The State of Sovereignty: Lessons from the Political Fictions of Modernity

Considers the problems of sovereignty through the work of Rousseau, Arendt, Foucault, Agamben, and Derrida.

Following up on the fables and stories surrounding political sovereignty-once theological, now often nationalist-Peter Gratton's The State of Sovereignty takes aim at the central concepts surrounding the post-9/11 political environment. Against those content to conceptualize what has been called the "sovereign exception," Gratton argues that sovereignty underwent profound changes durin...