Stasis Before the State

Nine Theses on Agonistic Democracy

Bibliographic Data

ID19946377
AuthorsDimitris Vardoulakis (0000-0002-7852-8900, corresponding author)
Year2020
Publication date2020-12-31
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
VenueStasis Before the State (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherFordham University Press (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1515/9780823277421
OpenAlexW2786745439
ISBN9780823277421
LanguageEN
Citations received6

This book critiques the relation between sovereignty and democracy. Across nine theses, Vardoulakis argues that sovereignty asserts its power by establishing exclusions: the sovereign excluding other citizens from power and excludes refugees and immigrants from citizenship. Within this structure, to resist sovereignty is to reproduce the logic of exclusion characteristic of sovereignty.In contrast to this "ruse of sovereignty," Vardoulakis proposes an alternative model for political change. He argues that democracy can be understood as the structure of power that does not rely on exclusions and whose relation to sovereignty is marked not by exclusion but of incessant agonism.The term stasis, which refers both to the state and to revolution against it, offers a tension that helps to show how the democratic imperative is presupposed by the logic of sovereignty, and how agonism is more primary than exclusion. In elaborating this ancient but only recently recovered concept of stasis, Vardoulakis illustrates the radical potential of democracy to move beyond the logic of exclusion and the ruse of sovereignty

Aggression · Agonistic behaviour · Algorithm · Democracy · Political science · Programming language · State (computer science) · Computer Science · Foucault, Power, and Ethics · History · Law · Political Economy and Marxism · Political Theology and Sovereignty · Politics and Society in Latin America · Psychology · Social Psychology

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