Journal Articles
“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
Books
Contested Territory presents a critical, non-sovereign theory of territorial rights capable of responding to border-defying global crises such as land dispossession, mass migration, and environmental depredation. Statist theorists have attempted to mitigate these crises within the framework of territorial sovereignty, but have not grasped how this crumbling system causes the problems they seek to solve. Others, pitting cosmopolitanism against sovereignty, have turned away from territoriality, thus ignoring the geographical dimensions of freedom. The need for a radical shift in theorizing territory is urgent. This book embarks on that shift and argues, against the mainstream view, that it is possible to theorize democracy within a framework of territorial non-sovereignty. In an effort to loosen the grip of sovereignty and broaden our territorial imagination, Contested Territory resuscitates a long-suppressed tradition in the history of political thought: the tradition of theorizing contested territory. The theorists of contested territory—anarchists, exiles, federationists, cosmopolitans, indigenous theorists, and so on—do not view the absence of sovereignty over land as a problem, and instead find democratic potential in overlapping rule. Building on such alternatives, this book charts normative foundations for a cosmopolitan, democratic theory of territory and land politics. Through a critical engagement with the thought of Hannah Arendt, it grounds democratic land governance in the land-based, non-sovereign practices of world-building. Contested Territory concludes that is both possible and desirable to decouple democracy and territorial sovereignty, and that by doing so we can better respond to the border-defying crises of our age.
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.
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.