The Force of Symbolic Power

Abstract

Abstract Most contemporary theorization and critique of sovereignty begins from the assumption of effective violence as the hard kernel of modern sovereignty. In this afterword, Hansen reflects on how the histories of provisional, overlapping, and divisible sovereignty in South Asia and elsewhere described in the special section “Rethinking Sovereignty” afford us a more differentiated view of the symbolic force of sovereignty—as a promise and a claim to inalienable property.