Democracy and its others / by Jeffrey H. Epstein.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Epstein, Jeffrey H., 1974- author.

Series:

Political theory and contemporary philosophy

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Democracy--Philosophy.

Democracy.

Noncitizens--Civil rights.

Noncitizens.

Immigrants--Civil rights.

Immigrants.

Political rights.

Citizenship.

Physical Description:

vi, 309 pages ; 25 cm.

Place of Publication:

New York : Bloomsbury Academic, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing, Plc, 2016.

Summary:

Today's unprecedented levels of human migration present urgent challenges to traditional conceptualizations of national identity, nation-state sovereignty, and democratic citizenship. Foreigners are commonly viewed as outsiders whose inclusion within or exclusion from "the people" of the democratic state rests upon whether they benefit or threaten the unity of the nation. Against this instrumentalization of the foreigner, this book traces the historical development of the concepts of sovereignty and foreignness through the thought of philosophers such as Plato, Locke, Hobbes, Rousseau, Derrida, and Benhabib in order to show that foreignness is a structural feature of sovereignty that cannot be purged or assimilated. Understood in this tight, foreignness allows for new forms of democratic political unity to be imagined, rejecting local practices which deprive individuals of political membership solely on the basis of national citizenship. This cosmopolitan model for citizenship provides a novel conceptual framework that simultaneously upholds the Legal importance of democratic citizenship for political justice, while ceaselessly contesting the exclusionary logic of the nation-state that reserves democratic rights for members of the nation alone. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 Ethnos, Demos, and Foreignness 13

Playing politics: ethnos and the (re)unification of the demos 15

2 Hospitality or War? A Foreigner Approaches 24

The Piraeus 26

Cephalus, the metic 31

Polemarchus, the metic 34

Polemarchs, the metic 34

Thrasymachus, the indecidable foreigner 39

3 The Fearful Origins of Sovereignly in the Social Contract Tradition 47

The fearful origins of sovereignty in Hobbes 48

The fearful origins of sovereignty in Locke 56

The fearful origins of sovereignty in Rousseau 58

4 The Qualities of Sovereignty in Hue Social Contract Tradition 63

Hobbes' absolute sovereign 63

Locke's neutral umpire 71

Rousseau's general will 78

A brief summary of sovereignty 85

5 Foreignness, Sovereignty, and the Social Contract Tradition 87

Territorial exclusions 88

Homogeneous unity and the sovereign exclusion of foreignness 91

Foreignness in Hobbes' theorization of sovereignty 96

Foreignness in Locke's theorization of sovereignty 103

Foreignness in Rousseau's theorization of sovereignty 111

6 The Naturalization of Artificial Sovereignty and Foreignness 130

Hobbes' naturalization of artificial sovereignty 132

Locke's naturalization of artificial sovereignty 137

Rousseau's naturalization of artificial sovereignty 146

The naturalization of artificial foreignness 153

7 The Foreign-Sovereign 159

The quasi-regime 165

8 Foreign Unto It-Self, the Democratic Nation-State 174

Democracy's others and the protection of the democratic nation-state 174

Foreign unto it-self: autoimmune democracy 182

Democracy to come and the foreign-sovereign 200

9 The foreign-Citizen at the Threshold of Democratic Cosmopolitanism 216

Universal hospitality at the border between the moral and legal 217

Unconditional hospitality and the cosmopolitanism to come 219

Democratic iterations 231

The foreign-citizen 240.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 301-305) and index.

ISBN:

9781501312007

1501312006

OCLC:

945952506