Samera Esmeir
Biographic Data
| ID | 534003 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Samera Esmeir |
| GIVEN NAMES | Samera |
| FAMILY NAME | Esmeir |
| SIGNATURE | ESMEIR S |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, Berkeley |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 20 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 15 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
La rhétorique et les possibilités de l’histoire du droit
Relations beyond Colonial Borders
This section presents selected contributions to the workshop “Relations beyond Colonial Borders: Indigeneity, Racialization, Hospitality,” convened by the International Consortium of Critical Theory Programs at the Three Sisters Kitchen in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in April 2023. Natalia Brizuela, Samera Esmeir, Alyosha Goldstein, and Rebecca Schreiber brought together scholars, activists, poets, and artists whose work critically engages the moder…
Solidarity's Challenge
Roundtable
The Zionist settler colonization of Palestine was, alongside apartheid in South Africa, one of the paradigmatic global issues that animated discussions among Global South anti-colonial scholars and leaders in the Bandung–Tricontinental era of the 1950s–1970s. While processes of formal decolonization have since played out across most of the Global South—notwithstanding the inequalities and violence of the postcolonial state and the neocolonial ord…
You're Not Defeated as Long as You're Resisting”
This interview with Lena Meari considers the history and present of Palestinian hunger strikes. Meari reflects on the political and theoretical dimensions of hunger strikes by Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli colonial prisons and illuminates their relationship to the history of the Palestinian liberation struggle and its transformations from the 1960s into the post-Oslo present. The interview situates the hunger strike at the center of …
On the Lives of Modern State Law
Modern state law is an expansive force that permeates life and politics. Law's histories—colonial, revolutionary, and postcolonial—tell of its constitutive centrality to the making of colonies and modern states. Its powers intertwine with life itself; they attempt to direct it, shape its most intimate spheres, decide on the constitutive line dividing public from private, and take over the space and time in which life unfolds. These powers settle …
On Becoming Less of the World
Research Article| April 01 2018 On Becoming Less of the World Samera Esmeir Samera Esmeir Samera Esmeir is associate professor in the Department of Rhetoric at UC Berkeley whose research is at the intersection of legal and political thought and Middle Eastern history. She is the author of juridical Humanity: A Colonial History (Stanford University Press, 2012), and is currently working on a book with the working title, The Struggle that Remains: …
In the Land of the International
The preamble to the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights establishes a peculiar hierarchy between rebellion and human rights. The preamble affirms that “whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law.” According to the declaration, rebellion against oppression and tyranny is an act that individual…
A World Compared, Destroyed, and Connected
Esmeir’s essay considers the mission statement of the Journal of the Society of Comparative Legislation (1896-97) alongside the 2013 mission statement of Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Joining them, Esmeir contends, is the reference to the method of comparison, and separating them are the details of the comparative practice, its ends and its powers. More specifically, the main difference between the two journals co…
Juridical Humanity
The Time of Engagement, Zaman al-ishtibak
This commentary examines two relationships between law and revolutions. In the first, international law collapses revolutions into military warfare, and in the second, state law endows itself with revolutionary powers. What are the meanings of revolution these two relationships articulate and the other meanings they foreclose? Both relationships fail to capture revolution as struggle; instead, they subject revolutions to the measures of violence …
At Once Human and Not Human
This article explores two approaches to the gendered human that occupied the historical stage of colonial Egypt. The first was juridical, the second was Islamic and mystical. Elaborating on the first, ‘juridical humanity’, this article probes the constitutive force of modern law in cementing the human as its teleology as well as the colonial operations of this force. Fashioning itself as an answer to the question ‘who is the human?’, juridical hu…
Competing Legal Orders
The Violence of Non‐Violence
The article examines the relation between war making in Iraq and juridical reforms aimed at instituting democracy, or what the article coins juridico‐democracy. It is argued that a certain aspiration for global peace, global security, and non‐violence to be instituted by juridico‐democracy accompanies the war against Iraq. Rather than leave this aspiration intact, the article examines the extent to which this aspiration itself is conducive to the…
Coffins on Our Shoulders
(2006). Coffins on Our Shoulders: The Experience of the Palestinian Citizens in Israel. Journal of Palestine Studies: Vol. 35, No. 4, pp. 76-77
Roundtable
The Zionist settler colonization of Palestine was, alongside apartheid in South Africa, one of the paradigmatic global issues that animated discussions among Global South anti-colonial scholars and leaders in the Bandung–Tricontinental era of the 1950s–1970s. While processes of formal decolonization have since played out across most of the Global South—notwithstanding the inequalities and violence of the postcolonial state and the neocolonial ord…
On Becoming Less of the World
Research Article| April 01 2018 On Becoming Less of the World Samera Esmeir Samera Esmeir Samera Esmeir is associate professor in the Department of Rhetoric at UC Berkeley whose research is at the intersection of legal and political thought and Middle Eastern history. She is the author of juridical Humanity: A Colonial History (Stanford University Press, 2012), and is currently working on a book with the working title, The Struggle that Remains: …
At Once Human and Not Human
This article explores two approaches to the gendered human that occupied the historical stage of colonial Egypt. The first was juridical, the second was Islamic and mystical. Elaborating on the first, ‘juridical humanity’, this article probes the constitutive force of modern law in cementing the human as its teleology as well as the colonial operations of this force. Fashioning itself as an answer to the question ‘who is the human?’, juridical hu…
The Violence of Non‐Violence
The article examines the relation between war making in Iraq and juridical reforms aimed at instituting democracy, or what the article coins juridico‐democracy. It is argued that a certain aspiration for global peace, global security, and non‐violence to be instituted by juridico‐democracy accompanies the war against Iraq. Rather than leave this aspiration intact, the article examines the extent to which this aspiration itself is conducive to the…
In the Land of the International
The preamble to the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights establishes a peculiar hierarchy between rebellion and human rights. The preamble affirms that “whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law.” According to the declaration, rebellion against oppression and tyranny is an act that individual…
A World Compared, Destroyed, and Connected
Esmeir’s essay considers the mission statement of the Journal of the Society of Comparative Legislation (1896-97) alongside the 2013 mission statement of Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Joining them, Esmeir contends, is the reference to the method of comparison, and separating them are the details of the comparative practice, its ends and its powers. More specifically, the main difference between the two journals co…
Coffins on Our Shoulders
(2006). Coffins on Our Shoulders: The Experience of the Palestinian Citizens in Israel. Journal of Palestine Studies: Vol. 35, No. 4, pp. 76-77
Coffins on Our Shoulders
(2006). Coffins on Our Shoulders: The Experience of the Palestinian Citizens in Israel. Journal of Palestine Studies: Vol. 35, No. 4, pp. 76-77
The Violence of Non‐Violence
The article examines the relation between war making in Iraq and juridical reforms aimed at instituting democracy, or what the article coins juridico‐democracy. It is argued that a certain aspiration for global peace, global security, and non‐violence to be instituted by juridico‐democracy accompanies the war against Iraq. Rather than leave this aspiration intact, the article examines the extent to which this aspiration itself is conducive to the…
Competing Legal Orders
At Once Human and Not Human
This article explores two approaches to the gendered human that occupied the historical stage of colonial Egypt. The first was juridical, the second was Islamic and mystical. Elaborating on the first, ‘juridical humanity’, this article probes the constitutive force of modern law in cementing the human as its teleology as well as the colonial operations of this force. Fashioning itself as an answer to the question ‘who is the human?’, juridical hu…
Juridical Humanity
The Time of Engagement, Zaman al-ishtibak
This commentary examines two relationships between law and revolutions. In the first, international law collapses revolutions into military warfare, and in the second, state law endows itself with revolutionary powers. What are the meanings of revolution these two relationships articulate and the other meanings they foreclose? Both relationships fail to capture revolution as struggle; instead, they subject revolutions to the measures of violence …
A World Compared, Destroyed, and Connected
Esmeir’s essay considers the mission statement of the Journal of the Society of Comparative Legislation (1896-97) alongside the 2013 mission statement of Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Joining them, Esmeir contends, is the reference to the method of comparison, and separating them are the details of the comparative practice, its ends and its powers. More specifically, the main difference between the two journals co…
In the Land of the International
The preamble to the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights establishes a peculiar hierarchy between rebellion and human rights. The preamble affirms that “whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law.” According to the declaration, rebellion against oppression and tyranny is an act that individual…
On Becoming Less of the World
Research Article| April 01 2018 On Becoming Less of the World Samera Esmeir Samera Esmeir Samera Esmeir is associate professor in the Department of Rhetoric at UC Berkeley whose research is at the intersection of legal and political thought and Middle Eastern history. She is the author of juridical Humanity: A Colonial History (Stanford University Press, 2012), and is currently working on a book with the working title, The Struggle that Remains: …
You're Not Defeated as Long as You're Resisting”
This interview with Lena Meari considers the history and present of Palestinian hunger strikes. Meari reflects on the political and theoretical dimensions of hunger strikes by Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli colonial prisons and illuminates their relationship to the history of the Palestinian liberation struggle and its transformations from the 1960s into the post-Oslo present. The interview situates the hunger strike at the center of …
On the Lives of Modern State Law
Modern state law is an expansive force that permeates life and politics. Law's histories—colonial, revolutionary, and postcolonial—tell of its constitutive centrality to the making of colonies and modern states. Its powers intertwine with life itself; they attempt to direct it, shape its most intimate spheres, decide on the constitutive line dividing public from private, and take over the space and time in which life unfolds. These powers settle …
Roundtable
The Zionist settler colonization of Palestine was, alongside apartheid in South Africa, one of the paradigmatic global issues that animated discussions among Global South anti-colonial scholars and leaders in the Bandung–Tricontinental era of the 1950s–1970s. While processes of formal decolonization have since played out across most of the Global South—notwithstanding the inequalities and violence of the postcolonial state and the neocolonial ord…
Relations beyond Colonial Borders
This section presents selected contributions to the workshop “Relations beyond Colonial Borders: Indigeneity, Racialization, Hospitality,” convened by the International Consortium of Critical Theory Programs at the Three Sisters Kitchen in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in April 2023. Natalia Brizuela, Samera Esmeir, Alyosha Goldstein, and Rebecca Schreiber brought together scholars, activists, poets, and artists whose work critically engages the moder…
Solidarity's Challenge
La rhétorique et les possibilités de l’histoire du droit
Political science (12 works) · Law (9 works) · Law (9 works) · Sociology (9 works) · Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics (7 works) · History (6 works) · History (6 works) · Politics (6 works) · Colonialism (5 works) · International Law and Human Rights (4 works)