Dematerializing Sovereignties in The Character of Holland and The Loyal Scot

This paper argues that in The Character of Holland and The Loyal Scot, Marvell consistently meditates on the nature of political sovereignty, especially regarding its perils and shortcomings. By ventriloquizing republican propaganda and monarchical ideology in these poems, Marvell creates a space where he can stage and then dematerialize these absolutist forms of power. Marvell demonstrates how the debate regarding union and division in each poem is really an argument about the nature and potential excesses of sovereign power. He does this by constructing a poetics in which his delineations of the political, as well as his own provisional status as an author, call into question the various formations of national identity put forward in these early and late satires. By entangling the political and the aesthetic, Marvell is able to imagine deeper, more abiding kinds of human attachment that transcend national boundaries and limit the exercise of sovereign power.

Thinking the Question of Religious Minorities in Colonial South Asia

This conceptual essay pivots on the following problem: Tethered to a context of Muslim empire, how is the legacy of the premodern Islamic legal tradition engaged and negotiated in the modern colonial moment in South Asia, marked by the loss of Muslim political sovereignty and the emergence of South Asian Muslims as a minority community? It engages this question through the example of intra-Muslim debates and contestations on the boundaries of friendship between Muslims and non-Muslims in modern South Asia, with a focus on the thought of certain prominent traditionalist ‘ulama’.

Philanthropy and the Jewish Diaspora in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

The rise of nationalism in Europe, the mass migration to the United States, and the dramatic transformations in the world following World War I were accompanied by an ongoing deterioration in the position of East European Jewry and led to changes in the patterns of governance in the Jewish world. The importance of the organizations addressed in this chapter transcended their philanthropic and political activity in France, Britain, Germany, and America. This manifested in the international nature of their activity, their power to shape the various Jewish communities, and the sense of international Jewish solidarity that they nurtured through their very existence. These Jewish organizations endeavored to create a Jewish nationalism that played down elements of territorial concentration and political sovereignty, opposed the concept of rejection of the diaspora, and emphasized the moral components of Judaism.

Celebrating the Diaspora

Few people today are familiar with the ideas and personalities associated with Jewish diaspora nationalism, or “autonomism,” as it was often called. The creation of the State of Israel has made the central premise of autonomism, the notion of the diaspora as the primary locus of Jewish intellectual and cultural creativity and the authentic home of the Jewish people, seem irrelevant. Jewish national identity has become inextricably linked with political sovereignty and land. And despite a recent spate of scholarly works on the leading figures in the movement, diaspora nationalism remains a mere footnote in modern Jewish historiography. Yet little more than a century ago, advocates of Jewish national rights in the diaspora aggressively competed with Zionists for the hearts and minds of Jews living in the multinational empires of Austria-Hungary and Russia. In the period between the 1880s and the 1930s, the movement to ensure national rights for Jews played a major political and cultural role in the Jewish communities of eastern and central Europe and among immigrants in the United States. This chapter examines some of the leading proponents of “autonomism,” including Simon Dubnow, the Bund, Nathan Birnbaum, Haim Zhitlowski, and Simon Rawidowicz. A conclusion discusses Jewish diasporist thinkers in western Europe and in the United States in the era after the Second World War.

The Sovereign’s Beatitude

Though it may sound awkward to ask whether the political sovereign is happy or unhappy, the question is relevant to political theory, especially within a political theological perspective. Because man was created in the image of God, human happiness needs to be a reflection of divine beatitude, and as divine sovereignty is, at least analogically, related to political sovereignty, the conceptual coherence is secured. The main argument is, however, that the analogy does not hold. I shall show how St Thomas Aquinas’s short treatment of God’s beatitude may mislead us about power, fame, riches, and dignity being essential to happiness, based on an analysis of Franz Kafka’s major novel, The Castle, and a few other writings by him. I shall argue that our tradition of political thinking and behavior remains ambivalent on this issue. The political sovereign is born out of our unhappy condition, yet its power, fame, riches, and glory suggests to us that it has appropriated our happiness. But for this very reason it cannot be happy, and it therefore suggests a false analogy between the divine and the political sovereign. It is fundamentally at variance with our happiness, which incites us to abandon, reject, and eventually, kill it.

Soil, territory, land: The spatial politics of settler organic farming in the West Bank, Israel/Palestine

In settler colonial settings, agriculture is a means of reclaiming territorial sovereignty and indigenous identity. Turning attention to the Jewish settlers in the West Bank and their multiple uses and abuses of organic farming, this article explores epistemic and political spatial operations on the colonial frontier. Applying a relational conceptualization of three spatial modalities—soil, territory, and land—we explore the ways in which these modalities serve as political apparatuses: Soil designates the romantic perception of cultivable space, territory is concerned with borders and political sovereignty, and land is seen as a space of economic value and as a means of production. While agriculture is a well-known instrument of expansion and dispossession, organic farming contributes to the colonial operation by binding together affective attachment to the place, and new economic singularity in relation to environmental and ethical claims. We argue that organic farming practices converge claims for local authenticity, spatial appropriation, and high economic values that are embedded in what we term the colonial quality turn. Ultimately, organic farming in the West Bank normalizes the inherent violence of the colonial project and strengthens the settlers’ claim for political privilege.

Contesting Civilization: Louis Riel’s Defence of Culture at the Collège de Montréal

A newly discovered manuscript of a debate between two college students sheds new light on Louis Riel’s experience in Montreal. By the time the young Métis left Montreal, he was an accomplished public speaker with a sophisticated understanding of Canadian society and culture. This article argues that Riel’s education was not isolating and frustrating but, rather, encouraged him to engage with public issues and moral reform. It demonstrates that Riel, in responding to the debate sparked by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, could engage meaningfully with Western theories of civilization. This debate is examined in the light of mid-nineteenth-century elite Catholic education, missionary and colonial thought, the nature of the civilizing mission, and Riel’s theories of political sovereignty. Tracing Riel’s unique intellectual genealogy provides insight into the diverse and dynamic ways Indigenous people experienced colonialism. Finally, it offers a critique of the “colonial archive,” particularly when it comes to Indigenous identities. Ultimately, Riel was a successful student who could act as an exemplar of “Western civilization” while confidently maintaining his own identity as an Indigenous person.

The Islamic Fundamentalism in Southeast Asia (The Case of Indonesia and Malaysia)

Islamic fundamentalism as a stream of Extremist claim a return to the true Islam and no compromise with the modern world has transformed the scene inside the country and in international relations as a threat and a serious contender in today's society. In fact, after September 11, 2001, expanded a serious debate about Islamic fundamentalism around the world. But it can be difficult to provide an overview of the history of political violence in which the phenomenon of Islamic fundamentalism as its starting point after September 11, is not mentioned. However, before the date mentioned in international studies, there are also traces of fundamentalism, But what is known today as the new form of Islamic fundamentalism, since 2011 and after the rise of the Middle East, was raised around the world and to create the challenges of Political sovereignty and security for the world's most strategic regions such as Europe and then Southeast Asia (especially Indonesia and Malaysia). Therefore, this research tries to answer this question: what is the most important factor in challenging the political sovereignty of states in Southeast Asia (especially Indonesia and Malaysia). The hypothesis is Islamic fundamentalism is a rival and threat against the sovereignty and national security of Indonesia and the Philippines. The result of this study explains and demonstrates the presence and role of Islamic fundamentalism in Indonesia and Malaysia as a serious challenge in the security-political reality of these countries. Therefore, this study seeks to recognize and address the challenges and threats that are faced by these two-country with the growth of Islamic fundamentalism.

Pak-Iran Relations Possibilities And Restrictions

This research paper intend to analyse the Pak-Iran economic and non-economic ties in view of local and international remonstrances stemmed post 1979. This would probe the inward and outward remonstrances to the link, mainly the part of India and US. This would too analyse possibilities accessible to both allies for enhancing their ties in to boost its worth and endurance. Pakistan is a Muslim state that is influenced by the U.S. averting the free growth of its society and throbbing its political sovereignty. At the same time, India is increasing its impact in South Asian security complex through creating bonds with the west surrounding states of Pakistan. The US-Indo tactical bond is also demarcating the equilibrium of strength in India’s benefit; thus, Pakistan is pressurized on east and west and critically risking the exterior security situation of the country. This study analyses Pak-Iran tie in view of this nexus of ties among the asserting and collaborating powers.