When:
Friday, March 26, 2021 12:00 PM
-
1:30 PM
Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs
Sovereignty, Order and Conflict presents
Sovereignty in Drag: On Fakes,
Foreclosure, and Unbecoming States
A
growing ethnographic literature demonstrates the mundane practices through
which both the state and sovereignty are performed. This article asks at what
point such performances succeed or where they may fail, even for those enacting
them. The article builds on long-term research in an unrecognized state, the
“Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus,” which is often called a pirate or
pseudo-state and which has undergone several decades of international
isolations. Since the early 2000s, however, Turkish Cypriots have experienced
the closer integration of their “state” into the global economy and transnational
institutions. This has resulted in international engagement with their “state”
that has made it appear more “real,” even as, paradoxically, citizens have
developed their own pervasive discourse of pseudo-ness. The article uses
examples of engagement with the unrecognized entity to show how, in the context
of globalization, citizens learn, in their daily lives, to perform their state
as a “state,” persistently calling attention to the made-up nature of their
sovereignty claims. The article develops the concept of the unbecoming to refer
to entities that are foreclosed from their inception, as well as the unsuitable
or unfitting form that such entities acquire when certain desires are always
already impossible.
Rebecca Bryant
Professor of Cultural Anthropology
Utrecht University
Rebecca Bryant is a Professor of Cultural Anthropology at
Utrecht University and an anthropologist of politics and law. She has published
numerous books and articles. Her work has focused on ethnic conflict and
displacement, border practices, post-conflict reconciliation, and contested
sovereignty on both sides of the Cyprus Green Line and in Turkey.
Co-sponsored by the Department of Anthropology and the Center for European Studies
Click here to register
For more information please contact, Ryan Griffiths, rgriff01@syr.edu or to request additional accommodation arrangements, please contact Morgan Bicknell, mebickne@syr.edu.