Journal Articles

“Land Grabbing and the Perplexities of Territorial Sovereignty,” Political Theory (2022), Volume 50, Issue 1, pp. 32-58.

“Democracy in contested territory: on the legitimacy of global legal pluralism,” Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy (2022), Volume 25, Issue 2, pp. 187-210.

“Hannah Arendt Encounters Friedrich von Gentz: On Revolution, Preservation, and European Unity,” Modern Intellectual History, forthcoming, onlinefirst at: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/modern-intellectual-history/article/abs/hannah-arendt-encounters-friedrich-von-gentz-on-revolution-preservation-and-european-unity/7194BA3533B926C5B7DF9BFE917E2A0A

 “Hannah Arendt reads Carl Schmitt’s The Nomos of the Earth: a dialogue on law and geopolitics from the margins,” European Journal of Political Theory 2017, 16 (13), pp. 345-366.

In translation: “Hannah Arendt liest Carl Schmitts Der Nomos der Erde: Ein Dialog über Gesetz und Geopolitik anhand ihrer Marginalien,” HannahArendt.net Zeitschrift für politisches Denken, April 2016, Ausgabe 1, Band 8.

Edited Volume

Another Universalism: Seyla Benhabib and the Future of Critical Theory (eds Jurkevics, Eich, Nathwani, Siegel). “Introduction: In Search of Another Universalism,” by Anna Jurkevics.

Another Universalism provides a comprehensive engagement with Benhabib’s path-breaking interventions and a tour of the cutting edge of critical theory today. Covering a wide range of debates and themes, Another Universalism is united by a core question: How can universal norms of human freedom, equality, and dignity be reconciled with particular contexts, especially ones of exclusion, difference, and adversity? Searching for universalisms that emerge from the concrete struggles of emancipatory movements, this book points toward an expansive, inclusive, and radical democratic vision. Contributors take part in key debates about the critical theory’s past and future, tackling subjects such as the relationship between democracy and cosmopolitanism, the role of law in emancipatory struggles, human domination of nature, the deprovincialization of critical theory concerning questions of race and empire, as well as Hannah Arendt’s continuing significance.

Chapters

“Private Borders, Hidden Territories,” in Lawless Zones, Rightless Subjects, Seyla Benhabib and Ayelet Shachar eds, Cambridge University Press, forthcoming.

“Critical International Political Theory,” with Seyla Benhabib, Oxford Handbook of International Political Theory, eds. Chris Brown and Robyn Eckersley, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018, pp. 74-86.

 “Seyla Benhabib,” Habermas Lexicon, eds. Amy Allen and Eduardo Mendieta, Cambridge University Press 2019, pp. 492-494.

Reviews and Critical Exchanges

Critical exchange with Annie Stilz, “Crises in Territorial Sovereignty: Critical Exchange on Anna Stilz’s Territorial Sovereignty: A Philosophical Exploration,” Political Theory 2021.

Review of Territorial Sovereignty: A Philosophical Exploration, by Anna Stilz in Political Theory 2021.

Review of Rightlessness in an Age of Rights: Hannah Arendt and the Contemporary Struggles of Migrants, by Ayten Gundogdu in Political Theory 2018 46(2), pp. 303-307.

Book Manuscript (under contract with OUP)

Contested Territory: A Critical Theory of Land and Democracy Beyond Sovereign Bounds

Contested Territory presents a critical theory of territory capable of responding to border-defying global crises, especially those related to migration, the environment, and land dispossession. Statist theorists have attempted to mitigate the ills of territorial sovereignty, but have not grasped how this crumbling system causes the problems they seek to solve. Others, pitting cosmopolitanism against sovereignty, have abandoned territoriality altogether, thus ignoring the geographical dimensions of freedom. The need for a radical shift in theorizing territory is urgent.

This manuscript embarks on that shift and argues, against the mainstream view, that it is possible to theorize democracy within a framework of territorial non-sovereignty. For too long, democratic theory has been captured by what I call “the sovereign territorial imaginary,” and accordingly assumes sovereignty is a necessary condition of democracy. In an effort to loosen the grip of this paradigm and broaden our territorial imagination, I resuscitate a long-suppressed, alternative tradition in the history of political thought: the tradition of theorizing contested territory. This tradition includes anarchists, critical geographers, indigenous theorists, anti-colonial federationists, cosmopolitans, and many others. The theorists of contested territory do not view the absence of sovereignty over land as a problem, and instead find democratic potential in overlapping rule and alternatives to the state form.

To bring out the possibilities of theorizing contested territory, I explore themes central to this tradition—local land autonomy, legal pluralism, federation, cosmopolitan membership, and critiques of land monopolization and colonialism—and probe their compatibility with democratic politics. The manuscript then charts normative foundations for a cosmopolitan, democratic theory of territory. In particular, I employ the thought of Hannah Arendt—both her phenomenology of “world-building” and her rejection of sovereign mastery—to argue that it is both possible and desirable to decouple democracy and territorial sovereignty. Methodologically, this manuscript draws on critical theory, archival research, historiography, and phenomenology, all toward the end of articulating the hidden tradition of contested territory, and giving it a firm normative footing so that we might better respond to the border-defying crises of our age.