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Seeking new forms of democracy, progressive politics raises a fundamental question: what is the alternative to the allegedly coherent, self-contained liberal subject that represents the project of modernity? Exploring the themes of nature, race, and the divine, this book identifies the more realistic alternative in the “relational subject”: a subject that is inseparable from the global field of relations through which it emerges and yet distinct from that field because it lives a life that no one else ever has. Recognizing ourselves as such subjects allows us not only to rethink politics, but, more profoundly, to envision sovereignty as the means by which we each rejuvenate ourselves and the polities we constitute with others.
“The Subject of Sovereignty is an original and profound meditation on politics and poetics of relationality. In this powerful book Feldman asks difficult but crucial questions about how to imagine otherwise, both in the political arena and in knowledge production.” • Shahram Khosravi, Stockholm University
“Feldman has written an astonishing book. It is a beautifully composed expression of a questioning mind encountering modernity through anthropology, philosophy, and reflection.” • Mark Maguire, Maynooth University
“In highly erudite fashion, Feldman cites examples from ethnography, but also from philosophy, literature, pop culture, and a wide range of other contexts to support his argument through different historical periods… I found it very refreshing to read a book of such wide historical and intellectual scope.” • Ingo W. Schröder, Dept. of Anthropology, University of Marburg
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Sovereignty’s Janus Face: Denying or Acknowledging Relationality
Chapter 1. Human/Nature:How the Rise of the Liberal Subject Impoverished Our Understanding of Relationality
Chapter 2. The Pathetic Oppressor: the Insanity of Sovereignty in a Racist World
Chapter 3. Sovereign Fusions: The Reduction to “Man” and Its Phenomenological Alternatives
Chapter 4. Extra/Ordinary Action: The Divine-Like Element in Relational Sovereignty
Conclusion: From Rethinking the Political to Rethinking Sovereignty
References
Endnotes