TPOLS 480 PPE Seminar: Sovereignty and State Power - Forman: Books
This guide was created for Michael Forman's TPOLS 480 course, Spring Quarter 2020.
Course Books
Some of your course books are available as ebooks!
On Sovereignty and Other Political Delusions by Joan CocksFor political theory to reflect, and reflect upon, not just Western political societies but the politics of an interrelated world, its basic concepts must be re-thought in a new key. In On Sovereignty and Other Political Delusions Joan Cocks argues that these concepts require revision because the practical conditions on which their old definitions hinged have decomposed. With a focus on concepts of violence, sovereignty, and progress Cocks constructs her argument using three case studies- the confrontation between Anglo-American settlers and Native American tribes, the search for Jewish sovereignty in the new state of Israel and the world s reaction to the attacks on the United States on 9/11. This book unsettles and refocuses these concepts so that they can better capture and illuminate the political experience of those at the receiving end of power across the globe today.
ISBN: 9781780933542
Publication Date: 2014-10-23
Leviathan by Thomas HobbesDuring the upheaval of the English Civil War in the seventeenth century, political philosopher Thomas Hobbes composed his masterwork, Leviathan. It was first published in 1651, between the trial and execution of King Charles I and the creation of the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell. In his book, Hobbes argued that a strong and undivided central government was necessary to maintain societal order. By accepting the rule of a sovereign authority figure--which Hobbes called the "Leviathan" after the biblical sea monster--humans could avoid being ruled instead by self-interest and fear, and so escape humankind's natural state of war and violence. This is an unabridged version of Hobbes's most famous philosophical text, which established social contract theory and remained influential in political philosophy for centuries.
ISBN: 1512486191
Publication Date: 2018-01-01
Walled States, Waning Sovereignty by Wendy BrownA prize-winning examination of why nation-states wall themselves off despite widespread proclamations of global connectedness. Why do walls marking national boundaries proliferate amid widespread proclamations of global connectedness and despite anticipation of a world without borders? Why are barricades built of concrete, steel, and barbed wire when threats to the nation today are so often miniaturized, vaporous, clandestine, dispersed, or networked? In Walled States, Waning Sovereignty, Wendy Brown considers the recent spate of wall building in contrast to the erosion of nation-state sovereignty. Drawing on classical and contemporary political theories of state sovereignty in order to understand how state power and national identity persist amid its decline, Brown considers both the need of the state for legitimacy and the popular desires that incite the contemporary building of walls. The new walls--dividing Texas from Mexico, Israel from Palestine, South Africa from Zimbabwe--consecrate the broken boundaries they would seem to contest and signify the ungovernability of a range of forces unleashed by globalization. Yet these same walls often amount to little more than theatrical props, frequently breached, and blur the distinction between law and lawlessness that they are intended to represent. But if today's walls fail to resolve the conflicts between globalization and national identity, they nonetheless project a stark image of sovereign power. Walls, Brown argues, address human desires for containment and protection in a world increasingly without these provisions. Walls respond to the wish for horizons even as horizons are vanquished.