The invention of the nation-state was the crowning achievement of the Sykes–Picot Agreement between the United Kingdom and France in 1916. As a geostrategic move to divide, defeat, and dismantle the Ottoman Empire during World War I, it was a great success and the modern colonial borders of the Arab nation-states eventually emerged in the course of World War II. Today, as nations are reconceiving their own postcolonial interpolated histories, Arab and Muslim states are becoming total states on the model of ISIS with Iran, Syria, Turkey and Egypt, among others, violently manufacturing their legitimacy. And yet simultaneously, examples such as the Nobel Peace Prize winning formation of a civil society 'Quartet' in Tunisia allude to a growing transnational public sphere across the Arab and Muslim world. In The Emperor is Naked, Hamid Dabashi boldly argues that the category of nation-state has failed to produce a legitimate and enduring unit of post-colonial polity. Considering what this liberation of nations and denial of legitimacy to ruling states will actually unfurl, Dabashi asks: What will replace the nation-state, what are the implications of this deconstruction on global politics and, crucially, what is the meaning of the post-colonial subject within this moment?
Les mer
Declares the end of the nation state as a political proposition predicting the dissolution of the state as an organizing framer of politics.
1. The Story of the King who had Two Bodies but No Clothes 2. The Myth of the Postcolonial State 3. From the Myth of the State to the Mystification of Caliphate to the Postmodern Ending of State 4. Palestine without Borders 5. Interstitial Space of the Art of Protest 6. Between and Beyond the Republic and Cyropaedia 7. The Last Grand Revolution at Forty 8. Who Killed Jamal Khashoggi? Who cares? 9. The Story of the Lion, the Fox, and the Ass
Les mer
The modern "state" and especially the so-called "nation-state" are increasingly showing their dark underbelly - their potential for global catastrophe. Is there another path ahead, beyond myth and calculation? Dabashi's stunning text explores this crucial question.
Les mer
Declares the end of the nation state as a political proposition predicting the dissolution of the state as an organizing framer of politics.
A fascinating demonstration of how the colonial legacy of the nation state has failed to produce a legitimate and enduring unit of postcolonial polity

Produktdetaljer

ISBN
9781786995643
Publisert
2020-04-15
Utgiver
Vendor
Zed Books Ltd
Vekt
490 gr
Høyde
222 mm
Bredde
140 mm
Aldersnivå
U, 05
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Innbundet
Antall sider
272

Forfatter

Biographical note

Hamid Dabashi is the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian studies and comparative literature at Columbia University, USA. His many books include The Arab Spring and Can Non-Europeans Think?, both from Zed Books. Dabashi has been a columnist for Al Jazeera for nearly a decade and has been a regular contributor to the New York Times, the CNN, the BBC, and the Egyptian Al-Ahram Weekly. His books have been translated into numerous languages.