Sovereignty and political modernity: A genealogy of Agamben’s critique of sovereignty

Abstract

This essay is an examination of the implications of the largely uncritical taking up of the ascendant Agambenian paradigm in recent scholarship. Following Arendt, it is argued that the most important reason for the success of the polemical redefinition of political community as subjecthood by those who elaborated the project of political modernity (esp. Bodin and Hobbes) has been its success at getting its opponents (e.g. Locke,

GMO doublespeak: An analysis of power and discourse in Canadian debates over agricultural biotechnology

“…Previous uses of the term 'constitutive power' are inconsistent. While some authors position constitutive power as possessed and deployed by actors, such as the state (see Browning & Christou, 2010;Neocleous, 1996), others view constitutive power as embedded in socially and historically developed norms and discourses (see Jennings, 2011;Rye, 2014). The present study adopts the latter view.…”

Potentiality, Sovereignty and Bare Life. A Critical Reading of Giorgio Agamben

“…). At this point, Agamben's reading of Heidegger comes to the 6 On the differences between Agamben's and Arendt's reading of constituted and constituting power, Jennings (2011) claims that Arendt's framework contrasts with "the political anthropology implicit in political modernity (including the revolutionary tradition up to Benjamin and Agamben) in which the very notion of a distinction between constituent and constituting power in constitutional theory still to this day necessarily implies pre-constituted people (i .e . the state of nature) choosing to form a political community outside of any pre-existing association of relationship to history" (2011 141).…”

Sovereignty: An Introduction

“…Anthropologists have paid particular attention to how colonial forms of government left enduring marks on the performance and legitimation of political power beyond Europe and the United States. And while the modern nation‐state may remain the dominant form of political authority and imagination in the contemporary period, it has taken several specific forms throughout the world, without completely removing or superseding older languages of power and public authority (see Jennings ).…”