Sovereign Subject Research Articles

Deconstructing the Narrative of Fascination in J. M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians and Foe

ABSTRACT In J. M. Coetzee’s two anti-colonial novels, Waiting for the Barbarians and Foe, the white colonizer narrators are fascinated with the inexplicable signs of torture on the subaltern bodies. Scholars have critiqued that, despite Coetzee’s narrative experimentation, the subaltern characters are still objectified under the colonizer’s gaze and remain silenced. Drawing on fascination studies, this essay argues that Coetzee’s novels aim to reflect and ultimately deconstruct the narrative of fascination operated in colonial storytelling. Symbolized by the medusa’s image, fascination indicates an unsettling engagement with something that elicits simultaneous attraction and repulsion in the beholder’s mind. This essay first examines how Coetzee’s novels reveal the fictionality of “the fascination with the primitive,” a pervasive element in colonial discourse used to construct otherness. Second, it explores how Coetzee’s narrators reach the aporia of the narrative of fascination, where the seductive power of storytelling collapses when confronted with the unknowable other’s silence. By framing the narrative of fascination within metanarrative terms, Coetzee challenges the narrative authority and sovereign subjectivity traditionally upheld in Western literature, while also prompting readers to reflect on their own roles as interpreters and consumers of such stories, particularly those involving the suffering of others.

Beyond political theology: Marx’s materialist theorization of democracy and constituent power

ABSTRACT This article recovers and develops Marx’s highly original materialist theorization of democracy and constituent power in Critique of Hegel’s Doctrine of State. Through close textual analysis and theoretical recontextualization, I reconstruct Marx’s development and deployment of these concepts as a central part of his critique of political theology, that is, the idea of the state as a sovereign subject transcending and exercising absolute power over society. Marx conceptualized democracy as the social basis of all constitutional forms of the state, which simultaneously revealed the inherent possibility of overthrowing it and capitalism in order to institute a continuous and collective non-sovereign form of self-determination described as ‘true democracy.’

Power and Governance in the Context of Globalization

Introduction. Issues of power and management in the context of globalization are one of the most pressing topics in Western social sciences, affecting a wide range of branches of scientific knowledge – from sociology, political science, social and political philosophy to economics and jurisprudence. The prospect of the disappearance of the state as a sovereign subject of legal relations, declared by globalists, or a radical transformation of this established political and legal phenomenon, the rapid development of non-governmental and non-profit organizations, the digital revolution, an increase in the level of informatization of society and many other factors of reality that did not take place in previous centuries, raise natural questions about the exercise of power and control in the new prevailing conditions. The study of this issue is new for domestic legal science, since this topic has not yet been considered by Russian legal scholars. Methods. In this study, dialectical, sociological and hermeneutical methods are applied. The above methods are used in conjunction to obtain a synergistic effect. Results. As a result of a comprehensive analysis of power and management in the context of globalization, the main aspects of this concept in relation to modern times have been identified, and forecasts have been made regarding the described situation in the near future. Discussion and Conclusion. This article, unlike other articles related in topic and purpose, offers a comprehensive analysis of power and management in the context of globalization in their modern and relevant form. The author takes into account the close relationship of globalization, power and power relations with the historical heritage, regional characteristics and objective factors of legal reality.

The intimate politics of everyday digital practices: Entangling and disentangling

The tactical struggle to carve out space-times free from the entangling logics of digital media attempts to reassert the sovereign subject. This project of disentangling goes beyond simply turning off, rejecting, or disconnecting from digital technologies. More ambitiously it works both within and against the logic of surveillance capitalism, an emerging regime which generates habits of attention as well as psychological and social forms of media dependence, in turn supplying third-party users with a durable supply of rendered behavioral data. Semi-structured interviews conducted with a sample of 20 subjects from North America reveal an ongoing quotidian struggle to maintain freedom, power, autonomy and self-direction while carving out a sort of hybrid territory around oneself. Excerpts from the interviews reveal a context-dependent set of practices, occurring in particular ways, at particular times, for particular purposes, with particular communications before and after. In addition, they show the provisional achievement of distance from entangling systems that seem to offer freedom to do things while in fact achieving microscopically targeted control. They reveal a spatial strategy involving a range of tactics for navigating the spaces of the attention/surveillance economy, appropriating digital media, and carving out spaces for personal agency in a mediatized society.

Policing the Enforcers: The Governmentality of Immigration Controls

Abstract As border controls have spanned from the territorial border to the interior, outsourcing controls to non-state actors has become the integral technology in everyday bordering. Whilst the racialized consequences of deputizing controls have been illuminated, the governmentality and biopolitical implications of these outsourcing processes have been overlooked. This paper argues that as the architecture of migration controls has evolved, the targets of control have widened; that migration controls have transcended migrants and are also used as a way to control sovereign subjects. Taking the genealogy of UK immigration control policy as a case study, the paper shows how the processes of outsourcing immigration controls to corporations, public institutions, and the private sphere have inverted the target of control through a governmentality of coercive measures and incentive structures. I argue that in outsourcing controls to non-state actors, the taken-for-granted boundaries between who is subject to immigration control and who is not are blurred because as sovereign subjects become complicit in borderwork, they also become subject to state violence. The implication is that all subjects become subject to immigration control, provoking the question of who immigration controls serve and to what end.

Towards a planetary coalition (a Preamble)

When ‘megafires’ and ‘superstorms’ proliferate, who is the real sovereign of the Anthropocene: anthropos, or nature become monstrous? In the Teracene (‘tera’ meaning ‘monster’), I argue that sovereignty should mean the right to refuse that which turns our existential situation into a horror film, in order to defend what preserves life’s endangered conditions of possibility. To build this right, I first need to deconstruct the concept of sovereignty and to reveal its groundlessness. Acknowledging this groundlessness, I propose an ‘ecopolitics without guarantees’ in which the otherness at the core of possible new Constitutions would not engender an alternative sovereign subject (a subject that would just replace anthropos or the ruling class), but rather an unconditional requirement and the rights that it legitimates. I explain that this unconditional requirement concerns the necessity of caring not only for future generations but also for past ones. I finish my article with a political fiction: the outline of a Preamble for a Constitution able to give voice to the damned of the Teracene. To acknowledge the existence of those suffering from the ongoing exploitation and colonization of the Earth and of those who wither from a future erased in advance, this speculative Preamble is centered not around the present but around the heteronomous, divergent temporality of that which never existed enough and that which threatens to fall out of existence entirely.

Mircea Anghelescu. Note de subsol despre posibilitățile istoriei literare

In an era of overqualification, Mircea Anghelescu chose to be a philologist, keeping his call on a continuous organic growth. His profile was defined with no stages skipped, as he was, chronologically, a lower education teacher, a librarian, a researcher, and finally a professor. The four stages were defining in the metamorphosis of an intellectual who, regardless of the technical opportunities of the last twenty years, stayed true to bibliographical notes. Mircea Anghelescu was interested in the endoderm of literary texts, deeming literary history as the sovereign subject in getting to know the world. Most of his work start from the belief that writers include epistemological fragments. Hence it can be claimed that reading involves a socio-literary perspective, searching for contexts, yet without overexposing them, to the detriment of an artistic vein. Thus, the interpreter has the task to remedy, like a restoring painter, all warped paintings and to rehydrate the frescoes drowned in incense and candle smoke. To take out from a book depository an anthology of literary works, while also taking a close look at all cultural dimensions, is an audacious undertaking.

‘Meine Hä / nde kennen die reaktionen de / ines Körpers die dich beweg / en machen’: The Disintegrated Body and Relationality in Özlem Özgül Dündar’s Poetry Collection Gedanken Zerren

Özlem Özgül Dündar’s debut poetry collection gedanken zerren (2018) explores what it means to be an embodied subject. Although some of the poems express the violence of having one’s identity ascribed by others, many are also vignettes of seemingly banal interactions that constitute a pre-lingual interconnectedness beyond fixed identities. The poems’ innovative form and style equally encourage us to regard language not just as a carrier of meaning, but as a material force, or indeed body, that can generate affective responses in readers. gedanken zerren enables us to imagine different perspectives on the body, engendering an increased awareness of everyday gestures and bodily reactions that indicate our inherent interrelatedness to other bodies. This is not the sovereign subject or absolute individual who is master of their own destiny, but rather a relational self in a body over which they have no totalizing control or complete knowledge. The idea of the body conveyed by gedanken zerren can be theorized through the deconstructivist thinker Jean-Luc Nancy’s writing on the body, which illuminates how Dündar’s poetry shifts the idea of human subjectivity beyond the hierarchical dualisms that have traditionally defined it, be they gendered, racialized, or a question of subject-object, or mind-body.

The Internet is Relational: Networked Connectivity and the ‘Sovereign Individual’ in Videos by Brenda Lien

This article argues that the Internet is a relational space. It draws on a provocative, multimedia trilogy by German video artist Brenda Lien to analyse the challenges to notions of sovereign subjectivity posed by the digital age. Lien’s Call of … trilogy explores the ambivalences of life on the participatory Internet, deploying at times shocking images of violence to undermine Web 2.0’s appealing aesthetics and cheery injunctions to its users to self-optimize and so gain personal sovereignty. The Internet’s spread in the 1990s into mass consumer use coincided with conservative ideologies aimed at promoting the ‘sovereign individual’ (Dale Davidson and William Rees-Mogg, 2008), capable of profiting in the dotcom era from neoliberal codes of conduct and low regulations. Since then, dataveillance via Internet platforms has grown to reduce technology users’ agency and privacy, framing Internet connectivity as a forcibly relational state, despite the individualist self-optimization opportunities it offers. The article reveals networked connectivity as an ambivalent mode of relationality, both necessary due to the communication and affiliation the Internet makes possible, and worrisome due to the connection it forces between technology users and corporations, unanswerably profiting from human needs in a way that challenges the sovereignty of the networked subject radically.

Sovereign Exceptions and Sexual Autonomy in Heinrich von Kleist’s Betrothal in San Domingo

This article investigates how the concept of a state of exception and its dialectic relationship with the norm are negotiated in the German author Heinrich von Kleist’s Betrothal in San Domingo (1811), the story of two doomed lovers – a Swiss visitor named Gustav and a “mestiza” woman named Toni – set against the backdrop of the Haitian revolution. Drawing primarily upon Carl Schmitt and Giorgio Agamben’s political thoughts as well as Alexander Weheliye’s critique of Agamben which, the former claims, has little “to say about racism, colonialism, and the world beyond fortress Europe” (64), I argue that the novella critically engages with the concept of exception and calls attention to its limitations but simultaneously offers an alternative conception to what political action may look like during a moment of intense conflict. The novella scrutinizes bio(necro)political theory’s placement of death at the center of our political thought, emphasizing instead the inadequacy of the universalization of the concept of “life,” particularly outside its Eurowestern perimeters. Through Weheliye, my analysis further suggests that Betrothal in San Domingo establishes Toni as an active, sovereign subject who, through actions of friendship and love, poses a significant challenge to the systems of exception and its underlying violent potentialities.

Who Is an Artist? Identity, Individualism, and the Neoliberalism of the Art Complex

The fantasized artist-as-origin began as the quintessential figure manifesting Enlightenment European concepts of individual autonomy and sovereign subjectivity—and thus of identity and meaning as these come to define and situate human expression as well as securing educated, middle-class, European white male hegemony in the Euro-American context. While we think of this conventional figure of the straight white male artist as old-fashioned, as having been relentlessly critiqued since the mid-twentieth century by artists, often from a feminist, queer, anti-racist, or decolonial perspective, this article asserts that the artistic author still drives much of the discourse as well as underlying the money and status attached to visual art today. Citing key works by a range of contemporary artists who have challenged these value systems—Cassils, rafa esparza, James Luna, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, and Susan Silton—this article foregrounds the critique of whiteness and masculinity and the interrogation of capitalism and neoliberalism necessary to interrogating these structures of value attached to artistic authorship.

The Space between 1s and 0s: Intentional Patiency in Computational Creativity

ABSTRACT: Challenging humanity’s self-reified monopoly over the domain of hermeneutics, computational creativity destabilizes the foundations of its lexical reference, invoking Walter Benjamin’s musings on the age of technological reproducibility. How may we delineate the parameters of creativity outside the bounds of apperceptive intent, especially if the generative process is strictly reliant upon conditional expressions of correlational nature rather than the transcendental aura of instantaneous inspiration? Should procedurally derived computational outputs deserve the label of creativity? If so, then how do such developments affect and even reconfigure human language to challenge the metrics whereby we inscribe it with social value? By probing the interstitial space between algorithmic design and arbitrary semantics through readings of autonomously written fiction, this essay investigates how computational creativity remediates literary expressivity in text-generating models. Based on the concept of intentional patiency , which I propose as an alternative to the agency of the phenomenological sovereign subject in the valuation and appreciation of nonhuman creativity, the essay asks what it means to write, and what writing means in an age when not only artistic output, but also creative agency may be approaching the singularity event horizon.

Society Bites: Phenomenological Aesthetics of the Ordinary and the Ordinary Cannibal

Abstract Drawing on phenomenological aesthetics and on the haptic aesthetics of eating as a form of everyday aesthetics, I examine the phenomenon of eating our own as meaningful in three dimensions: vital/natural, somatic/individual, and cross-cultural. Usually conceived as a concrete, rare, and foreign practice, I show how cannibalism is present in our daily lives, both symbolically and as a liminal possibility towards which – as Freud noticed in 1913 – we all tended as children. Cannibalism is present not only in cinematic, literary, or visual art, and in anthropological research that situates it far from “us,” but through narratives and carnal dispositifs of differentiation/assimilation of the Same and the Other, fundamental for our subjective constitution. I conclude with a reflection on how the classical aesthetics of the sovereign subject develops towards alternative models like Pelluchon’s gourmet ego that re-establish the connexion and moral engagement lost by solipsism by means of alimentary metaphors, but also romanticizing them, failing to address the problem of voracity and overconsumption, both at a social and at an individual level. This is more suitably addressed by Viveiros de Castro’s idea of a cannibal cogito, but even better understood by Emmanuel Levinas’ enjoyment-contact model of subjectivity.

The normative and legal component of the national-state selfdetermination of the Ukrainian people

It is relevant for the further progress and development of Ukraine to study the ascending legal foundations that laid the foundations of the constituent power of the people as the source, bearer and sovereign subject of power. The first stage of the Ukrainian people’s sovereignty process was completed during the National Liberation War of 1648–1657 with the formation and legalization of the institutions of the Ukrainian Cossack state, which was recognized as a subject of international relations. The next stage of the sovereignty of the Ukrainian people, as asocial subject of Ukrainian state-building, began in Western Ukrainian lands with the “Spring of Nations” in 1848 and ended with the formation of its own sovereign state-the Western Ukrainian People’s Republic. In Trans-Dnieper Ukraine, this stage began at the end of the 19th century. and ended in the period of the Ukrainian national liberation struggle of 1917–1921 with the restoration of national statehood. The state sovereignty of the Ukrainian People’s Republic was realized through a dialectical combination of the right of nations to self-determination and the principle of territorial integrity of the state. After the announcement by the Russian Soviet party leadership of the date of formation of the USSR on December 30, 1922, the Ukrainian SSR actually lost the opportunity to exercise the sovereign rights of the Ukrainian people and the state. During the dismantling of the Union of the SSR, the Ukrainian people used the right to self-determination, which is enshrined in the provisions of the Declaration on State Sovereignty of Ukraine dated July 16, 1990. A detailed analysis of legal acts that regulated the issues of external and internal sovereignty and legal personality of the Ukrainian people (nation) and the state in different historical periods will make it possible to objectively assess the formality and reality of Ukraine’s sovereignty in different historical periods. Key words: Ukraine, people’s sovereignty, nation-state self-determination, people’s right to self-determination, sovereignty, Cossack-Hetman era, UNR, Directory, ZUNR,Ukrainian SSR, juridification of Ukraine’s sovereignty, normative and legal component,historical significance

Technologies of abjection: The possessive logics and performative sovereignty of drug dog operations in New South Wales, Australia

This article considers the alarming escalation in the use of strip-searching on the part of the New South Wales police over the past decade and its connection with street-level drug policing including drug dog operations. These strategies mobilise a technology of detection which draws police ever more intently into the orbit of the sexual and sexual violation and in ever-closer proximity to the genital, the vaginal and the anal cavities of those it forcibly produces as suspects. I am especially interested in the symbolic, spectacular, gendered and performative dimensions of these ‘devices of sexual saturation’; their opportunistic deployment to patrol minoritarian populations (Aboriginal people, young people/minors, sexual and racial minorities) and cast aspersions on their self-sovereign capacities. Framed by the law as technologies of drug detection, these operations are better conceptualised as technologies of abjection devoted to the production of violable subjects as part of brutal ongoing efforts to shore up the authority of self-asserted, stolen sovereignty. A narcofeminist lens brings these gendered dimensions of drug policing into better view. Here, the ‘possessive logics’ that Aileen Moreton-Robinson implicates in the performativity of patriarchal white sovereignty on the part of the ‘postcolonising’ Australian state find their pretext and source of legitimation in the rhetoric of drugs and the fantasised sovereign subject it maintains as a requirement for the general functioning of the law: the ‘master of her intentions and desires’, in Derrida’s words. This mobilisation of technologies of abjection under the guise of drug enforcement is part of a longer story about the racialisation of sexuality and the sexualisation of race as biopolitical trajectories that naturalise and maintain settler-colonialism and its worlds. Countering their violence entails forging new solidarities among minoritarian constituencies that articulate, affirm and reactivate the non-sovereign potentials/performatives that inhere in our mutual vulnerability and relationally-constituted capacity for endurance.

THE POLITICAL VISION OF THE ORGANIZATION OF TURKIC STATES: AN ANALYSIS OF THE TURKIC WORLD VISION 2040

After 1991, the phenomenon of the Turkic world turned from an ideological dream to a political reality, with the independent Turkic states becoming equal and sovereign subjects in the international system and international politics. In this process, many cooperation organizations (TURKSOY, TURKPA, TWESCO, etc.) were established among the Turkic states. The Organization of Turkic States (OTS), established in 2009 as the umbrella organization of the Turkic world cooperation organizations, became even stronger with the membership of Uzbekistan in 2019. The 2021 Istanbul Summit and 2022 Samarkand Summit of the OTS are extremely important for the future of cooperation in the Turkic world. In this study, the political vision for the OTS and the Turkic World Vision - 2040 will be analyzed.

Editors’ introduction to the Special Section: The ethics and politics of the Anthropocene

Editors’ introduction to the Special Section: The ethics and politics of the Anthropocene

Russia as the State-Legal and Theoretical-Historical Category

Introduction . Ensuring the legal order and fostering the legal values constitute the complex multifaceted process requiring concentration of efforts on behalf of the state, society and personality, all integrated in an overarching term "provision of national security", that is being supplementary edited in legal sciences into the category "legal provision of national security". There are no minor or insignificant problems on the way to achieving the objectives aimed at respecting the national interests, the same as not yet compiled is the list of measures considered exhaustive enough to achieve them. In the present scientific article the problems directly referring to the terminology used in the name of the state "Russia" are investigated in the state-legal and theoretical-historical sense. In addition, the issues related to the use of the state emblem, anthem and flag as official state symbols of the Russian Federation, the legal status of which is regulated by the federal legislation and the international regulatory legal acts, are addressed. The use of the above symbols in practice refers directly to such an attribute of a state as the legal sovereignty in terms of its visual and phonetic demonstration on the international arena and within the state. The attitude to the state symbols as well as the interpretation of the name of the state are the markers of the legal status of the country, its actual capacities on the world arena and attitude of its own people and foreign citizens towards Russia as a civilisational, cultural and state-legal phenomenon. Thus in order to increase the efficiency of the legal provision of the national security, it is expedient to detail the legal status of the state and the national symbols of Russia. The aim of this study is to carry out the state-legal and theoretical-historical research of the verbal and visual designation of the Russian Federation as a sovereign subject of the international law. Materials and Methods . This scientific article investigates the topical problems of the national security provision in correlation with the verbal, phonetic and neuro-linguistic designation of Russia as a sovereign subject of the international law. The legalistic, the historical-legal and the concrete-historical methods, as well as the political-legal method of juridical research have been used. Results . It has been proved that the constitutional-legal norm stating the identity of the categories "Russia" and "Russian Federation" does not have a completely identical semantic meaning at the level of scientific doctrine and the former refers to the latter as the general to the specific. The authors draw attention to the fact that the name "Russian Federation" being the name of the state formed in 1918-1991 is not the only etymological variant of denoting the Russian state. The term "Russia" is a Greek interpretation of the category "Rus", which has been specificated as "Ancient Rus" in the historical and historical-legal doctrine. Therefore the “Russkaya Pravda (Russian Truth)” is entitled to be referred to the first monuments of law, as well as the "Zakon Russkij (Russian Law)" mentioned in the treaties with Byzantium. At the same time, attention is paid to the need to toughen the measures preventing cases of incorrect or, not to mention it, offensive attitude to the name of the Russian state, as well as to the official state symbols. According to the authors, participation of the Russian Federation citizens in the status of "neutral athletes" in the international competitions, where the state symbols of foreign states are demonstrated corresponds to such cases. Depriving Russia of the sovereign right to officially demonstrate the state symbols is illegitimate and should not be permitted in any circumstances under the threat of refusal of the official representatives from participation in the events where the multinational Russian people is discriminated against. Moreover, the very participation of athletes from Russia in the "neutral status" is regarded “by default” as a consent with implementation of the illegitimate Russophobically tended measures discriminating against the state. At present, such participation is not considered to be a violation of the Russian Federation legislation, but it is obviously unethical and unpatriotic, but in future the law-makers may change the qualification of the respective "misdeed". Discussion and Conclusions. The state-legal and theoretical-historical type of problems related to understanding of the categories "Russia" and "Russian Federation" fixed in the legal consciousness have been revealed. The objective to specificate the meaning of these notions at the level of a doctrine has been fully achieved, which enables to clarify the unbiased understanding of the state genesis as well as the current level of development of the Russian statehood and the mission of the Fatherland on the international arena.

‘Often in between’: Thinking through research methods and Indigenous sovereignty with Yuin Country

Indigenous scholars have been calling for renewed attention to the theorisation and practice of sovereignty, including within research. Their scholarship has drawn attention to the sovereignty of people within research processes, as well as diverse expressions of sovereignty. In this article we bring these two dimensions into conversation to consider how research methods might enable and enliven understandings and practices of sovereignty within geography. Illustrating Yuin approaches to research through poetry, observation and dreaming, we show how Country is a living enactment of sovereignty. It dynamically contributes to research processes and enables nonhuman entities to communicate within and beyond their territory as sovereign subjects. In particular, Yuin research methods acknowledge the significant contribution of plants in the theorisation~storying and practice of sovereign Country. Through plants, we come to develop a knowledge of sovereign Country as often in between things, including places and knowledges, vulnerability and protection, and removal and persistence. Such insights are respectfully offered here in the spirit of broadening disciplinary perspectives and capacities in order to revitalise research that addresses the relationships between territory and its people.

NASLEĐE EDIPOVE SFINGE: UDES SAMOIDENTIFIKOVANjA

The paper seeks to signalize the history of human self-understanding through the changes that the mythical encounter between Oedipus and the Sphinx underwent. First, a pattern is detected according to which the modern in Oedipus recognizes and celebrates the triumph of man over nature and his corresponding elevation into a sovereign subject. The central part of the paper offers an overview of contemporary (re)interpretations that restore the right to the Sphinx and suggest the desirability or necessity of a “new mythology”. The central part of the paper offers an overview of those contemporary (re)interpretations that restore the right of the Sphinx and suggests the desirability or necessity of a “new mythology”. The finding is that Oedipus, in a compulsive endeavor to completely disenchant the world, banished every secret and ecstasy from it, so the time has come for its “re-enchantment”. The final part of the paper tests and recommends a third strategy: the Enlightenment’s demythologization of the Enlight- enment as the last myth, revealing that Oedipus is the secret of the Sphinx, his construct. That is why it is his responsibility for insecurity into his own identity and status in the world not to move narcissistically onto projections of everything different from himself that he has subju- gated or will subjugate, but, for the sake of both himself and the world, less intimidated, more peacefully and in solidarity approach to it.