of
political theory)
and
anthropology
(framed
as the
temporal
negation
of
sociology)
. Other
disciplines
and their
concepts
can
then shift in and out
by shifting
scale,
expanding
from micro to
macro,
rather than
negotiating
the border: culture to
global
culture,
economy
to world
economy,
and so on. Modern forms of
knowledge
are
thereby organized
so as to tell the
story
of the
grand
trek to uni-
versality,
rather than the
story
of some kind of
complementarity
or
dialectic between
universality
and
diversity. They systematically
obscure the extent to which modern
politics
is
already
framed as a
unity/particularity
centered on the modern
subject.
It is thus
quite easy
to
perpetuate
some well-established rituals
when
trying
to think about
cosmopolitanism
from within the codes
of modern
politics, especially
when
trying
to do so from within dis-
ciplinary
traditions that are themselves a
product
of the
spatiotem-
poral framing
of modern
subjectivities.
These codes offer
plenty
of
opportunity
for
by
now rather stale debate. It is
perhaps especially
useful to reflect on the
many
different versions of Kant that seem
to be at work in various discussions of what
cosmopolitanism might
now
involve,
not least the Kant
stressing
the internalization of uni-
versality
within the autonomous
individual,
the Kant
stressing
the
internalization of
universality
within
democratic,
or at least
repub-
lican
states,
and the Kant who is sometimes
imagined
as a cham-
pion
of world
government.
It is useful not least in that Kant can
also be read as
sustaining
a
parochial,
and
perhaps
arche
typically
Eurocentric and
sexist,
demand that the
only way
of
reconciling
universality
and
diversity
is
through
the
production
of all humans
274
Polis,
Cosmopolis,
Politics
as autonomous modern
subjects
-
a
reading
that
ought
to
provoke
considerable
queasiness among
the various forms of liberal cos-
mopolitanism
that continue to treat Kant as an antidote to Hobbe-
sian accounts of
sovereign
freedom and
sovereign necessity.
Sovereign
Fixations
Many
forms of
contemporary cosmopolitanism begin
from some
version of the claim that the kind of
politics
associated with the sov-
ereign
territorial state is somehow obsolete. In some
respects,
this
does indeed seem to be a
plausible
claim.
Nevertheless,
it is all too
tempting
to wish all talk of
sovereignty away
or to claim that its
sig-
nificance,
as a mere
abstraction,
is
grossly exaggerated
or to invoke
teleologies
and
political
economies that tell us not to be so old-
fashioned.
Unfortunately, sovereignty
turns out to be an extraordi-
narily complex phenomenon
and one that cannot be detached
from the most
pervasive
cultural, social,
and
political practices
of
modern
life,
especially
those
practices
that
encourage
us to assume
that all
questions
about the
authority
of
authority
have
already
been answered with some
authority.
It remains all too
present,
even
while it
tempts
us to
engage
in eternal
speculations
about its
(impossible)
absence. At the
very
least,
sovereignty
is a term that
covers too
many
sins,
too
many practices,
and
requires
some
quite
extensive
conceptual unpacking.
To cut a
potentially
endless
story
very
short,
even the sketchiest
unpacking permits
some sense of
what
might
be at stake in
thinking
about the dilemmas now
posed
by cosmopolitan
accounts of
political possibility:
dilemmas that cer-
tainly
exceed the
capacity
of forms of
cosmopolitanism
that are
now articulated in
opposition
to the claims of the modern sover-
eign
state. Four
starting points might
be
helpful.
First,
sovereignty
can be understood to be a
problem,
or rather
a massive
complexity
of
problems concerning
the authorization of
authority.
Political theorists know this as the
problem
of
founding.
Others refer to
myths
of
origin.
It is in this sense that there is
always
a
politics
to the authorization of
politics,
an
ultimately
groundless ground,
a resort to
theology,
or
ontotheology,
a demand
for
justification
that cannot be
finally justified.
The
problem
of
sovereignty
is
intensely
difficult. It is not
going
to
go away.
On the
other
hand,
it
may
be that it is a
problem
that does not
always
have
to be
posed,
or
answered,
in the same
way.
Second,
it is
possible
to
distinguish
the
specifically
modern
framing
of the
problem
of
sovereignty.
While there
may
be
many
resonances between the accounts of
political founding
articulated
R. B.
J.
Walker 275
by
Plato and Aristotle and those
given by
the
political
writers of
early-modern Europe,
the
collapse
of the
authority
structures of
Christianity
and the rise of modern
capitalist society posed
distinc-
tive
problems
and
opportunities.
The Greek
polis
is not the mod-
ern state. The broad historical context here is both vast and con-
tested,
but the
prevailing
narratives tell us about the broad
conditions under which the
subsumption
of
political authority
under some kind of
theological authority,
mediated
by popes,
emperors,
and associated
agents
of hierarchical
subordination,
was
challenged by
a
resolutely
secular claim to
authority
on the
part
of
agents claiming
to be the
highest
source of
authority
on earth.
Hobbes is the
key figure
in the articulation of modern
political
thought precisely
because he was so much more
clear-eyed
about the
necessities and limits of a
politics
cut adrift from transcendental
authority
of
any
kind. It is this
clarity
that
reappears
in Schmitt's
account of
sovereignty
as a
capacity
to declare an
exception,
the dec-
laration of limits that enable the norms that
might
be
suspended.
Thus, third,
it is
possible
to
distinguish
the modern
framing
of
what it must mean to
provide
a
plausible
answer to the
problem
of
sovereignty,
a
framing
that refers not
only
to a vast historical can-
vass but to
specific early-modern preoccupations
with the
infinity
of
space, especially
as these
preoccupations
were articulated
by
the
geometrical
and neo-Platonist traditions of Galilean science. This is
the
general story
of the articulation of modern
subjectivities,
the
construction of modern individuals as
precisely
divisibles,
rather
than the
political,
or
communal,
creatures
envisaged
in Aris-
totelian traditions: the
story
of modern
thought
as a
struggle
with
the limits of human finitude. This is the
story
that celebrates Pas-
cal's account of man
caught midway
between the finite and the
infinite and Kant's account of human
maturity
as the
potential
presence
of the universal moral law enacted in the lives of mature
individuals
living
in mature
republics.
Hence,
to
stay
with the classic texts on
sovereignty,
the force of
Hobbes's claims about the
political necessity
of
affirming
a
post-
Thomist
metaphysics,
his ridicule of a realist
(or essentialist)
account of
language
in favor of a radical
nominalism,
and his asser-
tion of a
specific
account of
space,
time,
and
subjectivity
as the
only
possible,
or at least
only
reasonable,
ground
on which to frame a
story
about
reason,
about freedom and
necessity,
about before and
after,
about life before
politics
and
political
life after the
politics
that enables a life of
citizen-subjects.
Once this
story
is
told,
it can
then be retold and retold in terms
already given by
Hobbes's insis-
tence that modern
space,
modern
time,
and modern
identity
must
be the
only ground
on which to discuss
political necessity
and its
276
Polis,
Cosmopolis,
Politics
possible
freedoms.
Obviously enough,
these terms necessitate a mas-
sive erasure of other accounts of
space,
time,
identity,
and
political
possibility.
The conditions under which a Kant could
envisage
a new
world of mature modern
subjects
and insist on a critical
philosophy
conscious of the need to examine the conditions of the
possibility
of
enlightened knowledge
have then been set. The hard work of
articulating
the
grounds
on which a modern
politics might
be
grounded
has been done.
Enlightenment may proceed
on its
way
to
universality
and to the construction of what it must mean to envis-
age
a world of difference within a world of inclusions and exclu-
sions enabled
by
a
prior
narrative of inclusions and exclusions.
Fourth,
it is
possible
to
distinguish
the
expression
of this
specific way
of
responding
to the
problem
of
sovereignty
under
spe-
cific historical conditions in a broad
range
of
specific
sites. This is
where the threat of
proliferating categories
can most
easily
run out
of control and relations between
categories
become difficult to
cap-
ture within the
disciplinary strategies
of modern
scholarship.
As a
somewhat
arbitrary
but also
largely predictable attempt
to stem the
flooding,
however,
ten interrelated
expressions
seem
especially
cru-
cial,
all
opening up
various
ways
of
thinking
about
sovereignty
as a
problem
that has been
posed,
and in some sense
resolved,
in
pow-
erful modern accounts of
possibility
and
impossibility:
1. The
primary
articulation of an account of the
sovereignty
of
states,
an account able to
carry
the enormous
ontological
responsibility
of
resolving grand puzzles
about human fini-
tude,
of
replacing
the
angels
as a marker of the
margins
(and
thus
centers)
of
temporal
existence. This involved the need
to
distinguish
the
sovereign authority
of the
state,
both from
religious authority
and from other secular
authorities,
and
the need to articulate an account of the state as the secular
agent
of
sovereignty.
This articulation
expresses
a double res-
olution of the relation between
universality
and
diversity,
one
worked out inside in relation to the individual
subject
and
one worked out outside
by
the statist
subject.
The resolutions
are
mutually
constitutive,
yet
each can be and has been
treated as a
singular
discourse:
hence,
the
paradigmatic
dis-
tinction between social and
political theory,
on the one
hand,
and international
relations,
on the
other,
but also the
tempo-
ral
analogue
of this distinction in the
teleological
demands of
a world
moving
toward
development,
modernization,
and civ-
ilization: toward freedom mithin
necessity.
2. The articulation of the territorial extension of the
sovereign
territorial state.5 This involved the articulation of
geograph-
ical or
geophysical place
in terms of an abstract Euclidean
R. B.
J.
Walker 277
Space
and is
analyzed primarily
in literatures in
political
geography
and
geopolitics,
but also in relation to the visual
codes of modern
representation
in
space.
It also involved
what amounts to a novel form of
global population
control,6
a
systematic
distribution of
people
in
general
to territorial
spaces
in
particular, thereby generating tricky puzzles
about,
for
example, why
the
universalizing
claims of modern liber-
alism do not include the
right
to move
anywhere,
as well as
binary
discourses about the limits of
political possibility,
framed in terms of
security
and
danger externally
and citi-
zenship
and
belonging internally.
3. The articulation of
sovereignty
in relation to
specific
state
institutions as claimants to a
monopoly
of
legitimate
author-
ity.7
This involved the
gradual
articulation of
specific
under-
standings
and institutionalizations of the
proper
relation-
ship
between
power
and
authority
as well
as,
for
example,
the distinction between that which is
properly political
(or
governmental)
and that which is
merely
social,
or
civil,
or
economic,
or
private.
sovereignty
in relation to claims
about,
and
practices
of,
power.
Here we encounter the traditional
concerns of
political
theories
attempting
to
distinguish
claims about
legitimate authority, ranging
from reductionist
suspicions
about
power
as an
explanation
of all claims to
authority
to an insistence that
legitimate authority
works as
a
specific
form of
power.
Here we also encounter contem-
porary attempts
to
distinguish
or
explain
the
mutually
constitutive relations between
practices
of
sovereignty
and
practices
of what Michel Foucault sometimes
spoke
of as
governmentality.
sovereignty
in relation to claims about
the
necessity, legitimacy,
and limits of
violence,
about the
violence
legitimized by
the declaration of a
necessary
exception,
or state of
emergency,
and the absence of vio-
lence enabled
by
the
always possible
declaration of the
exception.
Carl Schmitt' s account of
sovereignty
affirms the
canonical
story
about the
convergence
of the violent limits
of modern
politics
with the territorial limits of the modern
state,
the limits marked
by
claims about national
security,
and the
obligations
of national
citizenship.
Others,
from
Karl
Marx,
Max
Weber,
and Walter
Benjamin
to
Giorgio
Agamben,
Michael
Hardt,
Antonio
Negri,
and
many
other
commentators on
changing
forms of violence and war fear
that the constitutive violence of modern
politics
is no
longer
confined to the territorial limits of the modern state
278
Polis,
Cosmopolis,
Politics
and that the state of
exception
has become normalized
across the face of the world.
6. The articulation of a
problematic relationship
between sov-
ereignty
and
subjectivity;
that
is,
the
framing
of modern
pol-
itics as a
puzzle
of
relating
the
macrosovereignty
of the state
with the
microsovereignty
of
individuals,
a
puzzle
resolved
through practices
of
popular sovereignty
(thus
traditions of
nationalism, socialism,
and
communitarianism)
or
attempts
to
represent
the micro in the macro
through specific
insti-
tutions of democratic
practice, representative
and otherwise.
problematic relationship
between sov-
ereign
and
sovereign:
hence,
the
development
of various
practices
of
ensuring
the survival of an interstate
system,
including
the structural
organization
of a balance of
power
mediated
by great-power hegemony,
the historical emer-
gence
of
rules, laws,
procedures,
and
institutions, and,
every
so
often,
the wars
required
to allow the
system
to
change
but not turn into an
empire;
that
is,
to
prevent
the dissolu-
tion of the
necessary
condition under which
any particular
state could sustain its claim to
sovereignty.
Theories of inter-
national relations
begin
here,
and
invariably
end
up
in
more or less the same
place, generating
familiar forms of
cosmopolitanism
in the
process.
8. The articulation of the claim to state
sovereignty
in both
domestic and international law and thus the
generation
of a
problematic
relation between domestic and international
jurisdiction,
as well as the
problematic legal
status of claims
about,
say,
humanitarian
intervention,
universal human
rights,
collective
security,
or
global governance.
multiplicity
of
practices
of authoriza-
tion,
understood under such
categories
as
culture,
aesthet-
ics,
epistemology,
and
scholarship,
modeled on the claims
of modern
sovereignty.
To
speak
of
authority
of
any
kind,
to
envisage
what it means to authorize
laws,
disciplines,
or cul-
tural
codes,
is to
engage
with at least some residual sense
that
authority
is
precisely
a
problem
and that modern forms
of authorization resonate with
(though emphatically
do not
simply
reduce
to)
the forms of
authority
we associate with
the
sovereign
territorial state. It is in this context that liter-
atures in cultural and
literary theory
can claim to be con-
cerned with
questions
about
sovereignty quite
as
readily
as
those that believe
political
or international theorists should
have a
monopoly
on the
subject.
R. B.
].
Walker 279
practices
deemed
applicable
to those
times,
places,
and
subjectivities
in which modern
sovereignty
is
expressed only
as an absence and that therefore have to be
brought
back in from their exclusions from the
system
of
modern states and the narratives of
modernity,
even
though
that
system,
and those
narratives,
work
only
because modern
sovereignty
affirms the
necessity
of exclusion.
Each of these
categories,
or
sites,
offers massive
scope
for the
kinds of detailed
analysis
that thrives in the modern division of
intellectual labor. In each
case, also,
it is often
tempting
to treat
sovereignty
as an achieved
condition,
as a
thing,
a
reality
that can
and must be taken for
granted.
In
addition,
it is not difficult to
imagine
various
ways
in which to work
through
the historical rela-
tion between several of the various
expressions
of modern state sov-
ereignty
that I have
tentatively
identified. Yet to
begin
to
unpack
the
concept
of
sovereignty
is to become
increasingly puzzled by any
claim about what
sovereignty
is. As a historical
production,
as a
problem,
and as a
response
to a
problem
that also
generates
sub-
sequent problems, sovereignty
is
especially
resistant to
attempts
to
identify
it as a
thing
rather than as a
highly
variable
practice,
a
practice
that nevertheless works in
part by effacing any
sense of its
own
production.
Disarticulating Sovereignties
Contemporary
claims about
cosmopolitanism
are difficult to dis-
entangle
from the achievements of the modern
sovereign
state,
whether as the
possibility
of
perfecting
the
universalizing possibili-
ties inherent in the modern states
system
or the
possibility
of shift-
ing
to some other
arrangement
less
hampered by
the territorial
fragmentation
of the modern states
system.
While there
may
be
accounts of
cosmopolitanism
with
only
tenuous roots in the
politi-
cal traditions of the
sovereign
state,
it has become
very
difficult to
articulate
cosmopolitan aspirations
without
becoming caught up
in
the
expectations
and limits of these traditions. The
overwhelming
consequence
has been that
cosmopolitanism
has
largely
suc-
cumbed to the
temptation
to
escape
from a
specific
account of the
proper relationship
between
universality
and
particularity by
affirming
the
priority
of
universality
over
particularity,
and to do so
by appealing
to traditions of humanitarian ethics rather than to
questions
about the
possibilities
of
politics.
It is difficult to see how
280
Polis,
Cosmopolis,
Politics
this
temptation
is to be avoided unless the modern
practices
of sov-
ereignty
are confronted more
directly.
Nevertheless,
and
again
in
very
shorthand
fashion,
it is
possible
to
imagine
what this
might
involve.
First,
as sources and sites of
authority
become
increasingly
inconsistent with
any
claim to a
single authority
in a
specific
terri-
tory,
we confront an
increasing
intensification of the
problem
of
sovereignty.
One can read a
very
wide
range
of
contemporary
debates
-
not least those about
global governance, global
civil soci-
ety,
the
mysteries
of the
market,
or the
strange
status of the World
Bank,
the World Trade
Organization,
various so-called international
regimes,
and so on
-
not in terms of some
easy
claim about the dis-
appearance
of
sovereignty
but
precisely
as an intensification of the
problem
of
sovereignty,
as a sense that
questions
about
authority
have to be
posed
in terms other than we have been used to.
Second,
there is
widespread agreement
about the
decreasing
plausibility
of the
specifically
modern
way
of
framing
the
problem
of
sovereignty
on the model of the territorial state or its
potential
absence.
Third,
there is also a
widespread
sense of the
decreasing plau-
sibility
of
ways
of
responding
to the
problem
of
sovereignty by
con-
structing
a relation between a
specific point
-
the
monopoly
of
-
and the
drawing
of
sharp
lines either be-
tween territorial
spaces
or
between,
say, public
and
private, politics
and
governmentality,
or friend and
enemy.
The
specifically
mod-
ern
-
which is to
say spatially organized
-
account of where and
what
sovereignty
must be is in serious trouble.
Perhaps
the easiest
phenomenon
to
identify
in this
respect
is the
changing
character
of
boundaries,
which are
increasingly porous
and
disaggregated
and
increasingly
difficult to fuse
together
as monolithic lines
sepa-
rating
this
society
here from that
society
there. It is
probably
not
the case that boundaries are
going away,
as some
populist imagi-
naries would have it.
They may
even be
proliferating
while becom-
ing
less
visible,
less tied to the
articulation,
and
military
defense,
of
physical spaces.
We
certainly
live in a world in which it is no
longer
easy
to assume that we can claim to resolve the relation between
universality
and
diversity by drawing
a
sharp
line between here and
there,
between inside and
outside,
or
by assuming
that the outside
can somehow be
brought
inside.10
Moreover,
if it is
becoming
more and more difficult to sustain
lines of demarcation in horizontal territorial
space,
this does not
imply
some return to the kind of hierarchical Great Chain of
Being
that seems to be so attractive to
many cosmopolitan
thinkers,
espe-
cially
in relation to
interpretations
of the
European Community.
R. B.
J.
Walker 281
Here it is
only necessary
to think about the
popularity
of a lan-
guage
of "levels"
among many cosmopolitan
thinkers,
as if the dan-
gers
of a world of here and there can be solved
only by invoking
a
new world of above and
below,
a return to the
imagery
of heaven
and earth. Kant of course referred to the
starry
heavens above and
the moral law
within;
but it is
pretty
clear that the
starry
heavens
are not above and that the whole
metaphorical baggage
of
above,
below,
here and
there,
is not a reliable
guide
to where we are
today
or how we
ought
to be
thinking
about our
possible
futures. In
any
case,
as
many people
have
suggested,
there are other
ways
of think-
ing
about
lines,
not least in terms of lines of connection and lines
of
movement,
and
they
will
probably
become much more
impor-
tant for
thinking
about
political
life than the lines of territorial
inclusion/exclusion
that we have learned to treat as
natural,
ele-
gant,
and
functionally
effective.
Finally,
there are
signs
of serious instabilities in each of the ten
sites identified above at which modern accounts of how the
prob-
lem of
sovereignty
have been
expressed
in the institutions and
practices
of modern
politics. Many
states will no doubt be able to
fudge
their
ontological
status for
quite
some time. The
continuing
power
of state institutions should not be
underestimated,
even
though
state institutions are not coextensive with
nations,
territo-
ries, communities, identities,
or authorities. Nor should one under-
estimate the
continuing appeal
of forms of
politics
that seek to
draw lines of inclusion and
exclusion,
though
these lines are
unlikely
to be drawn
exclusively
on
simple
territorial
space.
More-
over,
whether one
speaks
in the
language
of uneven
development
or of
cultural/regional
difference,
it is
necessary
to
emphasize
that
we are
dealing
here with
many potential
variations on a
very
com-
plex
theme.
Still,
there is no clear reason to
expect any
clear cor-
relations between the measures we
might
use to evaluate the
pow-
ers, influences,
or scale of state institutions and the measures we
might
use to evaluate the state of a state's
sovereignty.
Theses about
the decline of state
sovereignty
understood as a
monopoly
of
authority
in a
specific territory
and theses about the
disaggregation
and
proliferation
of
sovereignties
are
quite compatible
with theses
about the
continuing
or even
increasing
scale, size, influence,
and
so on of statist institutions. Much of the recent discussion of
glo-
balization,
for
example,
is
seriously
hobbled not
only by
familiar
conflations of
power
and
authority
but also
by
the conflation of the
practices
of states and the
practices
of state
sovereignty.
Moreover,
where state
sovereignty
was conceived as a more or
less
unchanging spatial,
territorial
affair,
fixed on
land,
modern
sovereignties
seem to be
highly
mobile. It is not clear to me that
282
Polis,
Cosmopolis,
Politics
anyone
has
got
a clear
conceptual grip
on
this,
especially
in rela-
tion to various claims about
changing
forms of
power
or
struggles
over what counts as the
legitimate
use of violence in the
presence
of a
superpower given
to unilateralist decisionism and a "war on
terror" that scrambles most of our conventional
understandings
of
a war between states. If one tries to read the movements of
agen-
cies and
governmentalities
that are at work in the
contemporary
world,
it is not difficult to
get
a sense of
sovereignties
as
temporary
and
specific
in their claims.
They
are
certainly
more difficult to
map
than the
sovereignties
of states.
By
the official codes of sover-
eign
states,
they
are not
sovereignties
at all. But
then,
it would not
take much to
argue
that there are no
sovereign
states at all
either,
no matter how much state
agents might
insist that there are.
With the
practices
of modern
subjects,
we are on
territory
that
seems the furthest removed from matters of state
sovereignty
as
conventionally
conceived
by analysts
of international relations and
law,
but closest to the hearts of
political
theorists,
who have rela-
tively
few resources for
thinking
about,
say, democracy, citizenship,
freedom,
equality,
the rule of
law,
and so
on,
beyond
the territorial
limits of the
sovereign
state.
In the context of
multiply
contested but at least
intermittently
plausible
claims about
globalization,
it is difficult to
suppose
that
democratic accounts of
can be contained
within monolithic territorial boundaries. In a world of
movement,
multiple
identities,
and all the
rest,
one should
probably
look at
the
ways
in which the
concept
of
citizenship
is
being
rearticulated
in
multiple
contexts. While there
may
be a lot of individualisms
and nationalisms
about,
the
regulative
ideal of the
single
self-
identical autonomous individual or nation is
increasingly
difficult
to sustain. Far from
being
natural
bedmates,
cosmopolitanism
and
established forms of liberalism are
probably
on a collision course.
Conversely,
while conventional accounts of international relations
have been
richly challenged by
claims about the
emergence
of all
kinds of
social, cultural,
economic and
legal
networks, institutions,
and
regimes
that
suggest
the outlines of some sort of
global
com-
munity
of
humankind,
there have been all too
many suspicions
that the
cosmopolitan aspirations
that have
accompanied
this
emergence
are better understood as forms of
imperial
domination
than humanitarian
emancipation.
All this
suggests
a
complicated picture,
one that needs to be
made even more
complicated.
What is not on the
agenda
is the
familiar notion that state
sovereignty
is here forever or
gone
tomorrow,
that the
polis
is
obsolete,
and that
cosmopolis
is,
or
should
be,
just up
ahead. The cultural force of this
prevailing way
R. B.
J.
Walker 283
of
framing
our
spatiotemporal options politically
is no doubt sus-
ceptible
to
many explanations,
not least those that focus on the
transcendentalist
aspirations shaped by
modern codifications of
classical and Christian traditions. It is
especially important
to
pay
some attention to the
way
the basic
paradox
of
sovereignty
was
resolved in the
early
modern
period,
both in the
extraordinary
conceptualization
worked out
by
Hobbes and in the more concrete
expressions
of
something very
close to Hobbes's
position
that we
generally
choose to associate with the
Treaty
of
Westphalia
(1648),
the conventional constitutional moment of the modern states
sys-
tem. It is also worth
noting
that the tension between secularisms
and
religions
was crucial in both cases. It was
also,
and
crucially,
a
resolution that
depended
on two
key
and related moves. One was
to
identify
a fixed
point
in
space
and
time,
and one was to draw
straight
lines between
points.
Modern state
sovereignty
can be understood in terms of the
constitutive
capacity
of a
monopolistic
center to be able to draw
the
line,
and to draw this line both
physically
and
metaphorically,
but also as the constitutive
capacity
of the line to enable the autho-
rization of
monopolistic authority.
Modern
sovereignty expresses
not
simply
a
point
or a line of
authority,
but a
point/line
at which
claims about
universality
and
plurality
are
resolved,
a
specific
account of how
universality
and
diversity
must be related. Modern
accounts of state
sovereignty
cannot be understood as a claim
about either
fragmented authority,
as claims about international
anarchy
would have
it,
or a claim about
monopolies
of
authority
in
a
particular territory,
as claims about
society
and the state would
have
it,
but as a
very specific
account of the
proper relationship
between
unity
and
diversity,
order and
anarchy.
This is what
gives
us our
historically specific way
of
responding
to the
problem
of sov-
ereignty
with a
specifically
modern account of
sovereignty
as that
which is able to draw clear lines between the normal and the
exceptional,
here and
there,
legitimate
and
illegitimate,
citizen
and
noncitizen,
and all the rest. This is also what makes it seem so
desirable but also
impossible
to deal with the
problem
of sover-
eignty by imagining
a move from
anarchy
to
universality.
Contrary
to the
ways
in which claims to
universality
and claims
to
particularity
are conceived as
opposites
-
nationalism/globalism,
realism/idealism,
domestic
jurisdiction/humanitarian
interven-
tion
-
they
are
part
of the same
package
and are
subject
to all kinds
of rhetorical switches and
reversals,
as we have seen in debates about
the use of
military
force in
Kosovo,
Afghanistan,
and
Iraq.
Much of
the debate about
intervention,
whether humanitarian or
preemp-
tive,
has come to be framed as a contest between multilateralism or
284
Polis,
Cosmopolis,
Politics
unilateralism. Yet each of these
apparent poles expresses
a further
polarity.
Multilateralism can be
expressed
in terms of
principles
of
self-determination and nonintervention or a
principled
claims
about the need for all states to achieve the same level of mature
modernity, by
force if
necessary.
Unilateralism can
express
all kinds
of
universalizing principles
in the name of
humanity,
as well as the
appropriation
of the name of
humanity by just
one state or small
group
of the most
powerful
states. The
apparent polarity
between
multilateralism and unilateralism can
easily
mask the much more
important convergence
between the
imperialist
tendencies that
can be
legitimized by
both.
What is
arguably
at stake is not the eternal
presence
or immi-
nent absence of
sovereignty,
but the functional
disaggregation, pro-
liferation,
and
spatial
differentiation of centers of
sovereign
author-
ity;
the
decreasing capacity
of central authorities to draw lines at the
same
place;
the
increasingly
contestable status of authorities that
are no
longer
able to draw all lines once and for all in the same
place;
the
disaggregation
of borders and the articulation both of
novel forms of
inclusion/exclusion
and of lines and networks of
connection;
the
increasing mobility
but also
only temporary
effec-
tiveness of
functionally disaggregate
authorities;
and the conse-
quent struggle
between two
quite
different forms of democratic
practice,
one concerned to work within the
spaces
of
political rep-
resentation carved out
by
modern
sovereign
states and one con-
cerned to
challenge
the
assumption
of modern
sovereignty
in
pro-
liferating
and
functionally/ spatially disaggregated
authorities.
These considerations
suggest
that it is a
great
mistake to
assume that our futures lie either with the
polis
or with the cos-
mopolis.
We
confront, rather,
ongoing struggles
to resituate and
politicize
sites of
political authority.
We
already
know that the old
distinctions between
global
and local or urban and rural or
north,
south, east,
and west are
being renegotiated very rapidly.
These
negotiations imply
the need to
renegotiate
our
understandings
of
both the
polis
and the
cosmopolis.
At this
point,
we need to be
quite
humble about the limits of our
capacity
to
imagine
what this
might
mean. We have ethics and more
ethics;
theories of
govern-
mentality, global
civil
society,
the
global
market,
global
social move-
ments,
and
nongovernmental organizations;
and
competing
claims
about human
rights, humanitarian/preemptive
interventions,
and
so on. All too
often,
these add
up
to a discourse that seems content
to wish
politics away,
and claims about
cosmopolitanism
are often
complicit
in this wish.
We also need to be lot more
empirically open
to the
diversity
of
things
that are
going
on in the world. If
cosmopolitanism
is a
name to be
given
to an
openness
to
connections,
to a sense that we
R. B.
J.
Walker 285
all
participate
in various
patterns
of both
commonality
and diver-
sity
that are not and cannot be fixed
by
the lines inscribed
by
mod-
ern
subjectivities,
and that also insists on
recognizing
the
radically
uneven
developments
and sites in which
people struggle
to act in
the
world,
then there is much to be said for it. If it is
just
one more
excuse for not
thinking
hard about
politics
-
and it will be noted
that I have
purposefully
not said
exactly
what I mean
by
this
term,
precisely
because I would
prefer
to underline its status as a
ques-
tion,
and a
practice,
rather than a
given
-
then we can leave it to
those moralists who
already
know where we must be
going.
That
kind of
cosmopolitanism
is
precisely
what has to be
resisted,
and I
think will be
increasingly
resisted as it becomes clearer and clearer
that it bears little relation to what
people
have to do in order to to
relate,
or
change
how
they
relate,
to the world and to each other.
Notes
1. For the "Doctrine" that "admitteth no other
Demonstration,"
see
Thomas
Hobbes, Leviathan,
ed. Richard Tuck
(Cambridge: Cambridge
UP,
1991).
2.
Among many
recent texts in the
Anglo-American
world,
I
think,
for
example,
of Martha C. Nussbaum and
respondents,
For Love
of Country:
Debating
the Limits
of
Patriotism
(Boston,
Mass.: Beacon
Press, 1996);
Daniele
Archibugi,
David
Held,
and Martin
Kohler, eds.,
Re-imagining
Polit-
ical
Community:
Studies in
Cosmopolitan Democracy (Cambridge: Polity,
1998);
Pheng
Cheah and Bruce
Robbins, eds.,
Cosmopolitics: Thinking
and
Feeling
Beyond
the Nation
(Minneapolis:
Minnesota
UP, 1998);
Bruce
Robins,
Feel-
ing
Global: Internationalism in Distress
(New
York: SUNY
Press, 1999);
and
Roland Dannreuther and
Kimberly Hutchings,
eds.,
Cosmopolitan
Citizen-
ship (London: Macmillan, 1999).
3. Carl
Schmitt,
The
Concept of
the Political
(1932),
trans, with an intro-
duction
by George
Schwab;
new foreword
by Tracy Strong (Chicago,
111.:
Chicago
UP, 1996);
and Carl
Schmitt,
Political
Theology:
Four
Chapters
on the
Concept of Sovereignty
(1922),
trans.
George
Schwab
(Cambridge:
MIT
Press,
1985).
4. For a brief
discussion,
see R. B.
J.
Walker,
"International/Inequal-
ity,"
International Studies Review
4,
no. 2
(2002): 7-24;
also
published
in
Mustapha
Kamal Pasha and
Craig
N.
Murphy,
eds.,
International Relations
and the New
Inequality
(Oxford, Eng.:
Blackwell, 2002), pp.
7-24.
5.
John
A.
Agnew,
"Timeless
Space
and State-Centricism: The Geo-
graphical Assumptions
of International Relations
Theory,"
in
Stephen J.
Rosow,
Naeem
Inayatullah,
and Mark
Rupert,
eds.,
The Global
Economy
as
Political
Space
(Boulder,
Colo.:
Lynne
Rienner, 1994), pp.
87-106;
John
G.
Ruggie, "Territoriality
and
Beyond: Problematizing Modernity
in Inter-
national
Relations,"
International
Organization
47,
no. 1
(1993): 139-174;
Bertrand
Badie,
La
fin
des territoires
(Paris: Seuil, 1996).
6. To borrow a formulation from
Barry
Hindess. See
Hindess,
"Divide
and Rule: The International Character of Modern
Citizenship," European
fournal of
Social
Theory
1,
no. 1
(1998).
286
Polis,
Cosmopolis,
Politics
7. For a recent
comprehensive
discussion,
see
Christopher
W.
Morris,
An
Essay
on the Modern State
(Cambridge: Cambridge
UP, 1998).
8. Graham
Burchell,
Colin
Gordon,
and Peter
Miller, eds.,
The Fou-
cault
Effect:
Studies in
Governmentality (London:
Harvester
Wheatsheaf,
1991);
Mitchell
Dean,
Governmentality:
Power and Rule in Modern
Society
(London: Sage, 1999).
9.
Many
of the classic texts on this theme are
represented
in Manfred
B.
Steger
and
Nancy
S.
Lind, eds.,
Violence and Its Alternatives
(New
York:
St. Martin's
Press, 1999).
For recent
discussions,
see for
example Giorgio
Agamben,
Homo Sacer:
Sovereign
Power and Bare
Life,
trans. Daniel Heller-
Roazen
(Stanford,
Calif.: Stanford
UP, 1998);
Michael Hardt and Antonio
Negri, Empire (Cambridge:
Harvard
UP, 2000);
and
Slavoj
Zizek,
Welcome to
the Desert
of
the Real: Five
Essays
on
September
11 and Related Dates
(London:
Verso. 2002).
10. This is the move that is still made in Hardt and
Negri,
note 9. For
brief comment to this
effect,
see R. B.
J.
Walker,
"On the
Immanence/
Imminence of
Empire,"
Millennium
31,
no. 2
(2002).

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