Sovereignty

In this study, I compare and contrast the structures and fates of three other unrecognized states – Abkhazia, Northern Cyprus, and the NKR. Following this, I hypothesize on the possible futures for the NKR as an independent republic and on the multiparty conflict it symbolizes, as well as the implications of such possibilities on the people of Nagorno-Karabakh.

While the Abu Ghraib photographs may have “gone away” in the contemporary traffic in pain, their image prevails in a variety of uncontested visual media and sites, from the internet to Hollywood. This paper elaborates what I call “homopolitics,” a modality of power operating around and through a figure of the in/human, that alters our understanding of sovereignty, the state of exception, and biopolitics. By arguing that sovereignty functions performatively within a network of governmentality, I show that normative frameworks of visibility shape our viewing of the Abu Ghraib photographs such that sexuality is distributed to prisoners but not the guards. This visual regime instituting this state of exception reveals the violence of a relationship between biopolitics and aesthetics. That conjunction may be disrupted by enacting a politics of aesthetics, and so I conclude by turning to Fernando Botero’s paintings of the Abu Ghraib atrocities to explore how the ethical effects of affect may change the future of the homopolitical image as it works through states of sexual exception.

In this paper I explore the deployment of time in imaginations of political community. Specifically, I consider the use of continuous, chronological time in constructing a clear, transparent, and knowable history, as well as the construction of time itself as a smooth teleological narrative from which political projects, communities, and subjects are imagined through and from. Ultimately, I argue that time functions as an ‘anamorphic orientation’ that lends legitimacy to the project of pursuing the destinal figure of community. However, these anamorphic orientations are not totalising. Drawing on primary research from the British Museum, as well as the work of Carl Schmitt and Walter Benjamin, I demonstrate that these smooth and coherent conceptions of political community can and are disrupted through misunderstanding and confusion of the museum’s intended programming. These instances serve as important reminders of the ways in which anamorphic orientations, such as the naturalisation of chronological time, cannot entirely suffocate the plurality of the world.

How can Bourdieu help us grasp international politics today? How can the concept of ‘‘field,’’ originally coined for analyzing relations within states, provide an understanding of emerging patterns of transnational governance? I argue that Bourdieu provides us with sophisticated analytical tools for exploring the strength and limits of state authority—also beyond the national territory. Moreover, I claim that sovereign state interaction—diplomacy—has developed into a metafield. If we are to understand emerging challenges to state authority, from private companies to international organizations and global media, we need to study everyday activities, which both reproduce and challenge the sovereign state system as a meaningful reality. I illustrate this idea of competing articulations of political authority by focusing on the EU’s new diplomatic service, which challenges the very idea of national diplomatic representation.

This essay examines sovereignty from the perspective of the responsibility to protect, particularly through the notion of sovereignty as responsibility. The paper argues that sovereignty as responsibility is supposed to be envisioned to be similar to the notion of good international citizenship. Such good (and "fully") sovereign states allegedly form the international community. Yet, this seems to contain a possibility for cultural chauvinism, particularly since the R2P framework seems to rely on the idea that the international community is good because its individual members are supposed to be good - a fallacy of composition.

""This paper compares two related corporate accounts of enacting sovereignty with Taiwan Aborigines: one as external threat to the nation, one as ancestor of the nation. First, Mitsubishi corporate webpage histories constitute mythic origin narratives about how their patriotic founder Yataro Iwasaki helped the Japanese government transport munitions and troops to Taiwan in 1874 and the government rewarded him with 30 ships, starting their close relationship. These narratives about this state-centered assemblage omit why Japan sent the military expedition, which ostensibly was a punitive expedition against Paiwan Aborigines for the 1871 massacre of 54 Ryukyu Islanders, but was actually part of the new Meiji state’s annexation of the Ryukyu Islands. Second, it analyses the Shung Ye Museum of Formosan Aborigines which was founded in 1994 by the wealthy chair of the Shung Ye Group, a Taiwan-based Mitsubishi-affiliated conglomerate. The museum is a private assemblage organized around hero narratives in which the chair demonstrates his patriotism by rescuing Taiwan Aborigines and their cultures. The museum contributes to the Taiwan-centered identity project which challenges One-China sovereignty claims over Taiwan.

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