Sovereignty a-venir: Towards a Normative Understanding of Sovereignty

Abstract

This article draws upon Derridean philosophy to argue for a more holistic understanding of sovereignty, a reading of the concept that alternatively envisages sovereignty as home, is prone to normativity, and bestows sovereignty with an ethical perspective. The first section shows how scholarly efforts to approach sovereignty, the English School of international relations theory in particular, do not go far enough in engaging with the concept in normative terms. In the second section we employ the Derridean notions of aporia, to-come and hospitality to synthesise sovereignty a-venir and link it with the normative positiveness of home. The article empirically proceeds with the case of Kosovo to illustrate how sovereignty a-venir points to a promised sovereign condition, normatively understood as hospitable home, but suggests that it will never exist in the present because it remains aporetic. The concluding section reflects on how sovereignty a-venir paves the way for follow-up research in the discipline.