This dissertation clarifies a tension within the modern ideals of sovereignty that inform the contemporary state system. On one hand, sovereignty is idealized as a kind of authority that constitutes the collective subject over which it is exercised. On the other hand, sovereignty is idealized as a kind of political authority that emanates from the very collective subject that it would constitute. This subject, ‘the people’, is construed as both the precondition for, and artifact of, sovereign authority. This paradoxical circularity has historically been hidden by appeals to territoriality as a fixed criterion of political community and democratic inclusion. The constitution of ‘the people’, in other words, is construed as objectively given by the apparently natural or pre-political boundaries of geographic territory. This appeal to purportedly pre-political boundaries can undermine genuinely democratic self-determination, as well as inquiry into the justice or legitimacy of political constitution itself. In order to criticize this type of purportedly pre-political closure, I draw upon recent work in democratic theory to clarify the fundamental contestability of sovereign acts of constitution and boundary setting.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VANDERBILT/oai:VANDERBILTETD:etd-07282010-164656 |
| Date | 05 August 2010 |
| Creators | Whitt, Matt Spencer |
| Contributors | Gregg M. Horowitz, Jose M. Medina, Robert B. Talisse, Carol C. Gould |
| Publisher | VANDERBILT |
| Source Sets | Vanderbilt University Theses |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.vanderbilt.edu/available/etd-07282010-164656/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to Vanderbilt University or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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