International Studies Compendium Project

Extract

Comment on this article   Sovereignty is simultaneously one of the more revered and reviled concepts in international relations (IR). Long taken for granted as the ontological founding concept of the discipline, sovereignty has gradually become the locus of debates about the conditions of possibility for change and transformation, and the limits of politics and agency. Rather than objectively given and inseparable from the “state,” sovereignty fosters and reproduces meanings and creates the conditions of possibility for political agency. It authorizes disparate subjects as sovereign agents and it inscribes heterogeneous bodies as its margins or its outside. “Articulations of sovereignty” considers sovereignty as a practice that is worked on and in turn works with and against other practices. Articulation is one of the main theoretical and methodological concepts in cultural studies, particularly used by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe (2001) and Stuart Hall (1986) . According to Laclau and Mouffe (2001 :105), articulation refers to “any practice establishing a relation among elements such that their identity is modified as a result of the articulatory practice.” Articulation names the process through which unity is created out of fragmentation and identity out of difference. Analyzing articulations means unpacking the context of fragmentation, difference, and heterogeneous ... log in or subscribe to read full text