Reading 1

● What is stamp paper?

An affidavit is a piece of paper containing an official signature/stamp which confirms the
veracity of a fact. It can be both judicial and non-judicial. It is used in affidavits, rental
agreements, and property etc., They use existing social structures and hierarchy to get
around the law. We need to use dubious means with the assistance of stamp paper to get
around the law because there is a conflict of interests or following the procedure is
tedious and cumbersome.
● Why does the law act as an obstacle?
Abiding by the law is something we all have agreed to. However, sometimes following it
is a hassle-ridden and time-consuming process. The law usually does not benefit the
people it was originally made for and is used by others with more power or falls before
the existing social structures of power and class.
● Stamp paper becomes important as people hold on to any sign of authority. This
happens as it helps them to alleviate their marginalisation. People like Vimlaji are
on the fringes of society/law for them any signature helps a lot. When you are a
marginalized citizen, your relationship with the law is conflicted. This is true for a
lot of marginalized groups like migrants, lower caste, tribals etc.,
● If the law is not treating everyone equally, then why are we dealing with it?
There are certain institutionalized forces.
The relationship is still not clear.
● The state strongly prohibits violence, what is its reason to do so?
It aims to safeguard its own monopoly of power.
The law addresses certain populations directly.
The people who are at the margin of the law address the law very differently.
Sometimes these people decide to take the law into their own hands (Ex:
Maoists) out of frustration.
 Power is not equivalent to violence. From one point of view, the State has agreed
through the constitution that it will not indulge in violence. Violence is used when
the State seeks to safeguard the existing status quo and existing social structures.
Social hierarchies transform themselves into legal hierarchies and make it difficult
for marginalised people to use the law.
❖ Illocutionary Force
The law has an articulating and truth-generating power. Once it is on stamp
paper, the person feels like he has a legal currency of truth and that gives
him security. The person holding the stamp paper feels secure due to the
authority accorded to the stamp paper.
Stamp paper is a portable, transparent and durable piece of communicative
technology. The Law becomes arrogant after providing this kind of
transparency.
The law gives a medium to generate transparency from social opacity due to its
authority. It gives legal transparency to opaque truth and gives its holders a sense of
security.
❖ Legal Artefact
• FIR, chargesheet, etc are legal artefacts. An artefact is an object that
inspires some discreteness. Some separateness.
• Everyday life means the mundane routine and how law plays a role in the
everyday life. You showing an Aadhar card etc.
• Sovereign life of laws is like a journalist going to cover a story at a crime
scene.
• The law’s sovereign life is within the spectacle. It is spectacular.
• Seemingly contradictory as it seems like it is transparent and provides
justice. But in reality, it is actually quite opaque. It seems objective but it is
actually subjective.
● The stamp- paper is a source of revenue for the State. The tax-paying
subject indirectly becomes a funder for mundane truths.
● In the article, we see how an uneducated person, Vimlaji, cleverly uses the
stamp paper as a means of scaring her son and negotiating her social reality.
The very character of the stamp paper which may/may not carry the
authority of the State was enough to scare her son. The paper may not carry
any legal value and social value to urban privileged people but for
underprivileged people like Vimlaji, these papers contain a social value.
These false papers contain the social values of fear and authority which
help the carrier negotiate.
● If official documents hover between ‘threat’ and ‘guarantee’ Vimala
appropriated the menace of a fictional legal document and reconstituted it
as a guarantee of her safety, showing how contrary documentary
potentialities are available simultaneously, not merely to official against
communities but circulate through both. Her act of getting around the law
using the currency of legality is a distinctive feature of people like
Vimalji. Even the typists know of this and refer to people like her with
words like- anpadh, ganwaar, jaahil, or majboor.
● The anthropologist cannot understand this because she comes from a
privileged background and cannot understand the judicial entitlement the
stamp paper gives to entitled people and her use of the word ‘nakli’ is
misplaced.
● Stamp paper is also used to solemnise and break marriages. The presence of
the stamp on an affidavit saying that the marriage is solemnized gives it
legitimacy. Similarly, despite the Hindu Marriage Act saying that a divorce
deed is required to obtain a divorce, most typists have typed affidavits
saying that two individuals have divorced. This divorce is then solemnized
by the stamp. This divorce is legal for poor people. The problems with
 getting a court-decreed divorce, the six-month wait, the expense of hiring a
lawyer and the finality of it are cumbersome for poor people and they prefer
this route where — one could change one’s mind, and no one would suffer.
● While these ‘nakli’ documents are similar to the official ones in some ways
there are dissimilar in some. These dissimilarities can be easily interpreted
as an act of ‘infelicitous’ or ‘bad drafting’, ‘poor English’, ‘legal ignorance’
or ‘translation problems’. Such a legalistic view flattens the document’s
stubborn refusal to be subsumed into pre-existing legal genres and
categories, precisely through its mining of those categories and its
simultaneous ability to rely on a tranche of cultural memories, social and
writing practices and political ideas of the foundations of authority and
ethical norms, which are constantly archived, circulated, duplicated and
rearranged.
● To conclude with the stamp paper as a legal instrument of levying tax on
written ‘instrumentalities’, such as divorce, property and identificatory
documents that can serve as legally valid proof in a court of law. The stamp
paper’s ability to proliferate outside of the legal frames of truth and revenue
and to inhabit the worlds of the sacred and aesthetic, and carry traces of
talismanic power even as it performs everyday bureaucratic tasks,
demonstrates how legal objects fabricate their own history.
● How does ethnography help us in learning about the law?
It tells us about the existing social realities and the law's implementation.
Ghosh uses this method by using stamp paper as a medium. To do so she
visits the Patiala courthouse and interviews various individuals like
Vimlaji, the typists and notaries. All these people have different
interactions with the stamp paper and the law as a result. Vimlaji doesn’t
want to go through the actual legal process but she is enamoured by the rule
of law and authority. This is expressed through her desperation to get a
‘nakli affidavit’ even though she knows it has no actual legal value but she
 knows of its social value and that it will be enough to assist her to negotiate
her social reality. Ghosh’s second interviewee, the typist, knows the
existing social realities and is well aware of the power of the stamp paper.
He is enthralled by the charisma of the law but still is very sympathetic to
the plight of the underprivileged. Through these interactions, we observe
how there is an extra-legal system created by the inaccessibility and
sluggishness of the law.
The word illocutionary refers to the declarative function of the law.
Engel Reading:

Reading notes:

Merry, Violence Against Women

Introduction

● Three approaches to gender violence in Hilo, Hawaii: feminist batterer intervention

program (state-funded social service agency), Pentecostal Christian church, and
indigenous Hawaiian family problem-solving process called ho'oponopono
● Each group defines the problem of gender violence differently and has a unique vision for
ideal gender relationships
● Each group draws on imported ideas about violence and gender, translated into the local
context
● This highlights the influence of global movements in shaping local approaches to gender
violence
● Approach 1: Feminist Batterer Intervention Program
● Based on feminism and a concept of rights
● Prioritizes women's safety and advocates for an egalitarian gender order
● Encourages women in danger to separate from their partners
● Teaches negotiation as a means to increase trust, love, and sexual pleasure for non-
violent partners
● Criminalizes the batterer and emphasizes victim's rights
● State-funded social service agency
● Approach 2: Pentecostal Christian Church
● Based on conservative Christian notions of salvation, healing, and Biblical authority
● Emphasizes gender complementarity and resists divorce
● Ideal family structure places husband under the authority of God and wife under the
authority of the husband
● Teaches women to submit to their husbands, use gentle words to diffuse conflict, and
pray to dislodge demonic influences
● Uses scriptural counseling based on Biblical quotations
● Large church
● Approach 3: Indigenous Hawaiian Family Problem-Solving Process (ho'oponopono)
● Descends from an ancient Native Hawaiian family problem-solving process
● Based on concepts of repentance, forgiveness, and reconciliation
● Emphasizes family and community responsibility for conflict
● Seeks reunification of family experiencing conflict, but unrepentant individuals can be
exiled
● Ideal relationship between husband and wife based on mutual respect
● Recently infused with ideas from psychiatry and alternative dispute resolution
● Network of practitioners providing services for drug treatment and social problems
● Conclusion
● Each approach to gender violence in Hilo, Hawaii draws on global movements and ideas
● The process of appropriation and translation differs between each group
● These local approaches highlight the influence of global movements in shaping local
strategies for addressing gender violence.
● In this passage, the author explores the convergence of different ideologies and
techniques used in three different organizations working towards reducing gender
violence in Hilo, Hawai'i. The author identifies a shared similarity among these
organizations in their emphasis on techniques of personal transformation, despite their
vastly different ideologies. The author argues that this shared emphasis on the creation of
the modern self is a result of the market-driven professionalization of these organizations
and their need for financial support.

● Themes:

● The Role of Self-Management in Gender Violence Reduction Programs

● The author notes that all three organizations emphasized self-management as a solution to
the problem of gender violence. These organizations encouraged men and women to take
responsibility for their actions, control their feelings, and build self-esteem. They used
psychotherapeutic techniques to manage their emotions and encouraged clients to
recognize their feelings as a way of managing them.

● The Intersection of Ideologies and Personal Transformation Techniques

● Despite their differences in ideologies, the organizations in Hilo adopted similar
techniques for personal transformation. The author argues that this convergence is a
result of the market-driven professionalization of these organizations and their need for
financial support. By adopting these techniques, these organizations contributed to the
absorption of marginalized populations into the project of modernity while also
protecting women.

● Resistance to Personal Transformation Techniques

● The author notes that many men resist these techniques of personal transformation,
particularly those that require a redefinition of masculinity. They may brag about their
sexual prowess, joke about controlling women and resist the legal regime that defines
them as criminals. Women may also resist these techniques because they hope that their
partners will change on their own or because they are afraid to go forward with
 prosecution.

● Gender Violence in Windward Hawai'i

● Location: The article is set in Hilo, a small port city in windward Hawaii. The location is
significant because it is home to a diverse population with mixed ancestries and a history
of colonialism and marginalization.
● Post Industrial and post plantation society: The region has transitioned from a sugar
plantation economy to a post industrial and post plantation society with significant
unemployment and a growing marijuana production industry. This has led to a culture of
guns, drugs, and violence, including domestic violence.
● Increase in gender violence: There has been a significant increase in cases of violence
against women in Hilo over the past 25 years, with a rise in calls to the police, requests
for protective orders, and arrests for abuse of a family or household member.
● Help-seeking: The increase in court cases of wife beating reflects both an increase in
battering and a willingness by victims to seek help from the law. Victims are taking the
initiative to call the police and ask for restraining orders.
● Feminist violence control program: The research covers changes in the feminist
violence control program between 1991 and 2000 and the shifts in the church approach
and Native Hawaiian program. The article is based on ethnographic observations,
interviews with practitioners, and observations of court proceedings, the violence control
program, the probation office, and the prosecutor's office.

● The Alternatives to Violence Program

● Main points:
● The Family Crisis Shelter imported the Duluth model to create the Alternatives to
Violence (ATV) program in 1986.
● ATV included a batterer intervention program and a women's support group.
● The judiciary funded the ATV programs for batterers and provided staff to assist victims
filing restraining order petitions.
● ATV was the only non-prison option for batterers in town, and the judiciary referred all
battering cases to it.
● The program served 647 clients referred by the judiciary in the years 1992-3.
● The program received funding from the judiciary and United Way, but experienced
financial shortfalls by 2000.
● A research study funded by the judiciary in 1993 investigated the effectiveness of the
men's programs statewide, but found sparse statistics and difficulty gathering recidivism
data from police reports.
● The program changed substantially in the mid-1990s, eroding its privileged status within
the judiciary, and its major funding source.
● The program expanded into a large and complex organization with two shelters and two
batterer intervention programs, and a budget of over one million dollars.
● The Executive Director hired staff without professional degrees, leading to accusations of
incompetence by some members of the board and staff.
● The program moved from an egalitarian feminist organization to a more hierarchical
structure.
● Incidents involving civil rights violations, "fiscal improprieties," and theft charges led to
the resignation of the Executive Director in 1993 and her replacement by a professional
Executive Director with a Master's degree.
● Several experienced facilitators and the original ATV Director left, some setting up
competing programs, claiming that the new ATV was no longer feminist.
● By that time, there were about six alternative batterer intervention programs in town, as
well as private therapists offering anger management programs.
● The program for men was redirected toward a new model called Healthy Realization in
1998, which is a more supportive approach to batterer retraining that encourages men to
build self-esteem and focuses on improving their psychological functioning.
● The new approach emphasizes positive features, with discussions being less didactic.
● Participants are less often required to fill out anger and control logs, and instead,
encouraged to think about themselves in positive ways while learning to recognize and
avoid their violence.
● ATV's approach to gender violence shifted from viewing it as a product of oppression to
an individual psychological characteristic.
● The program sees battering as a result of low self-esteem and an inability to understand
feelings in a society that allows men to express their self-doubt violently.
● The new approach is part of a broader psychotherapeutic theory of human behaviour.
● Program strategies focus on building men's self-esteem and looking for their strengths,
communicating that battering is wrong, and promoting gender equality.
● The analysis of structures of domination has become less prominent in the program.
● The change in ATV's ideology and practices was influenced by ideas imported from the
US mainland, including the Duluth model and psychotherapeutic approaches to change.
● The program has lost some of its critical edge due to pressure to change.
● The program's strategies increasingly focus on feelings, including feeling good about
oneself, deciding how to act, and learning how to get along.
● The theory of protecting children from violence has replaced patriarchy as a prominent
topic.
● The goal was to reinterpret Hawaiian beliefs in psychological terms while also validating
them.
● In the 1980s, the Neighborhood Justice Center in Honolulu suggested ho'oponopono as
an alternative to mediation, but it differs from mediation in its holistic approach.
● Ho'oponopono is now part of a growing global movement promoting restorative justice,
many of which are based on indigenous peoples' judicial mechanisms.
● In 1986, the Family Crisis Shelter adopted the Duluth model to create the Alternatives to
Violence (ATV) program, which included a batterer intervention program and a women's
support group.
● ATV received more funding for retraining men than for providing shelter services for
women and children, as the judiciary funded the program for batterers and paid staff to
assist victims filing restraining order (TRO) petitions.
● The judiciary referred all battering cases to ATV in the late 1980s and early 1990s,
making it the only non-prison option for batterers in town.
● In 1993, the judiciary funded a research study to investigate the effectiveness of men's
programs statewide, which found that program statistics were generally sparse, reflecting
the press of work and lack of staffing.
● By the mid-1990s, ATV had expanded into a large and complex organization with an
annual budget of well over one million dollars, but it was experiencing financial
shortfalls.
● Several incidents in the early 1990s, involving accusations of civil rights violations by
some staff, "fiscal improprieties" and charges of theft against the Executive Director, led
to her resignation in 1993 and to her replacement by a professional Executive Director
with a Master's degree.
● The early egalitarian feminist organization of ATV was gradually replaced by a more
hierarchical structure, and some members of the board and staff thought that hiring staff
without professional degrees for the shelters was a mistake, claiming that some of these
people were incompetent.
● By the mid-1990s, several of the experienced facilitators and the original ATV Director
left, and some set up competing programs, claiming that the new ATV was no longer
feminist..
● In 1998, ATV redirected its program for men toward a new model called Healthy
Realization, which is a more supportive approach to batterer retraining that focuses on
building self-esteem and improving psychological functioning. Discussions are less
didactic, and participants are encouraged to think about themselves in positive ways
while learning to recognize and avoid violence.

● Pentecostal Beginnings; Healing Gender Violence;

● The passage mentions that the Native Hawaiian pastor has taken a different path in
addressing gender violence. Here are some possible pointers to explain this:
● The passage does not provide detailed information about the specific ideas from the
Hawaiian sovereignty movement that the pastor draws on, but it suggests that these ideas
are distinct from the mainstream approaches discussed earlier in the text.
● The Hawaiian sovereignty movement is a political and cultural movement that seeks to
restore Native Hawaiian self-determination and autonomy. It challenges the legacy of
 colonization and the marginalization of Native Hawaiian people and culture.
● One possible implication is that the pastor's approach to gender violence is grounded in a
broader critique of power relations and historical injustice that goes beyond individual
psychology or religious teachings. The pastor may see gender violence as one
manifestation of colonial violence and cultural erasure and may prioritise collective
healing and empowerment rather than individual counselling or exorcism.
● It is also possible that the pastor's approach incorporates Native Hawaiian cultural
practices and values that are not explicitly Christian or psychotherapeutic. For example,
the pastor may draw on concepts of aloha (love, compassion, and harmony), kapu (sacred
law), or ho'oponopono (conflict resolution) to address gender violence in a culturally
relevant and holistic way.
● The passage suggests that the pastor's approach is not widely adopted by other churches
or organizations in Hawaii, and may face resistance or scepticism from those who adhere
to more mainstream or imported approaches.
● Community: The Ho'oponopono Process;
● Ho'oponopono is a Native Hawaiian problem-solving process that is deeply spiritual,
used to resolve family problems through repentance and forgiveness. It cures or prevents
physical illness, depression, or anxiety by discovering the cause of the person's trouble,
resolving interpersonal problems, and untangling or freeing agents from transgressions by
apology and forgiveness.
● The revival of ho'oponopono in the 1980s and 1990s was led by a psychiatrist, a
psychologist, social workers, and Mary Kawena Pukui, as the Culture Committee of the
Queen Lili'uokalani Children's Center. They sought to build bridges between Western
ideas of mental health and Hawaiian ones and validate Hawaiian beliefs. During the
1980s and 1990s, ho'oponopono was developed as an alternative to the criminal justice
system. It has been incorporated into a global movement to promote forms of restorative
justice based on indigenous peoples' judicial mechanisms.
● Ho'oponopono works by gathering the family together to pray and ask the help of the
Akua or Gods to try to get to the heart of the problem and move the discussion through
recognizing the problem, repentance, forgiveness, and reconciliation. If a person refuses
to repent or go along with the group's views, he or she will be evicted from the family.
Ho'oponopono has been used to confront gender violence, and courts and probation
officers sometimes refer Native Hawaiians in battering situations to ho'oponopono. It has
retained its core features while evolving to meet new areas of social services and political
movements for indigenous peoples.

● Conclusion:

● Three approaches to violence against women based on rights, religion, and community
 begin from very different cultural places.
● The rights-based approach grew out of a feminist critique of patriarchy and relies
extensively on criminalization to protect women and show that violence is unacceptable.
● The religious approach criticizes secular society and offers an alternative social order
articulated in the Bible and based on religious experience and a hierarchical family order.
Transformation comes through spiritual experiences and the power of God.
● The community approach resituates the individual within a caring community of family
members who work toward reconciliation and forgiveness, with the understanding that
genuine repentance should be accepted, but failure to repent can mean exile.
● All three approaches use psychotherapeutic approaches that rely on understanding
feelings, making choices, and building self-esteem, but the particular identities they focus
on are quite disparate.
● Each of these three groups began from a critique of modern society and an effort to
contribute to its reformation. They established separate communities within which they
could construct a different kind of society and personhood.
● Over time, each group has gradually changed, moving away from its radical origins and
assimilating a more mainstream perspective.
● The moving force in each case was the pressure to maintain the organization, and each
moved away from its initial radical vision and adopted a more mainstream approach to
personal transformation to survive and grow.
● The colonization of these disparate discourses by modern technologies of the self is never
complete; its effect is not uniformity but similarities within distinct cultural spaces.
● The community approach emphasizes reconciliation and forgiveness within a caring
community. Although these approaches have disparate origins, they share similar
technologies of self-formation, including psycho-therapeutic approaches that focus on
understanding feelings, making choices, and building self-esteem.
● Each of these programs is aimed at relatively marginal people who are economically
vulnerable and relatively uneducated. These programs share homogeneity in the midst of
differences, as they rely on globalizing technology of the self, which emphasizes self-
management and self-restraint.
● Despite being founded on radical critiques of modern society, these programs have
gradually assimilated more mainstream perspectives. The pressure to maintain the
organization has driven each program to move away from its initial radical vision and
adopt a more mainstream approach to personal transformation.

Class Discussion
What is meant by ‘technologies of the self’?
Aumita: To form organizations and project themselves in a way that makes them more palatable
in the modern power structure. For example, how the Church has remodelled itself after seeing
how it has gone out of sync with modernity.

Prof: - She says that it means how ‘technologies’ are created to heal and correct the self. She also
accepts Aumita’s point. - Practices that one adopts to generate a certain script of the self.

‘Carceral Feminism’ - Punishing Gender Violence

‘Receiving Modernity’ - Everyone is feeling a pressure to more modern which translates into a
different message

‘Reify’ - Reduce any idea to its basics

● Class Notes:
● During the class discussion, we talked about transnational pressures that are felt at the
local level, especially in Hawaii. These pressures are the dominant global ideas that are
affecting the actions of NGOs operating in the area. She explained how these NGOs are
adapting and changing their modus operandi from gender violence to psychotherapy or
counseling.
● Primary Response to Domestic Violence:
● The primary response to domestic violence is to ensure the victim's safety and file a
police complaint. However, the victim is often reluctant to approach the police, and
societal rehab methods and other community-based responses are being explored to
address the issue.
● Societal Correction of Justice:
● Engels argued that societal correction of justice or injustice should be dealt with at a
communal level. The failure of society to ethically train its subjects, particularly men, is a
contributing factor to domestic violence. Therefore, the community as a whole should
take the responsibility to curb this menace. Engels pointed out that three methods are
being used to grapple with this problem using different perspectives.
● Anthropologists and Gender Violence:
● Engels criticized our liberal tolerance towards those who do not share our viewpoints.
Anthropologists, on the other hand, are trained to drop judgment and sit with anyone
without judging them. Gender violence is not only a concern of the liberal feminist
movement; even the church is concerned about gender violence, although it does not
believe in the free agency of women.
● Technology of Self:
● Engels introduced the concept of the technology of self. This refers to how we use certain
practices, such as brushing teeth, to shape ourselves. The modalities of the self are micro-
practices that are scripted in our lives on a daily basis and help shape the modern self.
She explained how the three entities- NGOs, the church, and the court- receive
modernities differently and are feeling the pressure to be more modern than they
currently are.
 ● NGOs as Vehicles of Global Superior Morality:
● NGOs are the agency of the global political/moral economies. They cannot afford a
strong moral stance, as opposed to a state that can assert a strong moral code. NGOs
became vehicles of global superior morality from the developed world to the developing
world. The feminist NGO has superiority in the know-how of how to protect women and
how to address men as opposed to the church.
● Transformation from Punitive to Restorative Forms of Justice:
● Engels argued that the three entities are changing with consonance with and are
influencing each other all the time. There is a transformation from punitive to restorative
forms of justice. The notion of guilt is being done away with or mellowed down. Engels
discussed the tension between the courts and the Hoponopono model, a simplistic model
of behavior that is connected to the community, sociological, and cosmological
equilibrium that they are trying to form.
● Society-Ecology and God:
● The Hoponopono model acts as a way of alternative dispute resolution and strives to be
far from a modern entity. Its existence is at the tangent of many entities that are the
phenomenon of the modern world- the church, carceral feminism- and tries to find
balance between society, ecology, and god. The Hoponopono model is an attempt to reify
something with basic functions kept intact.
● Feasibility of Applying these Principles in the Legal System:
● Engels discussed whether it is feasible to apply these principles in the legal system. She
argued that there is a need for a more restorative system where every act is done within a
meta, and the community introspects as a whole to find balance. However, the question
remains whether it is feasible to apply these principles in the legal system.
● Marginalized Section of Society.
Shashank continued the discussion by emphasizing the importance of education and
training for marginalized sections of society. He talked about how these individuals can
be empowered to acquire skills and get a job, and then reflect on whether or not it was a
good decision for them. He also brought up the idea of therapeutic justice, where the
focus is on restoring relationships rather than punishing the offender.
● The discussion concluded with the class reflecting on the importance of promoting a
more restorative and community-based approach to justice.
● They talked about the need to shift away from punitive measures and towards approaches
that focus on repairing harm and restoring relationships.
● The class agreed that this would require a fundamental shift in the way we think about
justice, and that it would require the involvement and participation of communities at all
levels.

Reading 3 : Ather Zia

Reading notes
● This is another ethnographic study. This time documents or government papers
have become the medium for revealing the complexities faced by family members
and activists in finding their ‘disappeared’ kin.
● The papers become tangible proof/remembrance of the disappeared kin whom the
government portrays as non-existent.
● The documents are kept in a ubiquitous plastic bag and act as the ultimate proof of
the disappeared kin’s existence and his eventual enforced disappearance. The
documents are kept with the aim of attracting questions and raising more
awareness about the disappearance but they are characterized by the elements of
government papers i.e., unhelpful and obfuscating official vocabulary.
● The documents are usually office memos, inane flyers, and circulars from
government offices pertaining to the issue of disappearances, which are of little
consequence to the case.
● The family of the disappeared kin regard the documents as a ‘rafiq’, a friend, who
brings no ‘rafaqat’, succour.
● At first the bag does not seem to be significant, except for its ubiquity, since
almost all the APDP activists carry such bags during the protests, for, as they say,
it “might be needed.” Once one gets to know the activists and the families, this
bag of documents takes on a heightened presence
● Most bags that I handled were worn out and distended by the sheer volume of
kakad/kagzaat (documents/ paperwork) collected over the years. The motif of the
bag that contains the file encapsulates a routine that makes the disappeared
“present” and is also a physical presence on the women’s bodies when they carry
the bag around.
● How is countermemory produced, and how does it undergird the nature of these women’s
everyday lives? What is the affect countermemory infuses into their activism? The
women create a counter to what the government is either documenting or purging and
disseminating against the people who have been disappeared. In some cases the denial on
the part of the government forces is so severe that the kin is accused of alleging
 disappearance of a person who probably did not even exist. In such cases not only is the
physical body gone but even memory is threatened.
● It was less about getting justice, which she saw as almost impossible, but more to affirm
the memory of her son and the realness of his existence. It is in these affective crevices
that memory stays and the flag of resistance against the erasure that the militarized
government enforces flies high. These become modes of countermemory and ways of
remembering that emerge and that must be acknowledged as acts of resistance and
agency as good as any other institutional modes. Even if they are not generative of
tangible forms of justice, they certainly are intent upon it.
● It happened with striking coincidence with other kin-activists as well, where the file was
produced as a form of truth. Culled from the documents of the government’s own
institutions, it seemed to be a supplement to the women’s experience. The file became an
artifact laden with affect, even if the documents themselves did not establish the
disappearance in strict legal terms. The collection of documents amassed by the activists
—that is, the file— appears as a central motif of countermemory, of loss, and of a
subaltern power. I understand this file as an archive that the women activists collect and
curate as a site of preservation and propagation of a traumatic history. Contrary to what
we might expect of an archive, it is not housed in a building of great architectural worth
connected to the state. This archive is not housed in a stately building and safe vaults but
is found in nondescript tote bags hanging from the ceiling or kept in tin trunks. But this
archive is always in a safe place. I use the term “archive” to elucidate the centrality of the
documents. They do not fit what one imagines an archive to be, but then,
● It is filled with FIR Copies, missing reports,statements before police and/or magistrates,
police final reports etc.,The bag of documents is filled with nonseninsencial bureaucratic
papers which have no real value. Some of them are filled with Parchis which re referrals
from one government officer to another regarding the ase, but the family still collects.
● Apart from the official documents directly or indirectly pertaining to the disappearance,
the files contain paperwork concerning the life of the disappeared, such as a birth
certificate, proof of residence, employment confirmations, even school report cards and
diplomas. Even though these documents do not help the case, they are present for the
specific purpose of building the life narrative of the disappeared.
● The performance of the file is an important event which is undertaken by the social
workers.This performative aspect includes explaining each document at length,
interspersed with retelling anecdotes from the life of the disappeared, often from birth up
until the event of the disappearance. The file seems to stand in for the disappeared and
assign a space, offering visibility to what was made invisible.
● The documents visibilze the disappeared and give them a presence. This presence
provides a counter to the government’s oppression because it is in writing i.e credible.
The government then plays a unwilling role in visibilizing the disappeared.
● In this context the file as an embodiment of countermemory to the government’s
imposition of erasure of the disappearance becomes pivotal in shaping the resistance
 against oppression. It also reveals the paradox of government functioning in Kashmir: it
is only institutions or agents of the government who can “authorize” the pieces of paper
into any form of memorial or other value. So here we find the government at odds with
itself, even if in the long run it does not help the cases. The documentation collected by
the activists and kin becomes a part of a repertoire that constitutes the politics of
mourning and becomes a performative site, sometimes as an extension of the bodies of
the women, and vice versa.
● In the context of such silencing, how is memory produced? How does it stay, create, and
inform? During a time of unspeakable violence, it seems like the space for memory is
constricted—which does not mean forgetting or that no one remembers. While the
government is in the process of thwarting memory through repressive erasure, we see
countermemory materializing.
● Counter-memory looks to the past for the hidden histories excluded from dominant
narratives . . . counter-memory focuses on localized experiences with oppression, using
them to reframe and refocus dominant narratives purporting to represent universal
experience.
● Despite the nonexistence of documents like the FIR, which would establish Syed
Ahmed’s disappearance in front of the law, Zooneh’s file stands in as a mark of the
disappearance. It becomes a sign, a countermemory. “Each time the court gives me a
new tareekh, it admits each time that I am accusing them of disappearing my son.” In this
liminal space before the law, Zooneh ensures that she fills the archival gap and creates
the file as a unique archival embodiment, despite the physical irretrievability of her son.
This process becomes a manifestation of the affective law.
● The file, as Matthew Hull (2012: 127) has explained in the context of South Asian
bureaucracies, is as “technology for materially enacting an authoritative decision, for
making decisions out of various utterances and action.” Likewise, for the kin the file
becomes a way to materially enact the disappeared.
● Among the families of the disappeared, opening a file formally in an office (a process
commonly called file kholen or khulawen) is seen as an important step in initiating the
search for the disappeared. Even though the official and judicial procedures are
disappointing, the activists compel all new members to “urgently open a file.” The
initiation of the file in an administrative office, court, or the SHRC becomes almost like a
conception or seeding, only after which the case can gestate.
● The absence of the FIR is an analytic for understanding how the file is a site of affect and
the politics of mourning. Instead of the FIR being a tangible paper entity that I could hold
in my hand, where it existed, Hameeda performed the “complaint” before me, albeit
inversely. In a similar manner, each time they answered a question about the
nonexistence of an FIR, most of the APDP activists performed its absence. Thus the
activists, through performative narrations, themselves embody the FIR’s absence from
their archive. In this way the file becomes part of the repertoire that has been uniquely
fashioned to trace the disappeared through an imaginative reconstitution.
 ● Dead people can be acknowledged and mourned for. There are social practices and
customs that tell us how to get closure from death. But what happens with a disappeared
person? The family never gets closure.The disappeared, however, exists as a perpetually
living specter that lurks by the door in that knock that is always about to come. There is
no closure. The disappeared is always within reach in the entrails of the carceral system
— a flip of a page away in jail rosters.Since the disappeared is nowhere, he is
everywhere, a strange presence inciting to action and acts of memory. The disappearance
might have occurred in the past, but the disappeared is always present.
● A file, according to Mathew Hull (2012: 129), is a “time bomb” for bureaucrats. It can go
off anytime. Especially in the politically volatile scenario of Kashmir, if the officers
diverge from generic memoing and write something proprietary, it might come back to
haunt them. Thus the file becomes a haunting in the government archives, where it stays
dormant, awaiting operations that are deferred endlessly.
● A file talks; it does not die.”7 The “not dying” of the file is an important metaphor in
many ways. It is not only a haunting repository for producing knowledge about the
disappeared but it also fills a discursive and spatial lack of the disappeared individual; it
is an “affective archive.”
● Thus the affective archive is a shrine, a monument, a memory: resistance to forgetting
and a step toward justice. The archive becomes an outside memory, a presence
personified, a subversive museum sometimes filled with artifacts that the government
itself has endorsed, like memos or decrees or reports, or media write-ups.
● The mothers have marks on their body( Circumcision marks) which are another proof
that their dissapeared sons existed. They equate the disappearance to pregnancy and are
waiting for their sons to be born/ reappear.
●
Class Discussion

● This piece is particularly troubling as those of us who have loved in mainland India in
non - militarized.
● The women in question are not weak and helpless. They are, instead, fighters even when
they are ‘beating their chest’.
● Very likely the disappeared person is dead after they faced a lot of violence in custody.
● This is therefore state sponsored violence which is different violence that is socially
transacted. While, in the latter, you can invite the intervention of the state, there is very
rarely such an opportunity in the former. The former is also presented as legitimate. In
this way, the state becomes the sole legitimate arbiter of violence and monopolises social
violence.
● Violation of civil and political rights primarily occurs when the state falters in its duty to
offer humane treatment to even those who have done wrong. This is where questions of
human rights arise.
● When the person disappears, their presence is replaced by the ‘file’ - a collection of
 random official and non - official documents - which is a desperate attempt by the
mothers/ wives to get legitimacy from the law with respect to the disappeared.
● What is the law ‘saying’ when it does not say anything regarding a disappeared
person?
It is creating an ‘ambiguous truth’ - when the law is silent about something, it generates
ambiguity about the very truth - it denies legitimacy to that fact (modern term for it would be
gaslighting). Even something that is obviously true, the Indian state sometimes denies legitimacy
to it and almost ‘gaslights’ their family into accepting otherwise.

How does the law become invisible and a specter?

Ather Zia says that the law somehow ceases to exist when the good side of it is appealed. All the
constitutional protections and yada yada do not work and it becomes invisible which comes back
only to haunt its subjects.

Is this an aberration or the nature of law itself?

When we think about processes like these, the neutrality of law is brought into question. The
state does not initially reveal who it is siding with, it pretends to be impartial. When we
understand events like these, the nature of the state and its concomitant laws become clear.

● The state is capable of using the law to generate horrific injustices.

● Prof. would like us to move away from the idea that the law goes wrong only when it is
not followed. Wrong can be done even when something is absolutely grounded in the law
and perfectly legal.
Why does Matthew Hull call the file a ‘time bomb’?
The file acts as atime bomb. The bureaucrats cannot write anything apart from generic
bureaucratic replies as the activists can then use these file against them. The file becomes a
haunting presence in the government archives and acts as the proof of the missing person’s
existence. These are similar to the stamp papers in the sense that they carry a false sense of the
authority of the law but do not carry any legal value.

● The countermemory is of no consequence to the police but act as a salve to the victim’s
family. The files containing documents such as birth certifiacte, proof of residence and
school records act as life record or proof of the person’s existence and his/her life story.
They build the life narrative of the disappeared and offers visibility to the person who
was made to be disappeared.
● In face of documentary annihilation the mere possession of these documents seem to
substantiate the that the disappearance occured and by implication that the person existed.
● The files give proof that the memories in the somatic archive/ the mind exist. Even if the
State refuses to acknowledge the disappeared person, the files act as a prop to
acknowledge the existence.
● Among the families of the disappeared, opening a file formally in an office (a process
 commonly called file kholen or khulawen) is seen as an important step in initiating the
search for the disappeared. Even though the official and judicial procedures are
disappointing, the activists compel all new members to "urgently open a file." The
initiation of the file in an administrative office, court, or the SHRC becomes almost like a
conception or seeding, only after which the case can gestate.
● These archives both physical and somatic are counter memory and act as a pushback to
the hegemonic state narrative.
The difference between hegemony and dominance is that the former is internalised. Coined by
Gramsci. Hegemony is the state in which the person being oppressed is not aware that he/she is
being oppressed and willingly participates in the activities which are part of the hegemonic
structure

● Through Jabber’s account of searching for Mohsin, it becomes clear that it is in the nature
of the law to wear any kind of resistance down because it is ultimately interested in its
own survival. Through this account, Zia Ather substantiates her earlier point of how the
kind of resistance that APDP offers is likely to end up acceding to the authority of the
law itself.

Sally Engle and Zia Ather's writings differ in the sense that Engle focuses on institution while
Ather gives us the perspectives of people involved. Ather’s writing strikes us with sympathy and
pity over the state of her ethnographic subjects while Engle gives us an descriptive overview.

Reading Notes

● Mother’s cope and find solace in various ways to deal with the disappearance of their
sons. For example, Hableh whose son Rafiq disappeared a decade before Ather is writing
has taken to poetry to ‘versify her loss’.
● Often, the disappeared have a more vital presence than everyone surrounding their loved
ones. Their loved ones or those who are most affected by it see their presence and conjure
their memories at every instance and as a reaction to everything.
● The kin of the disappeared collect a ‘file’ on them. This consists of anything that even
slightly alludes to their existence. This collection of papers or kagad/kaagzaat is
generally kept in polythene or sturdy jute tote bags for their preservation.
● When cases of disappearance come to light in Kashmir, a familiar tendency of the
authorities is to deny the existence of the person itself. They also try and destroy all
remaining sources of evidence that might point to the person. However, this is often
thwarted as the kin of the person disappeared proceed to create a countermemory of this
person that runs against the narrative of the state through their file. The file thus acts as
an archive that is dedicated to this person and becomes an ‘affective crevice’.

The Specter of the File

● The ‘central motif’ of this countermemory is the file. It signifies loss and power of the
subaltern.
● Female kin of the disappeared have created an archive of sorts of the disappeared.
Everything that they once did or is public about them is steadily and patiently
documented and amassed into one single narrative of disappearance.

‘This archive is not housed in a stately building and safe vaults but is found in
nondescript tote bags hanging from the ceiling or kept in tin trunks. But this
archive is always in a safe place. I use the term “archive” to elucidate the
centrality of the documents. They do not fit what one imagines an archive to
be, but then, as Jacques Derrida (1996: 90) has written: “Nothing is less clear
today than the word ‘archive.’” I stretch the term “archive” to illustrate how
the file that is gathered document by document is curated and how it becomes
a physical and affective site where the disappeared becomes “present” and the
disappearance is established.’

● The reports that activists of the APDP create often use ‘official documents’ only so that
they can be ‘allowed to speak for themselves’.

‘The intention behind this choice was not to in any way undermine the
validity or significance of oral testimonies in speaking truth to power, but
was seen as a way of confronting the State with facts that it itself would
consider valid and beyond reproof. If official documents, produced by the
State’s own functionaries and institutions tell the “Official Truth,” the
documents in this report repeatedly and conclusively certify the
impossibility of justice in Jammu and Kashmir.’

● On the other hand, files that families of the disappeared curate can comprise of all kinds
of files - anything that mentions the disappeared even in the slightest. Most documents in
the file would not count for much before a court.
● These documents are obtained by employing a variety of methods which include bribing,
pleading or invoking pity.
● Even if a large number of these documents might prove to be useless in official terms
later, they are collected and preserved specifically for creating a story of the person’s life.
● Whenever asked anything about the disappeared, the kin of the disappeared refer to the
file and explain at length the contents of any document which is filled with personal
anecdotes and which inevitably traces the story of the disappeared right from birth to the
disappearance. Ather calls this ‘performing the file’.
● The file, in this way, assigns a space to the disappeared person even if they are not
themselves physically present.
Althusser

Chapter 4

Text notes

● · Althusser is a Marxist and focuses more on the base and superstructure theory of
the state.
● The State is the repressive apparatus.
● · There needs to be a distinction between State power( which is achieved after
revolution) and the repressive state apparatus( which continues to exist in some form or
the other even after revolution)
○ · The objective of the class struggle is the possession of state power and,
consequently, use of the state apparatus holding state power as a function of their
class objectives by the classes;
○ · The proletariat must seize state power in order to destroy the existing bourgeois
state apparatus; (first replacing it with a proletarian state apparatus, then
destroying all state power and state apparatuses altogether)
● ·Althusser acknowledges all of this and the "base and superstructure" theory of the state,
but he claims that the Marxist theory of the state is currently descriptive and has not yet
progressed to a more developed level.
● Retaining descriptive theory at the initial step makes it unstable. As a result, some
Marxists come to believe the state to be nothing more than a tool of dominance at the
disposal of the ruling class's conscious will. This is problematic in Althusser's view
because it "reinforces a bourgeois, instrumentalist-idealist conception of the state and a
bourgeois idealist (humanist) conception of social classes’ as subjects."
● · Althusser asserts that in order for the Marxist theory of the state to advance past the
descriptive stage, we must understand the mechanisms underlying the state's operation.
He wishes to "add something to the classic definition of the state as state apparatus" in
order to accomplish this.
● · According to him, the major issue with Marxist theory as it stands now is that is only
applicable to the realm of political practice. This fails to capture in theory form other
complexities that have already been experienced in the proletarian class struggle.
○ So, his novel contribution is through the concept of ideological state apparatuses,
as distinct from the repressive state apparatus (army, police, courts etc.) already
recognized in Marxist theory. The latter use actual, physical, direct violence.

· His provisional list of ideological state apparatuses:

● · the Scholastic Apparatus

● · the Familial Apparatus
● · the Religious Apparatus
● · the Political Apparatus
● · the Associative Apparatus
● · the Information and News Apparatus
● · the Publishing and Distribution Apparatus
● · the Cultural Apparatus

Ideological state apparatus

● 1. Each ISA is formed of corresponding institutions or organisations. They together

constitute a system. We cannot discuss a component without taking into consideration the
entire system.
● 2. Each ISA, although defined as ideological, is not reducible to the existence 'of
ideas' without concrete, material support. The ideology of each ISA is realized in material
institutions and material practices; but more importantly, these material practices are
‘anchored’ in non-ideological realities. E.g., the family as an ISA is anchored both in a
reality that is ideological (production/consumption unit) and biological (unit of
reproducing the human race)
● 3. Definition:“An Ideological State Apparatus is a system of defined institutions,
organizations, and the corresponding practices. Realized in the institutions, organizations,
and practices of this system is all or part (generally speaking, a typical combination of
certain elements) of the State Ideology. The ideology realized in an ISA ensures its
systemic unity on the basis of an 'anchoring' in material functions specific to each ISA;
these functions are not reducible to that ideology, but serve it as a 'support'.”
● 4. The difference between the state apparatus and these ISAs is that ISAs cannot be
called ‘repressive’ like the former because they do not use direct physical violence. Even
if they do, the use of physical violence is not manifest or dominant in them. Instead, they
primarily function through ideology, or rather, ideologization. On the other hand, state
apparatus uses violence first, ideology second
○ · Private institutions also are part of the state apparatus as they have to
conform to the State’s and the burgeois’s ideology to continue existing. By doing
so they become tools of dissemination of the State’s iseoloogy and become part of
the state apparatus.
● · “The system of each ISA, its existence, and its nature owe nothing to law; they are
indebted to the altogether different reality that we have called the State Ideology.”
● · ISAs operate with 2 kinds of ideologies:
○ · Primary ideology – the State ideology that is ‘realized in’ or ‘exists in’ the
corresponding institutions and their practices. The ideological formations of these
ISAs are by-products of state ideology.
○ · Secondary/subordinate ideology – the ideology that is ‘produced’ in each
ISA by its practices, e.g., the political ISA’s ideology of ‘personality cult’.
However, “no practice in the world produces ‘its’ ideology all by itself.” These
secondary ideologies are produced from practice, the influence of other external
ideologies, other external practices, and finally, the effects of the class struggle.
○ · Sometimes the primary and secondary ideologies entangle and are similar
to each other. When they are, it is because of the class conflict and its ideological
side effects that they are brought about. Simply put, when the bourgeois state is
 threatened by "open working-class struggle," the state apparatus and ISAs
cooperate/form pacts of complicity, and this is when these formations intersect.
○ · They constantly lend one another a hand… but this does not take place
without ‘contradictions’: the ideological sub-formations 'produced' in the
apparatuses by their own practice sometimes don’t gel with each other that well.
“But, somehow or other, when an Ideological State Apparatus such as the school
or family is ailing, the others manage to hold out for a while, and if the dominant
ideology is still functioning properly among broad sectors of the 'population', the
bourgeois state manages to hold up, and its various apparatuses do, too. For how
long? That is another story: until state power and the state apparatus themselves
are taken by storm in what is known as a revolution".
● · The ISAs are apparently fragile apparatuses – the shocks of class struggle seem to
impact their ideological sub-formations more easily than they would the actual state
apparatus, which is much stronger. But in reality, the ISAs are quite strong, to the point
that it concerned Lenin how to get hold of them throughout his life.
● · It is very hard to destroy the ideological state apparatus, the destruction needs to be
followed by its subsequent replacement with a newer ISA. If this does not happen “ The
future of the revolution willl be jeopardized- Lenin”
● · If the old ISAs are not replaced after the revolution “the proletarian ideology of the
proletarian state is not realized” – they continue to imbue the masses with bourgeois
ideology. More importantly, they allow the old ideology to survive, reproduce itself,
probably even overthrowing the socialist state.
● · The object of State ideology “is to guarantee the conditions for the exploitation of
the exploited classes by the dominant classes, above all the reproduction of the relations
of production in which this exploitation takes place, since these relations of production
are the relations of exploitation of the class social formation under consideration.”
● · The base or infrastructure of the class state is exploitation. The effect produced by
the superstructure is simultaneously
○ o to ensure the conditions under which this exploitation is carried out
(Repressive State Apparatus) and
○ o the reproduction of the relations of production, that is, of exploitation
(Ideological State Apparatuses).

Class Discussion
● Religion, while not being part of the RSA itself, becomes an ally of state power.
● Civil Society functions as allies of state power.
● Citizens are psychologically and sociologically trained to be ‘good citizens’. The state
therefore needs the so - called ‘private institutions’ to create a disposition for obeying the
state.
● Althusser has criticized Marxist theory till then which has only provided a descriptive
analysis of the state. They have not diagnosed the state.
● Althusser argues that we must distinguish b/w state apparatus and state power.
● Ideology doesn’t function through violence or through express command, it instead
creates incentives for us to behave in a certain way such that we use our ‘free will’ to
 function in that same manner.
● If one wants to understand what hegemony is, one must look at the periphery of
hegemony.
● There is a materiality to an ISA. Material practices that are different from ideology itself
are essential for it. Material practices live at a tangent from the ISA.
● Althusser doesn’t subscribe to the public private divide. He argues that both work to
consolidate state power.
● Even though the ISA might appear to be weak, it is extraordinarily difficult to attack
them because of their incohernece which makes them exceptionally difficult to fight.
● However incoherently, the ISA, in the end, works together, to protect the class interests
which manifests itself in what Althusser calls ‘state ideology’.
● Althusser wants us to show why despite shocks like the rise of the USSR, the various
wars and atrocities of the 60s, capitalism is still going on in Europe and North America.
● Themes that the Prof. identified in this text are as follows -
1. The relative autonomy of the superstructures and the reciprocal
2. The permanence of ideology
3. The specificity of art in relation to ideology.
4. The overdetermination in principle of any historical conjecture.
5. The distinction between objects of knowledge and real objects
6. The nonsubjective nature of historical processes
7. The imbrication of philosophy in politics
8. The ineluctability of class struggle in history

● All institutions form a system. They don’t operate in isolation.

● ISA’s take a long time to change and are resilient to change. They form a system. They
complement RSA. The RSA impose sanctions when we go against the ISA.
●

Chapter 5

Text notes

● Althusser defines the law as a system of codified rules which are applied in day to day
practice.He mostly stresses upon private law- which governs commodity exchange and
property rights. An important principle of this law is legal personality (i.e., individuals
being considered legal persons endowed with defined legal capacities);
● Then he talks about 3 main characteristics of the law

1.The systemacity of the law

-This is achieved by jurists removing contradictory laws

-Jurists trying to make the law more comprehensive by taking notes of changing case laws and
customary laws.

This indicates something important: That there is an ‘outside’ of the law – in the form of
customary laws, undefined case laws, oral law, etc. – that needs to be absorbed, otherwise its
existence is threatening to the Law as a system.

2. The Formalism of Law:

-It can only be systematized consistently and comprehensively because it is FORMAL – i.e., it
doesn’t govern the contents of contracts, only the form in which they are made.

- Formalism + systemacity of the law -> Universality (it applies to everyone and anyone can
invoke it).

-The effect of the law’s formalism is important: Formal law applies to defined contents, but these
contents are absent from law itself. These contents are the relations of production.

3.The repessive nature of the Law

● Althusser’s conclusions from this description:

1. Law only exists as a function of the existing relations of production.
2. Law has formal systematicity, only on the condition that the relations of
production are completely absent from law itself.

This leads us to a classical Marxist formula: “Law ‘expresses’ the relations of production while
making no mention at all, in the system of its rules, of those relations of production. On the
contrary, it makes them disappear.”

Class notes

● It is unclear whether the law is an ISA or part of the RSA.

● The law ensures that morality is enforced by the people and vice versa. The author
believes that the law does’nt function properly without a moral supplement. Ex: We must
not steal and the Bible.
● The law requires us to pay taxes and we also pay taxes because we want to look like good
citizens. Our morality ensures that we follow good legal behaviour.
● Law - codified rules with the sanction of the sovereign. The threat of sanction ensures
that we follow the law.
● What are the driving forces or motivations behind the three commands that the
Prof. mentioned?

Ex: 1. A mother telling a child to sit down -Parental authority.

2. A teacher talling a student to submit their homework after class.
 3. A court tells a young person that you are a first offendoe in a motor vehicle case. A fine
will be imposed - This leads to lowering of social dignity due to the charisma attached to the
law. It has a higher social cost than the first two instances. This due to the ideological state
apparatus putting the law on a pedestal.
● The moral ideological supplement does’nt mean the law is actually weak. The moral
ideological supplement is kind of an add on. It ensures smooth functioning of the law.
● The law perpetuates inequality in the language of equality. It conveniences a peson who
is already advantaged in the current relations of productions.
● It claims of grand narratives but even these contain some ulterior motives and some
attachments to the status quo.
● This makes it a kind of ISA.
● Law is also inherently scared of subjectivity and therefore it strives for non -
contradiction and comprehensiveness which in turn it could be applied mechanically.
● The law is generally unconcerned with any possible condemnation that it might be at the
receiving end. Unless it is changed in response with the sanction of a legal authority, it
continues functioning as it is despite any social churn that might happen.
● The law must always take a legal form. As long as it does this, the point just above
applies.
● The law abstracts itself completely which means that it strips itself of its immediate
context. It expresses the relations of production and becomes a well - oiled machine for
the functioning of society in capitalism.
● There must also be a law of how to apply law itself like procedural laws. It must,
therefore, prescribe how law should function.
● Kant stated that law and morality are different in that only the former uses punishment to
enforce itself. Althusser does not dispute this. He only differs from Kant because of his
failure to explain law’s incorporation of morality to support capitalism.
● Moral ideology, in fact, supplements legal ideology. This allows the enforcement of the
law to ensure the enforcement of the law without the ‘gendarme’ - the police.
● The injection of this kind of moral supplement is essential to avoid friction in the
functioning of the law.

Theme of the week : The theory of the modern state

Nation-states are modern entities, but states have existed long before modernity. Law functioned
differently before the emergence of modern-states. Nation-states have a defined demographic
structure & elected democracy. The modern nation state differs from the pre-modern state in the
sense that it protects the republic while the latter protected the monarch.The modern-state is very
legible ( it has aadhar, UIDAI etc). The modern state is more interested in regulating, surveilling
and controlling dissent in its population. The citizens of the modern state are partially
incarcerated. It works insidious ways to retain its power and receive consent for its actions.
The nation-staes are part of a larger ideological system. They need the assurance and recognition
of powerful nation-sates for legitmization of its actions.
Taylor, Charles. 1994. The Politics of Recognition. In Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics
of Recognition.
PART ONE

Theme: Recognition and identity as driving forces in contemporary politics

● The demand for recognition is a driving force in contemporary politics, particularly for
minority or "subaltern" groups, feminism, and multiculturalism.
● Recognition is linked to identity, which refers to a person's fundamental defining
characteristics as a human being.
● Nonrecognition or misrecognition can inflict harm and be a form of oppression,
imprisoning someone in a false, distorted, and reduced mode of being.
● Misrecognition can cause a person or group to suffer from low self-esteem and
internalized inferiority, which becomes one of the most potent instruments of their own
oppression.

Theme: Historical changes leading to the modern preoccupation with identity and
recognition

● The collapse of social hierarchies, which used to be the basis for honor, led to the modern
notion of dignity in a universalist and egalitarian sense.
● The old concept of honor was superseded, and the forms of equal recognition have been
essential to democratic culture.
● Democracy has ushered in a politics of equal recognition, which has taken various forms
over the years and has now returned in the form of demands for the equal status of
cultures and genders.

Theme: The role of philosophers in shaping the discourse of recognition and identity

● Hegel's dialectic of the master and the slave is an important stage in the discourse of
recognition and identity.
● Other philosophers have also contributed to this discourse, including Montesquieu, who
used honor in the ancien régime sense, and modern philosophers who use the concept of
dignity in a universalist and egalitarian sense.
● The discourse of recognition and identity has evolved over time and has become a
familiar and readily understandable concept in contemporary politics.

Theme: The Emergence of Individualized Identity and the Ideal of Authenticity

● The importance of recognition is intensified by the new understanding of individual

identity that emerges at the end of the eighteenth century.
● This notion arises along with an ideal of being true to oneself and one's own particular
way of being, known as the ideal of authenticity.
 ● The ideal of authenticity consists of being in touch with one's inner voice, which takes on
independent and crucial moral significance.
● The displacement of the moral accent comes about when being in touch with our feelings
becomes essential to attaining full human being.
● This new view of being in touch with oneself can be seen as a continuation and
intensification of the development inaugurated by Saint Augustine, who saw the road to
God as passing through our own self-awareness.
● The first variants of this new view were theistic or at least pantheistic.
● Jean-Jacques Rousseau is an important philosophical writer who helped to bring about
this change by articulating something that was already occurring in the culture.
● Rousseau presents the issue of morality as following a voice of nature within us, which is
often drowned out by passions induced by our dependence on others, particularly pride.
● Our moral salvation comes from recovering authentic moral contact with ourselves,
which Rousseau calls "le sentiment de l'existence."

Themes:( page 29-31)

● The development of the ideal of authenticity

● The importance of originality and self-contact in defining one's way of being human
● The impact of the decline of hierarchical society on identity
● The dialogical nature of human language and the role of interaction with others in self-
definition

Pointers:

● Herder's idea that each person has their own way of being human
● Importance of being true to oneself and one's originality
● The ideal of authenticity and its association with self-fulfillment and self-realization
● Application of originality to culture-bearing peoples
● Relationship between the decline of hierarchical society and the emergence of the ideal of
authenticity
● The dialogical nature of human language and the role of significant others in self-
definition
● The passage discusses the development of the ideal of authenticity after Rousseau, with
Herder as its major early articulator. Herder's idea that each person has their own way of
being human, or "measure," has had a deep impact on modern consciousness.
● This idea gives moral importance to being true to oneself and one's own originality,
which is seen as in danger of being lost due to pressures towards outward conformity and
taking an instrumental stance towards oneself.
● The ideal of authenticity is often associated with self-fulfillment and self-realization, and
is based on the principle of originality .- each person's voice has something unique to say,
and the model by which to live can only be found within oneself
● This concept of originality also applies to culture-bearing peoples, who should be true to
their own culture rather than trying to imitate others.
 ● The passage also discusses the impact of the decline of hierarchical society on identity. In
earlier societies, identity was largely fixed by one's social position, but the ideal of
authenticity calls on individuals to discover their own original way of being, which
cannot be socially derived.
● The dialogical nature of human language is crucial to this process of self-definition, as
people acquire the languages needed for self-expression through interaction with
significant others.

(Page 31-33)
Themes:

● Dialogical nature of human identity

● Contribution of significant others
● Importance of recognition

Headings:

1. Human identity is dialogical: Our understanding of ourselves is formed through dialogue

with significant others, which continues throughout our lives.
2. Contribution of significant others: The people who love and care for us shape our
identity, and even after they are gone, their influence remains.
3. Importance of recognition: Inwardly derived identity requires recognition from others,
which can be challenging to obtain in the modern age.
4. The importance of dialogue in identity formation

We define our identity in dialogue with significant others, and this conversation continues within
us even after they are gone

● Our understanding of the good things in life can be transformed by sharing them with
loved ones
2. The limitations of the monological ideal
● The monological ideal underestimates the role of dialogue in human life
● It would take great effort to prevent our identity from being shaped by the people we love
3. The role of recognition in identity formation
● Inwardly generated, personal identity depends on recognition from others
● Socially derived identity was based on social categories that were taken for granted, but
personal identity has to win recognition through exchange
4. The ongoing nature of identity negotiation
● Discovering our own identity doesn't mean working it out in isolation, but negotiating it
through dialogue with others
● Our own identity crucially depends on our dialogical relations with others
5. The relationship between identity and art
● Even solitary artists aspire to a certain kind of dialogicality through addressing their work
to a future audience
 ● The very form of a work of art shows its character as addressed.

Themes: (34-36)

1. Historical Perspective on Recognition: The author suggests that the need for
recognition is not new and has always been an essential aspect of identity formation.
However, in premodern times, people didn't speak of 'identities' as they were too
unproblematic to be thematized as such.
2. Rousseau and Universal Recognition: Rousseau's ideas about citizen dignity and
universal recognition are identified as one of the points of origin of the modern discourse
of authenticity. In his work, he critiques hierarchical honor and prefers a republican
society where all can share equally in the light of public attention.
3. Hegel and the Politics of Equal Recognition: The topic of recognition is given its most
influential early treatment in Hegel's work. The author suggests that the understanding
that identities are formed in open dialogue has made the politics of equal recognition
more central and stressful. The refusal of equal recognition can inflict damage on those
who are denied it.
4. Intimate Relationships and Self-Discovery: In the culture of authenticity, relationships
are seen as the key loci of self-discovery and self-affirmation. Love relationships are
crucial because they are the crucibles of inwardly generated identity.
5. Politics of Equal Recognition: The understanding of identity and authenticity has
introduced a new dimension into the politics of equal recognition, which now operates
with something like its notion of authenticity. The withholding of recognition can be a
form of oppression, and this factor has been highlighted in contemporary feminism, race
relations, and discussions of multiculturalism.

PART TWO:

The author discusses the concept of recognition in two spheres - intimate and public. In the
public sphere, recognition has come to mean two things - a politics of universalism emphasizing
the equal dignity of all citizens and a politics of difference emphasizing the unique identity of
individuals and groups.

Themes: (37-39)

1. Two Spheres of Recognition: The author differentiates between recognition in the

intimate sphere and the public sphere.
2. Politics of Universalism: The concept of equal citizenship is universally accepted, and
measures have been taken to equalize rights and entitlements for all citizens.
3. Politics of Difference: The idea of recognition in the politics of difference is to recognize
the unique identity of individuals and groups, which has been ignored or assimilated to a
dominant identity.
4. Universal equality vs. politics of difference
● Universal equality demands acknowledgement and status to something not universally
shared, while politics of difference is full of denunciations of discrimination and refusals
of second-class citizenship.
● The principle of universal equality is hard to assimilate to the politics of dignity because
it asks for acknowledgement of something that is not universally shared.
● The politics of difference grows organically out of the politics of universal dignity
through a shift in understanding of the human social condition.
2. Second-class status
● The understanding of identity as formed in interchange introduces a new form of second-
class status into our purview.
● The politics of difference redefines nondiscrimination as requiring that we make
distinctions the basis of differential treatment, leading to conflicts with the politics of
universal dignity.
3. Mediation and justification
● Attempts are made to mediate and justify measures meant to accommodate minorities on
the basis of dignity.
● Reverse discrimination is defended as a temporary measure to level the playing field and
eventually allow the old "blind" rules to come back into force.
4. Cherishing distinctness
● Some measures urged on the grounds of difference aim to maintain and cherish
distinctness, not just now but forever.
● The aspiration for identity to never be lost is legitimate if we are concerned with identity.
● People who through some circumstance that has befallen them are incapable of realizing
their potential in the normal way handicapped people, or those in a coma, for instance.

(Page 39-41)

1. Politics of difference and universal potential for identity formation

● The politics of difference is based on the universal potential for forming and defining
one's identity, both as an individual and as a culture.
● This potentiality must be respected equally in everyone.
2. Equal respect for evolved cultures
● A stronger demand has recently arisen in the intercultural context that equal respect be
accorded to actually evolved cultures.
● Critiques of European or white domination consider depreciatory judgments of other
cultures to be factually mistaken and morally wrong.
● Bellow's statement that "When the Zulus produce a Tolstoy we will read him" is seen as a
denial of human equality and a reflection of European arrogance.
3. Conflict between politics of equal respect and politics of difference
● The principle of equal respect requires treating people in a difference-blind fashion.
● The politics of difference demands recognition and fostering of particularity.
 ● The politics of equal dignity is seen as a reflection of one hegemonic culture, forcing
minority or suppressed cultures to take an alien form.
● The supposedly fair and difference-blind society is highly discriminatory in a subtle and
unconscious way, because it suppresses identities.

Themes ( concluding page)

● The challenge to the liberalism of equal dignity

● Defining universal, difference-blind principles
● Emergence of politics of equal dignity

Points:

● The most radical forms of politics of difference argue that "blind" liberalisms are
reflections of particular cultures
● There is a concern that bias towards particular cultures may not just be a weakness of
proposed theories, but that the idea of liberalism itself may be a kind of particularism
masquerading as universalism
● Defining universal, difference-blind principles is seen as essential for the liberalism of
equal dignity
● Different theories may be proposed and contested, but the shared assumption is that one
theory is right
● The emergence of politics of equal dignity is explored in the next part.

PART THREE
Themes:( Pages 44-47)

● Emergence of the politics of equal dignity

● Rousseau's contribution to the discourse of recognition
● Other-dependence and hierarchy
● Honor and positional goods
● Depraved condition of mankind

Points:

● The politics of equal dignity emerged in Western civilization through two models -
Rousseau and Kant.
● Rousseau is seen as one of the originators of the discourse of recognition due to his
emphasis on equal respect as indispensable for freedom.
● Other-dependence and hierarchy are linked in Rousseau's philosophy, as he associates
other-dependence with the need for others' good opinion, which is bound up with the
traditional conception of honor.
● The esteem sought in this condition is intrinsically differential and a positional good.
● The depraved condition of mankind is characterized by a paradoxical combination of
properties - unequal in power, yet all dependent on others.
● Rousseau emphasizes the corrupting influence of master and slave on each other in this
condition of dependence.
1. Hierarchy and deference
● In a system of hierarchical honor, deference of lower orders is essential
● Master-slave relationship is not solely based on brute power
2. Rousseau's views on pride
● Pride is one of the great sources of evil
● Influenced by Stoic and Christian discourses on pride
● Rousseau does not completely endorse the idea of completely overcoming concern for the
good opinion of others
3. Public appearance and esteem
● Rousseau sometimes sounds as if he is endorsing the idea of stepping outside the
dimension of human life where reputations are sought, gained, and unmade
● Esteem still plays a role in Rousseau's accounts of a potentially good society
● Citizens in a functioning republic care about what others think
4. Connection to Fatherland
● Ancient legislators took care to attach citizens to their fatherland
● Public games were used to achieve this connection
● Rousseau describes prizes that strike modern men as beyond belief

● Glory and public recognition played an important role in ideal republican contexts.
● However, the beneficial effects of this glory and recognition were dependent on equality
and balanced reciprocity among citizens.
● The lack of differentiation or distinction between different classes of citizens was crucial
to the success of public events such as games, festivals, and recitations.
● These events took place in the open air and involved everyone, making people both
spectator and show.
● The contrast is drawn between these virtuous assemblies and modern religious services in
enclosed churches and modern theater, which operates in closed halls and involves a
special class of professionals making presentations to others.
● In the Letter to D'Alembert, Rousseau emphasizes the importance of identity between
spectator and performer in these virtuous assemblies

(Pages 48)

1. Balanced reciprocity and liberty:

● Rousseau argues that a perfectly balanced reciprocity makes dependence on opinion
compatible with liberty.
● Complete reciprocity ensures that following opinion does not pull a person outside of
themselves.
● Caring about esteem in this context is compatible with freedom and social unity.
2. Unity of purpose:
● Unity of purpose is necessary for complete reciprocity.
 ● In a society where all the virtuous are esteemed equally and for the same reasons, caring
about esteem is compatible with freedom and social unity.
● In contrast, in a system of hierarchical honor, unity of purpose is shattered and attempting
to win the favor of another who has different goals can be alienating.
3. Good kind of other-dependence:
● Rousseau distinguishes between the bad kind of other-dependence, which involves
separation and isolation, and the good kind, which involves a unity of a common project
or "common self".
4. Third discourse on honour and dignity:
● Rousseau adds a new discourse about honor and dignity to the traditional discourses
denouncing pride and promoting an ethic of honor.
● His discourse is different in that it sees the concern with honor as compatible with liberty
and social unity, provided there is balanced reciprocity and unity of purpose.
5. Critique of traditional discourses:
● Rousseau critiques the traditional discourses on pride and honor for being non-
universalist, inegalitarian, and promoting a competitive and hierarchical society.
● He offers an alternative vision of society that is based on balanced reciprocity and a
common purpose, which he believes will promote virtue and ethics.

The Importance of Esteem in Rousseau's Republican Model ( Page 49-51)

● Rousseau's denunciatory language in the first discourse

● Importance of esteem in his portrait of the republican model

II. The Problem with Pride and Honor

● Striving after preferences leads to division and other-dependence

● Loss of the voice of nature, corruption, forgetting of boundaries, and effeminacy

III. The Remedy

● Not rejecting the importance of esteem but entering into a different system
● Equality, reciprocity, and unity of purpose
● Unity makes possible the equality of esteem
● Essential to the unity of purpose itself

Rousseau's Critique of Pride and Honor:

● Pride and honor lead to division and other-dependence

● This results in loss of the voice of nature, corruption, forgetting of boundaries, and
effeminacy
● The remedy is not to reject esteem, but to enter into a system of equality, reciprocity, and
unity of purpose
● The equality of esteem is essential to the unity of purpose
Hegel's Dialectic of Recognition:

● Hegel takes recognition as fundamental to human flourishing

● The ordinary conception of honor as hierarchical is flawed because it cannot satisfy the
need for recognition
● The struggle for recognition can only find satisfaction in a regime of reciprocal
recognition among equals
● This regime is found in a society with a common purpose, where there is a "we" that is an
"I", and an "I" that is a "we".

Rousseau's Solution:

● Rousseau inaugurates the new politics of equal dignity

● His solution requires a tight unity of purpose that seems incompatible with any
differentiation
● For Rousseau, the condition of a free society is that the two terms joined by a relation
involving power must be identical
● This principle applies to all two-place relations involving power, including the relation of
sovereignty

Conclusion:

● Esteem and recognition play a crucial role in politics

● Rousseau and Hegel offer different solutions to the problem of recognition
● Rousseau's solution of a tight unity of purpose is a flawed one because it excludes
differentiation
● Rousseau's new critique of pride leads to a politics of equal dignity
● Hegel's dialectic of recognition builds on this idea.

In the last section, he discusses Rousseau's conception of a free society and how it relates
to the idea of differentiation of roles.
● According to the Taylor, Rousseau believed that a free society requires a rigorous
exclusion of any differentiation of roles. This means that for any two-place relation
involving power, the two terms joined by the relation must be identical in order for the
society to be considered free.

He explains that this principle applies to situations where individuals present themselves in
public space to others, as well as situations where individuals exercise sovereignty over others.
In the social contract state, the people must be both sovereign and subject.
Themes:

● Free society
● Differentiation of roles
● Two-place relation
 ● Power
● Sovereignty
● Rousseau believed that a free society requires a rigorous exclusion of any differentiation
of roles.
● For any two-place relation involving power, the two terms joined by the relation must be
identical for the society to be considered free.
● This principle applies to situations where individuals present themselves in public space
to others, as well as situations where individuals exercise sovereignty over others.
● In the social contract state, the people must be both sovereign and subject.

PART FOUR

I. Introduction

● The question of whether a politics of equal dignity based on recognition of universal

capacities is bound to be homogenizing is raised.

II. Kantian Model of Equal Rights

● Kantian model separates equal freedom from other elements of the Rousseauean trinity
and looks to an equality of rights accorded to citizens.
● This form of liberalism has been criticized by proponents of the politics of difference for
its inability to give due acknowledgement to distinctness.

III. Restrictive View of Equal Rights

● Forms of equal rights liberalism may restrict acknowledgment of distinct cultural

identities.
● Standard schedules of rights may not apply differently in one cultural context than they
do in another, and their application may not take account of different collective goals.

IV. Canadian Case

● Two conceptions of rights-liberalism have confronted each other in the Canadian case,
throughout the long and inconclusive constitutional debates of recent years.
● This issue has played a role in the impending breakup of the country.
● The restrictive view of equal rights has been criticized for failing to acknowledge distinct
cultural identities.
● The question of whether a politics of equal dignity based on recognition of universal
capacities is bound to be homogenizing remains unresolved.
● The restrictive view of equal rights may not be the only possible interpretation.
The Canadian Charter of Rights and its relation to diversity:
Background:

● Canadian Charter of Rights adopted in 1982, providing a schedule of rights for judicial
review of legislation at all levels of government.
● Question arises on how to relate the schedule to the claims for distinctness put forward by
French Canadians and Aboriginal peoples.

Quebec's Laws:

● Quebec passed laws regulating language, restricting Quebeckers from sending their
children to English-language schools, requiring businesses with over 50 employees to run
in French, and outlawing commercial signage in any language other than French.
● These restrictions are in the name of their collective goal of survival, which may be
disallowed by the Charter in other Canadian communities.

Meech Amendment:

● Proposed constitutional amendment recognizing Quebec as a "distinct society" and

making it one of the bases for judicial interpretation of the constitution, including the
Charter.
● This opens up the possibility for variation in interpretation in different parts of the
country, which is fundamentally unacceptable for some.

The Canadian Charter:

1. Provides a basis for judicial review based on two basic scores:

2. Defines a set of individual rights similar to those protected in other Western democracies.
3. Guarantees equal treatment of citizens and protects against discriminatory treatment on
irrelevant grounds such as race or sex.
● There are additional provisions for linguistic and Aboriginal rights, which could be
understood as according powers to collectivities.
● The two dominant themes in the public consciousness are individual rights and equal
treatment of citizens.

Entrenchment of Bills of Rights and Judicial Review:

● The trend of entrenching Bills of Rights and providing a basis for judicial review is
common in Western democracies.
● The American Constitution was the first to entrench a Bill of Rights, which protected
individual and state government rights against encroachment by the federal government.
● The theme of nondiscrimination became central to judicial review after the Fourteenth
Amendment.

Collective Goals vs Individual Rights:

 ● Collective goals may require restrictions on individual behavior that may violate
individual rights, which is a concern for many non-francophone Canadians.
● Quebec's language legislation restricts who can send their children to English-language
schools and requires certain businesses to be run in French.
● Espousing collective goals on behalf of a national group can be thought to be inherently
discriminatory, as not all citizens living under a certain jurisdiction will belong to the
national group.
● Pursuing collective ends may involve treating insiders and outsiders differently, which
could provoke discrimination.

Distinct Society Clause:

● The Meech Lake accord proposed recognizing Quebec as a "distinct society" and making
this recognition one of the bases for judicial interpretation of the constitution, including
the Charter.
● The distinct society clause was a cause for concern for many Canadians outside of
Quebec who believed it clashed with the Charter's provisions for individual rights and
equal treatment of citizens.
● There was a common demand for the Charter to be protected against the distinct society
clause or take precedence over it.

The main idea of liberalism, as expressed by Dworkin, is that individual rights and freedoms
must always take precedence over collective goals and interests. This perspective has become
increasingly popular in the Anglo-American world and is based on the following principles:

● The protection of individual rights and freedoms is the primary function of government.
● Collective goals and interests must not be pursued at the expense of individual rights.
● Discrimination against individuals or groups is inherently wrong and must be prevented.
● The rule of law must be upheld, and all citizens must be treated equally under the law.

This perspective has been elaborated and defended by prominent legal and philosophical thinkers
such as John Rawls, Ronald Dworkin, and Bruce Ackerman.

Dworkin's concept of Liberalism and the importance of Procedural Commitment

Concepts/Themes:

● Moral commitment
● Substantive commitment
● Procedural commitment
● Liberal society
● Equality and fairness
● Autonomy and human dignity
● Neutrality
Dworkin's distinction between moral commitments:

● Views about the ends of life (substantive)

● Commitment to deal fairly and equally with each other (procedural)

Liberal society:

● Adopts no particular substantive view about the ends of life

● United around a strong procedural commitment to treat people with equal respect
● Espousing a substantive view violates the procedural norm

Importance of Procedural Commitment:

● Ensures diversity is respected

● All citizens are treated with equal respect
● Citizens deal fairly with each other
● State deals equally with all

Autonomy and human dignity:

● Human dignity consists largely in autonomy

● Ability of each person to determine their own view of the good life
● Dignity is associated with the power to consider and espouse for oneself some view or
other
● A liberal society must respect this power equally in all subjects

Neutrality:

● A liberal society must remain neutral on the good life

● Citizens are free to hold their own views
● State ensures equality and fairness, regardless of citizens' views

Conclusion:

● Dworkin's concept of liberalism is rooted in the importance of procedural commitment,

which ensures that all citizens are treated with equal respect and the state deals equally
with all
● This concept is based on the belief that human dignity consists largely in autonomy and
the power to determine one's own view of the good life, and that a liberal society must
remain neutral on the good life while ensuring equality and fairness for all citizens

The tension between collective goals and liberal society in Quebec (Page 59)
Concepts/themes:

1. Liberal society and the "procedural republic"

 ● The idea that a liberal society cannot accommodate publicly espoused notions of the good
is widespread, influenced by Kantian philosophy and the concept of the "procedural
republic"
● The "procedural republic" emphasizes judicial review based on constitutional texts over
legislative action based on building majorities
● This model has a strong hold on the political agenda in the United States
2. Quebec's collective goals
● Quebec's government prioritizes the survival and flourishing of French culture in Quebec
as a good
● Political society in Quebec is not neutral between cultural preservation and individual
self-development
● Policies aimed at cultural survival seek to create members of the community who identify
as French-speakers and actively involve the government in shaping future generations
3. Different models of a liberal society
● Quebecers opt for a different model of a liberal society, organizing around a definition of
the good life that can be sought in common
● Public policies are justified when the nature of the good requires it to be sought in
common
● The treatment of minorities, including those who do not share public definitions of the
good, is crucial and rights are fundamental, including rights to life, liberty, due process,
free speech, free practice of religion, and so on
4. Fundamental rights vs. privileges and immunities
● There is a distinction between fundamental liberties that should never be infringed and
privileges and immunities that can be revoked or restricted for reasons of public policy
● Fundamental rights include commercial signage in the language of one's choice

Relevant details:

● Quebec's policies aimed at cultural survival involve government intervention in shaping

future generations to identify as French-speakers and actively participate in the
preservation of French culture
● This is seen as a departure from the "procedural republic" model that emphasizes
individual liberties and judicial review over collective goals and legislative action
● The tension between collective goals and liberal society highlights the challenge of
balancing individual liberties with the preservation of cultural heritage in a diverse
society
● The distinction between fundamental rights and privileges and immunities is important
for determining the scope of government intervention in shaping cultural policies in
Quebec and other societies with similar collective goals.

Incompatible Views of Liberal Society:

● There are two incompatible views of liberal society

● The two views have squared off against each other in the last decade
● The resistance to the "distinct society" came in part from a procedural outlook in English
Canada
 ● From the standpoint of Quebec, this attempt to impose a procedural model of liberalism
bespoke a rejection of the model of liberalism on which Quebec was founded
● Each society misperceived the other throughout the Meech Lake debate
● The rest of Canada saw that the distinct society clause legitimated collective goals
● Quebec saw that the move to give the Charter precedence imposed a form of liberal
society that was alien to it, and to which Quebec could never accommodate itself without
surrendering its identity

Inhospitality to Difference:

● There is a form of politics of equal respect that is inhospitable to difference

● This form of politics of equal respect is enshrined in a liberalism of rights
● It insists on uniform application of the rules defining these rights without exception
● It is suspicious of collective goals
● It cannot accommodate what the members of distinct societies really aspire to, which is
survival
● Survival is a collective goal that almost inevitably will call for some variations in the
kinds of law deemed permissible from one cultural context to another, as the Quebec case
clearly shows.

The Compatibility of Collective Goals and Liberalism

Introduction:

● Two incompatible views of liberal society

● Disharmony in recent years due to conflict between these views

Procedural Outlook and English Canada:

● Resistance to "distinct society" and prioritizing the Charter

● English Canada perceives Quebec's collective goals as a threat to procedural liberalism
● Quebec sees prioritizing the Charter as a rejection of its identity

Politics of Equal Respect and Inhospitability to Difference:

● Liberalism of rights is inhospitable to difference due to insistence on uniform application

of rules and suspicion of collective goals
● Survival is a collective goal that may call for variations in permissible laws from one
cultural context to another

Other Models of Liberal Society:

● Different line on fundamental rights and uniform treatment

● Willingness to weigh importance of uniform treatment against cultural survival
● Grounded on judgments about what makes a good life, including the integrity of cultures
Conclusion:

● Multicultural societies becoming more prevalent

● Rigidities of procedural liberalism may become impractical in the future.

PART FIVE
Liberalism and Multiculturalism

Concepts/Themes:

● "Difference-blind" liberalism
● Separation of politics and religion
● Incompatibility of liberalism with certain cultures
● Liberalism as a fighting creed
● Multiculturalism and porousness
● Marginalization of citizens belonging to different cultures

Difference-blind Liberalism:

● Claims to offer a neutral ground for people of all cultures to coexist

● Requires a distinction between public and private spheres and between politics and
religion
● Controversy over Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses shows the limitations of difference-
blind liberalism
● Mainstream Islam does not separate politics and religion as expected in Western liberal
society
● Liberalism is not a possible meeting ground for all cultures, but is the political expression
of one range of cultures
● Liberalism cannot and should not claim complete cultural neutrality

Separation of Politics and Religion:

● The division of church and state goes back to the earliest days of Christian civilization
● Early forms of separation were different from modern developments, but the basis was
laid for them
● The term "secular" was originally part of the Christian vocabulary

Incompatibility of Liberalism with Certain Cultures:

● Liberalism is the political expression of one range of cultures and is incompatible with
other ranges
● Liberalism is more of an expression of the secular, postreligious outlook popular among
liberal intellectuals rather than an organic outgrowth of Christianity, as seen from the
perspective of Islam
 ● Liberalism is a fighting creed that draws lines and makes substantive distinctions in
politics

Multiculturalism and Porousness:

● All societies are becoming increasingly multicultural and porous

● Porousness means that societies are more open to multinational migration and more
members live the life of diaspora, whose center is elsewhere
● This creates awkwardness in cases where "how we do things" covers issues such as the
right to life and freedom of speech

Marginalization of Citizens Belonging to Different Cultures:

● There are substantial numbers of people who are citizens and also belong to cultures that
call into question philosophical boundaries
● The challenge is to deal with their sense of marginalization without compromising basic
political principles

The Demand for Recognition in Multicultural Societies

Introduction:

● Multicultural societies face the challenge of recognizing and accommodating different

cultures while avoiding the imposition of one culture over another.
● The demand for recognition of equal value has become explicit in recent times due to the
spread of the idea that individuals are formed by recognition.

The Importance of Cultural Recognition:

● The demand for cultural recognition goes beyond the acknowledgment of cultural
survival as a legitimate goal.
● It requires the recognition of the equal worth of different cultures, not just their mere
survival.
● Nationalism has been powered by the sense of being despised or respected by others
around them, leading to the breakup of multinational societies due to a lack of
recognition.
● Sensitivity to external recognition is evident in certain supposedly closed societies that
react to findings of organizations like Amnesty International or attempt to build a new
world information order through UNESCO.

The Denial of Recognition as a Motive:

● Actors often deny that they are moved by the demand for recognition, instead pleading
other factors like inequality, exploitation, and injustice as their motives.
● Quebec independentists, for example, attribute their fight for independence to factors
other than a lack of recognition on the part of English Canada.

The Explicit Demand for Recognition:

 ● The demand for recognition has become explicit due to the spread of the idea that
individuals are formed by recognition.
● Mis-recognition has now graduated to the rank of a harm that can be enumerated
alongside other harms like inequality, exploitation, and injustice.
● Multicultural societies face the challenge of recognizing and accommodating different
cultures while avoiding the imposition of one culture over another.
● The demand for recognition of equal value has become explicit in recent times due to the
spread of the idea that individuals are formed by recognition.
● This demand goes beyond the acknowledgement of cultural survival and requires the
recognition of the equal worth of different cultures.

The Limits of Demanding Equal Worth for Different Cultures

I. Introduction

● Discussion of the challenges of valuing cultures that are vastly different from our own
● The need for a "fusion of horizons" to develop new vocabularies of comparison

II. Presumption of Value for Different Cultures

● The argument for extending the presumption of value to all cultures

● The connection between withholding the presumption and denying equality
● The tension between the extension and the "difference-blindness" principle

III. Demanding Equal Worth for Different Cultures

● The stronger demand for actual judgments of equal worth applied to the customs and
creations of different cultures
● The implicit claims of prejudice or ill-will in the exclusion of certain works from the
canon
● The problematic nature of demanding a final concluding judgment of equal worth
● The importance of approaching the study of different cultures with an open mind and a
presumption of value
● The limitations of demanding equal worth as a matter of right
● The need for ongoing critical evaluation of cultural value and the potential for biases and
limitations in our judgments

The issue of "objectivity" and "truth" in cultural judgments

● There is a vigorous controversy over the "objectivity" of judgments in cultural fields, and
whether there is a "truth of the matter" as there seems to be in natural science, or whether
even in natural science "objectivity" is a mirage.
● The author does not have much sympathy for forms of subjectivism in this context, which
are shot through with confusion.
 ● The moral and political thrust of the complaint concerns unjustified judgments of inferior
status allegedly made of nonhegemonic cultures.
● But if those judgments are ultimately a question of the human will, then the issue of
justification falls away. One doesn't, properly speaking, make judgments that can be right
or wrong; one expresses liking or dislike, one endorses or rejects another culture.
● The complaint must then shift to address the refusal to endorse, and the validity or
invalidity of judgments here has nothing to do with it.

The distinction between genuine respect and patronizing endorsement

● The act of declaring another culture's creations to be of worth and the act of declaring
oneself on their side, even if their creations aren't all that impressive, become
indistinguishable. The difference is only in the packaging.
● Yet the first is normally understood as a genuine expression of respect, the second often
as unsufferable patronizing.
● The supposed beneficiaries of the politics of recognition make a crucial distinction
between the two acts. They know that they want respect, not condescension.
● Any theory that wipes out the distinction seems at least prima facie to be distorting
crucial facets of the reality it purports to deal with.

Neo-Nietzschean theories and the issue of power

● Subjectivist, half-baked neo-Nietzschean theories are quite often invoked in this debate.
They claim that all judgments of worth are based on standards that are ultimately
imposed by and further entrench structures of power.
● A favorable judgment on demand is nonsense, unless some such theories are valid.
● The proponents of neo-Nietzschean theories hope to escape this whole nexus of
hypocrisy by turning the entire issue into one of power and counterpower. Then the
question is no more one of respect, but of taking sides, of solidarity.
● But this is hardly a satisfactory solution, because in taking sides they miss the driving
force of this kind of politics, which is precisely the search for recognition and respect.

The importance of intensive study for genuine judgments of worth

● Even if one could demand it of them, the last thing one wants at this stage from
Eurocentered intellectuals is positive judgments of the worth of cultures that they have
not intensively studied.
● For real judgments of worth suppose a fused horizon of standards, as we have seen; they
suppose that we have been transformed by the study of the other, so that we are not
simply judging by our original familiar standards.
● A favorable judgment made prematurely is not genuine and can be condescending
The Paradox of Multiculturalism

1. The paradox of multiculturalism is that the demand for equal recognition can end up
making everyone the same.
● This is because the standards used to judge worth are those of North Atlantic civilization,
which can lead to the homogenization of other cultures.
● For example, the implicit assumption that other cultures should produce the same kind of
excellence as Western civilization, such as a "Zulu Tolstoy", shows ethnocentricity.
2. Critics of multiculturalism use this paradox as an excuse to turn their backs on the
problem.
● They argue that the choice is not between a repressive Western culture and a
multicultural paradise, but between culture and barbarism.
● Civilization is an achievement that needs to be defended from besiegers both inside and
out.
3. There must be a middle ground between the inauthentic demand for recognition of equal
worth and self-immurement within ethnocentric standards.
● This middle ground is the presumption of equal worth, which is a stance taken in
embarking on the study of other cultures.
● Instead of asking whether this is something that others can demand from us as a right, we
should ask whether this is the way we ought to approach others.

Class Discussion:
Themes: Recognition, difference, multiculturalism, identity, dignity, honour, respect, liberalism,
community, group rights, individual rights.

Headings:

1. The Need for Recognition in Modern Society

2. The Composite Idea of Identity
3. The Transition from Honour and Dignity to Liberalism
4. The Limitations of Group Rights
5. Conflicting Cultural Practices and Human Rights
6. Liberalism and Racism
7. Majoritarianism and the Exclusion of Minorities

Charles Taylor's ideas on recognition, difference, multiculturalism, dialogical, identity, dignity,

honour, respect, and liberalism form the basis of this discussion. The notes highlight how these
concepts are applicable in real-life situations, such as granting citizenship to refugees and
migrants and accommodating their cultural practices.
The Need for Recognition in Modern Society

Explained how modernity has led to a solid formation of the individual, moving away from the
idea of communities. However, the continuous reaffirmation of one's identity has led to a battle
for public space, where dignity is earned and performed. The mobility in nation-states has made
it necessary to live in a space of common dignity in a place of difference, requiring tolerance
where both parties live in dignity.

The Composite Idea of Identity

Explained how the idea of identity is composite in the sense that it is cultivated by engaging with
people one loves, values, etc. It is a conceptual requirement of identity formation or discovery. It
stipulates that meaningful building blocks of an agent's identity be formed or uncovered in
dialogue with frameworks of meaning that cannot be reduced to mere products of individual
choice.

The Transition from Honour and Dignity to Liberalism

Discussed how society is transitioning from the idea of honour and dignity to a more liberal one.
However, the conferring of equal recognition with equal rights does not always work. Everyone
should be recognized for their identity, but recognizing particularity can conflict with universal
human rights, especially with regard to patriarchal cultural beliefs.

The Limitations of Group Rights

explained how group rights can exclude and discriminate against non-indigenous citizens to
protect indigenous citizens. This can lead to political differences and conflicts. Cultures that are
not seen as good enough for recognition need to be given equal importance in the public sphere.
However, cultural practices that conflict with human rights, such as female genital mutilation,
need to be addressed.

Conflicting Cultural Practices and Human Rights

How liberal democracies require acts of equality and reciprocity even though they may not be
organic in nature. However, liberalism can fail to accommodate contested positions, especially
when certain communities have radically different ideas of the good life. Within liberalism, there
is racism due to the existence of the universal, which is mainly white.

● Majoritarianism and the Exclusion of Minorities

● We discussed how majoritarianism can exclude minorities, as the enunciation of "we"
often leaves out marginalized groups. Liberalism can be seen as a political tool that
allows the majority to control and decide who will be accommodated or excluded. This
leads to the assumption that one template fits all, which may not be the case.
● Conclusion
● A comprehensive overview of Charles Taylor's ideas on recognition, difference,
multiculturalism, dialogical, identity, dignity, honour, respect, and liberalism. They
highlight the need for recognition in modern society and the limitations of group rights.
The notes also discuss conflicting cultural practices and human rights, as well as
majoritarianism and the exclusion of minorities.
● The case of UCC and granting citizenship to individuals regardless of their religious
beliefs, and how refugees and migrants sometimes claim cultural exceptionalism that
makes it difficult for European countries to accommodate them.
● We also talked about how bringing religious identity into a secular space can be a
contentious issue, with larger communities sometimes codifying certain acts that smaller
communities might not agree with.
● Discussed the importance of belonging to a community or fraternity, and how one's self-
identity is not just something that they create themselves but is also recognized by others
around them.
● The discussion then turned to identity politics and the idea of identitarian ideals. We
explored the notion that a person's land is a part of their identity, and how political claims
for communitarian rights can be an important part of the legal framework of a land. We
then considered what it is about modernity that ignited such conversations about identity,
● and why it is necessary to have these conversations in the first place.
● Discussed the idea that modern society values the formation of the individual and
autonomy, which can move people away from the idea of communities. However, the
conditions of homogeneity can lead to the creation of identity struggles. We also talked
about the importance of living in a space of common dignity, even in the presence of
difference, and the role of tolerance in fostering such a space.
● We explored the dialogic and composite nature of identity, where a person's identity is
cultivated through engagement with the people and values they love and value. We talked
about the importance of authenticity in this process, and how the transition from honor
and dignity to a more liberal idea of identity is an ongoing process.
● We then discussed the challenges of conferring equal recognition with equal rights, and
how recognizing particularity can sometimes conflict with universal ideas of human
rights. We talked about group rights and how the state has a responsibility to recognize
both them and the individuals who may be oppressed by these group rights.
● We also discussed political differences and how some cultures are not considered "good
enough" for recognition. We debated the issue of female genital mutilation and how
cultural rights can sometimes conflict with women's rights. We concluded that a certain
vocabulary is necessary to recognize and navigate these conflicts.
● We also talked about how liberal democracies are productive to the extent that they start
acting in ways that require the practice of certain acts of equality and reciprocity, even if
they are not organic in nature. We explored how liberalism can fail to accommodate
contested positions, particularly when certain communities have radically different ideas
of the good life.
 ● Touched upon the issue of racism within liberalism, particularly due to the existence of
the universal, which is mainly white. We concluded that liberalism can still survive in
such arrangements, and is an important political tool.
● Discussed the romantic idea that cultures are formed in conflicts, and how the liberal
vantage point is often that of the majority, particularly white caucasian Christians.
● Talked about how this idea of "we" often excludes minorities and assumes that one
template fits all. We imagined a world where a community does not subscribe to the
moral idea of the universal, in which case their universal becomes the majority's
particular.

Bajpai, Rochana. (2019). Multiculturalism in India: An Exception? In Multiculturalism in the

British Commonwealth: Comparative Perspectives on Theory and Practice

Introduction:
 ● India's multicultural policies and legal pluralism in religious family law, territorial
autonomy for linguistic and tribal groups, and quotas for caste and tribal minorities.
● Indian Constitution of 1950 recognized group-differentiated rights within a liberal
democratic framework.
● Non-Western experience of dealing with ethno-religious pluralism in Asia and Africa is
longer-standing than most Western democracies.

Indian Exceptionalism:

● Claims of Indian exceptionalism need to be qualified.

● Constraints hindering the adoption of multicultural policies in other contexts are also
present in India.
● These include the association of minority protections with colonial divide and rule,
developmentalist ideologies denying the significance of ethno-cultural claims, and
convergence of liberal concerns for individual rights with nationalist concerns for civic
unity and social cohesion.

Debating Difference:

● The Indian Constitution marked a cutback in multicultural provisions compared to the

late colonial state.
● Shift from consociationalism to affirmative action as the overarching framework of
group-differentiated rights.
● The Indian Constitution embodies two distinct approaches to the accommodation of
difference: integrationist and restricted multicultural.
● The Constitution recognizes affirmative action for historically disadvantaged groups but
lacks normative support for protecting cultural difference and minority practices.

Normative Deficit:

● In India's constitutional vision, cultural difference lacked adequate normative support as a

basis for group-differentiated rights.
● The normative deficit remains politically influential, as state assistance to minority
cultures is seen as an illegitimate concession motivated by electoral considerations.
● This line of critique is exploited by a resurgent Hindu right.

Liberal Framework:

● Does the normative deficit suggest that a liberal framework inherently lacks the resources
to accommodate group-differentiated rights, as postcolonial theorists have often
suggested?
 ● In Debating Difference, the author challenges this view, showing how secularism, equal
citizenship, and equality of opportunity can be consistent with group-based rights.
● The findings do not support the anti-modernist position that the modern state is incapable
of accommodating difference in any real sense.

Failure of Policy-makers:

● The main challenge for multiculturalism in India has been the failure of policy-makers to
elaborate normative-ideological resources for the justification of multicultural rights.
● An overly narrow understanding of the requirements of national unity limits political
imagination with regard to the accommodation of difference.
● The long shadow of the country's partition along religious lines in 1947 continues to
contribute to this limitation.

A. Colonial Constitutionalism and Group-Based Representation:

● Group-based representation was a hallmark of colonial constitutionalism in India.

● Each step of constitutional reform in the first half of the twentieth century was
accompanied by the extension of special representation provisions to more groups.

B. The Minority Question:

● The minority question encompassed the claims of three kinds of groups: religious
minorities, Scheduled Castes, and backward tribes.
● The employment of the term 'minority' denoted the group's claim to special treatment
from the state, not its numerical status.
● Untouchables were removed from the purview of the term 'minority' in official
categorization.
● An amendment was adopted to define the term 'minority' more narrowly and exclude
Scheduled Castes from its ambit.
● The decline of the term 'minority' during constitution-making encapsulated the
transformation of group-differentiated rights from consociationalism to affirmative
action.

Approaches to Group-Differentiated Rights in the Indian Constituent Assembly:

1. Opposition to all group-differentiated rights:

● This position encompassed assimilationist and integrationist positions (distinct).
● Constitutional outcomes varied across different areas of group-differentiated rights.
 ● Integrationist position won on quotas for religious minorities as well as ex Untouchables
and tribals in legislatures and government employment.
2. Support for maximal group rights:
● This can be termed multinational.
● Initially favored by minority parties, but most moved to restricted multicultural policies
by the end.
● Cutback on multinational provisions that had characterized colonial constitutionalism and
minority demands.
3. Intermediate, restricted multicultural position:
● Support for some group rights.
● Embodied in the constitution for cultural rights of religious minorities and territorial
autonomy for linguistic minorities and tribal populations.

Nationalist Normative Repertoire:

● Multiple meanings of concepts in different strands of opinion in the Assembly.

● Conceptions of secularism, equal citizenship rights, democracy, social justice,
development, and national unity.
● National unity was the overriding concern for most.
● Convergence among nationalists of different ideological hues that quotas for religious
minorities detracted from national unity and secularism, justice, and democracy.
● Less evident convergence in the case of quotas for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled
Tribes, as well as provisions for religious, linguistic, and cultural autonomy.

● What is the integrationist approach and the restricted multicultural approach to

accommodating diversity in the Indian Constitution?

● The integrationist approach to accommodating diversity in the Indian Constitution

emphasizes the idea of a secular, civic, and liberal democracy that treats all citizens

equally, regardless of their religious or caste identities.

● This approach can be seen in the debates on reservations for religious minorities,

disadvantaged castes, and tribes.

● The reservations for these groups were seen as temporary measures to enable economic

and social advancement and to reduce disparities that hindered national unity and

development.
● The nationalists who advocated for these reservations did not intend them to be

permanent and did not recognize them as a form of representation or protection for

distinct interests.

● On the other hand, the restricted multicultural approach to accommodating diversity in

the Indian Constitution acknowledges the importance of cultural and religious identities

but imposes certain limits on their expression.

● This approach can be seen in the provisions for religious freedom and family laws.

● The Indian Constitution allows associational and institutional autonomy and includes

specific provisions for the public profession of religious identity.

● However, the expression of these identities is restricted to some extent, and the state has

the power to intervene in matters such as family law to ensure that the rights of women

and other vulnerable groups are protected.

● What is the restricted multicultural approach and how is it reflected in the Indian

Constitution? What are the limitations of this approach according to the author?

● The restricted multicultural approach, as described by the author, refers to an approach to

the accommodation of diversity that allows for certain rights and protections for groups

and individuals of different cultural backgrounds, but within certain limits.

● In the case of the Indian Constitution, this approach is reflected in the provisions for

religious freedom and family laws, which allow for associational and institutional

autonomy, as well as specific provisions for the public profession of religious identity.

● The Constitution allows all individuals to profess, practice and propagate religion, while

religious groups and denominations have the right to establish and maintain institutions
 for religious and charitable purposes, manage their own affairs in matters of religion, and

own, acquire and administer property in accordance with the law.

● However, the author notes that the religious freedom of groups is not unlimited, as it is

subject to other constitutional rights, including those of equality and non-discrimination.

State intervention is permitted not only in the interests of public order, morality, and

health but also for purposes of social welfare and reform.

● The author also notes that the normative resources for restricted multiculturalism in the

Indian Constitution remained deficient, as justifications for multicultural provisions were

under-developed in nationalist opinion.

● The limitations of this approach, according to the author, are that the normative deficit of

restricted multiculturalism fails to provide adequate protections for individuals and

vulnerable groups within minorities, particularly women.

● The author argues that weak multiculturalism, as opposed to strong or maximal

multiculturalism, offers better protections for individuals and vulnerable groups within

minorities.

● Although support was available for limited multiculturalism within strands of Indian

nationalism, justifications for multicultural provisions remained under-developed in

nationalist opinion, on account of multiple factors. Prominent among these was the

emphasis on individual over group rights in this period, which gained enormously from

their convergence with nationalist concerns. Moreover, arguments for affirmative action-

type of group-differentiated provisions remained under-developed in nationalist opinion.

Class Discussion:

Multiculturalism and Group Rights in a Liberal Democratic Framework

● Charles Taylor, a political philosopher, argues that the liberal democratic framework does
not adequately respect group rights and can undermine them.
● The "significant other" refers to recognizing and respecting the cultural differences of
minority groups. This is important in a multicultural society to ensure that diverse groups
are not marginalized or oppressed.
● The politics of equal recognition is the idea that each group should be recognized and
respected equally within society. However, this can become problematic when it conflicts
with individual rights or when there is tension between different groups.
● In India, there is a cultural battery in the public sphere where people claim superiority
over various aspects, such as gods, diet, language, and provinces. This can lead to
tensions between different groups.
● The law can impose constraints to ensure that multiculturalism is contained, but it cannot
solve this issue entirely.
2. Law and Its Role in Containing Multiculturalism
● The law is a moderate (veneered) instrument because it aims to balance competing
interests within society. It is not always effective in addressing complex social issues, but
it can help contain conflicts.
● Past suffering and protective legal logic refers to using legal frameworks to address the
historical marginalization or oppression of certain groups. For example, affirmative
action policies in India aim to address historical discrimination against lower castes.
● The law should have empathy for marginalized groups and contain cultural differences to
ensure peaceful coexistence.
● Affirmative action policies should not perpetuate majoritarian paternalism, which is the
idea that the majority group should have power over minority groups.
● The constitution and the law should reflect the lowest common denominator to ensure
that all groups have equal rights and protections.
● State support for religious institutions, such as schools, can allow for the propagation of
religion but should not infringe on the rights of other groups.
3. Perception of Society and Empathy for Marginalized Groups
● The perception of society justifies the order of the law, meaning that laws are often
created to reflect the values and beliefs of society.
● Empathy for marginalized groups is essential in ensuring that they are not further
oppressed or marginalized by the law.
● Giving affirmative action with a sense of majoritarian paternalism can be problematic
because it can perpetuate the idea that the majority group is superior to minority groups.
● The law should aim to contain cultural differences and promote peaceful coexistence.
4. Confusion between Backwardness and Cultural Difference
● Confusing backwardness and difference can lead to misunderstandings and perpetuate
oppression or marginalization. For example, assuming that certain cultural practices are
backward can lead to stigmatization or discrimination.
● The politics of difference can threaten the national secular narrative because it may
emphasize differences between groups rather than their commonalities.
● Arrogance can prevail over inclusion when one group assumes that their values or beliefs
are superior to others.
● The idea of who "we" are can be more important than individual importance, which can
lead to the suppression of minority groups.
● There was a fear that separate electorates based on religious identity would make it
difficult for the country to stay intact because it would encourage separatism rather than
unity.
● Culture per se as a category refers to the idea that culture can be essentialized, meaning
that it is seen as a fixed and unchanging entity.
5. Culturalism and Modernity in Post-Independence India
● Culturalism refers to the idea that culture is an essential aspect of identity and that it
should be protected or preserved.

The law as a moderate (veneered) instrument: Bajpai argues that the law is a
moderate instrument that should act as a ring master in containing conflicts that arise
between groups with different cultural beliefs and practices. It should not perpetuate the
hegemonic view of the majority, but rather promote the interaction between the self and
the other to flourish. The law should act as a means of peaceful coexistence between
different groups and should not exacerbate conflicts.
● Perception of the society as justification to the order of the law: Bajpai suggests that
the law should be based on the perception of society, but it should also be in line with the
values of the constitution. The society's perception of cultural differences should not lead
to the exclusion of minority groups, but rather the law should ensure that all groups are
treated equally.
● Empathy for the groups that are sidelined: Bajpai emphasizes the need for empathy
towards groups that are marginalized in society. However, she cautions against
implementing affirmative action policies with a sense of majoritarian paternalism. She
suggests that the law should be based on the lowest common denominator in society, and
state support should not be used to propagate religion.
● Groups that do not fit in the historical minority narrative: Bajpai points out that there
are groups in society that do not fit into the historical minority narrative, even though
they may be quite numerous. These groups may pose a threat to the majority liberal
framework because their cultural ideas and practices may not be in line with the dominant
culture. Bajpai cautions against confusing backwardness with difference and warns that
the politics of difference may threaten the national secular narrative.
● Cultural difference as opposed to backwardness: Bajpai argues that cultural difference
should not be confused with backwardness. She suggests that the idea of culture is fixed
by the universal and that modernity looks at other things that it considers to be outside of
what we will be suspicious of. Bajpai notes that the claim to ethnocentrism is high in
states that are identified as Arab or Islamic. She suggests that culture should not be seen
as a separate category, but rather as an integral part of society.
● In the post-independence journey of modernity and progress, culturalism to be kept
under check: Bajpai suggests that in the post-independence journey of modernity and
progress, culturalism should be kept under check. She notes that people should rise above
their petty class differences to move towards a progressive future. She warns that the
fidelity of the idea of who we are may prevail over individual importance and that the
implementation of separate electorates based on religious identity may threaten the unity
of the country.
Rochana Bajpai's text highlights the complex nature of multiculturalism in India and the
challenges faced in promoting cultural diversity and preserving the national secular narrative.
She argues that the law should act as a moderate instrument that promotes peaceful coexistence
between different groups, and that empathy towards marginalized groups is essential. Bajpai
cautions against the politics of difference and suggests that cultural difference should not be
confused with backwardness. Finally, she notes that in the journey towards modernity and
progress, culturalism should be kept under check, and individuals should rise above their petty
class differences to move towards a more inclusive future.
Max Weber

Class Notes

1.What role does the bureaucracy play?

It plays the role of governance and reinforces the legitimacy of the state through its interactions

with the populace. It does the government ‘chores’. Every bureaucrat derive their duties, power

and scope of action from the law. The law states the composition, appointment, jurisdiction,

powers and removal procedure. The legal language

● This the system of bureaucracy can be seen in many readings like Zia Ather, engels,

Althusser etc. We see different versions of the bureaucracy in all these readings.

● Bureaucracies can exist outside the state machinery. They can be private-bodies operating

outside the state but follow bureaucratic logic. The officers in such institution follow a set

of rules and apply their decision-making skills this together constitutes the bureaucratic

process.

● Is a lawyer a bureaucrat?

Yes, the lawyer needs to apply her mind to a set of complex rules to get the desired results. She

needs to have knowledge about the rules made by the State and make complex decisions

regularly. They interact regularly with the state bureaucracy and are approached by clients to

walk them through the bureaucracy labyrinth. The are regarded as bureaucratic specialists

because they speak the State’s language and assist in interpreting and translating .

● The concern of the modern state is highlighted in Weber’s writings which are then

manifested as an essential motif of sociology. We see a split between political sociology

 and sociology in the 20th century with sociology focussing more about culture, religion,

food etc. While political sociology focusses upon the modernity, the modern State

structure, beauracrcy.

● How can political sociology analyse bearactractic institutions while employing

sociological methods like ethnography.

In such cases the people of the bureaucracy are not the subjects. Rather it is the process of

the bureaucracy which gives us a view of the structure. Through the process or subject

they reveal the structure of the bureaucracy. In Nayanika Mathur we see how the

MGNREGA scheme reveals the working and structure of the lower bureaucracy. Political

sociologists then bring a altnerative sense of

● Disenchantment- Weber used the German word Entzauberung, translated into English as

“disenchantment” but which literally means “de-magic-ation.” More generally, the word

connotes the breaking of a magic spell. For Weber, the advent of scientific methods and

the use of enlightened reason meant that the world was rendered transparent and

demystified. Theological and supernatural accounts of the world involving gods and

spirits, for example, ceased to be plausible. Instead, one put one’s faith in the ability of

science to eventually explain everything in rational terms. But, for Weber, the effect of

that demystification was that the world was leeched of mystery and richness. It became

disenchanted and disenchanting, predictable and intellectualized. In that sense, the

disenchantment of the world is the alienating and undesirable flip side of scientific

progress.Indeed, Weber did not have many good things to say about the process of

disenchantment. For example, in a disenchanted world, public life is on the wane because

transcendent values are no longer to be found in community or polity; rather, people seek

emotional fulfillment in private relations. According to Weber, such undesirable

consequences of disenchantment can be attributed above all to the fact that science

inadequately fills the vacuum left by the diminishment of religion: science may be able to
 clarify questions of values and morals, but it is ultimately incapable of answering them.

However, a return to old-style religion is also an inferior solution, for that would

represent a withdrawal into the obsolete and unfounded beliefs of the past. The

inadequacy of both science and religion produces a fundamental impasse in the modern

world, Weber thought.

● The beauracracy does’nt abide by logics of the market. It need a continuous supply of

money to finance its nitty-gritties. Most of the tax revenue earned by the state is used to

support the bureaucracy and military.

Reading Notes

Bureaucracy is the social organization of rationalized authority. It is a form of organizational

management that has been developed to handle large organizations and their complex
administrative tasks. According to Max Weber, the ideal type of bureaucracy is one that can be
described as a machine. This machine-like organization has three main components:

1. Specialization of labor
2. Authority hierarchy, and
3. Impersonality

Origins

Max Weber believed that a bureaucrat’s ideal type is the ultimate goal in order to avoid any
corruption.Max Weber was a German sociologist who wrote extensively on authority, power,
rationalization in society, and capitalism’s ability to create wealth for society. He is known for
his two major works – The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905) and The Theory
of Social And Economic Organization (1920).

Max Weber also created what he called the Ideal Type of Bureaucracy, which enabled him to
study all aspects of bureaucracy more scientifically than had ever been done before then. He
believed that a bureaucrat’s ideal type is the ultimate goal in order to avoid any corruption. Max
Weber’s type of bureaucracy is an administration that upholds the rules and regulations with
strict adherence to protocol. The guidelines are written, followed, and enforced consistently from
employee to employee.

Bureaucracy

Bureaucracy is a system of rules and procedures that are designed to make the operation of an
organization or society as efficient, effective, and rational as possible.
Bureaucracy can be divided into two types:

1. Formal bureaucracy
2. Informal bureaucracy

Formal bureaucracy

Formal bureaucratic systems have explicit written rules that are enforced by the organization’s
hierarchical structure. They are often characterized by impersonality, rigidity, inefficiency, and
inflexibility.

Informal bureaucracy

Informal bureaucratic systems operate outside of any formalized process with only implicit
agreements between individuals who work together regularly. These may include unwritten
norms about how decisions should be made or what information should be shared.

Characteristics

1. Bureaucracy is a system of rules that are enforced by an organization (Written rules and
regulations)
2. Bureaucracies can be used to control and regulate the behavior of people in organizations
3. Bureaucracy is often associated with red-tape, which refers to excessive bureaucracy or
complicated administrative procedures that inhibit quick decisions and action
4. Bureaucracy is a system of organization where the power to make decisions and enforce
them rests with one person or group
5. Bureaucracy has been criticized for being too rigid and not allowing enough flexibility
6. Bureaucracies are often seen as inefficient because they require so much paperwork, but
this can be countered using computers to automate some processes
7. Bureaucracy is a system of organization that is characterized by hierarchical levels and
the rule of law
8. Bureaucracies are typically found in large organizations, such as governments or
corporations. (The word bureaucracy comes from French and means office work)
9. Standardized procedures, methods, and practice
10. Bureaucracy is impersonal because it does not involve direct contact between the
bureaucrat and those being served by the bureaucracy
11. Bureaucracies are characterized by labor division with specific tasks assigned to
particular individuals or groups of individuals within the organization
12. The rule-making authority for a bureaucracy resides in its top managers

Weber’s Six Principles Of Bureaucracy

Max Weber identified six bureaucracy principles: rationality, hierarchy, expertise, rules-based
decision making, formalization, and specialization.

1. Authority Hierarchy
2. Formal Rules and Regulations
 3. Division of Labour (Specializations)
4. Impersonality
5. Career Orientation
6. Formal Selection Process

Principle of Authority Hierarchy

Bureaucratic structures can be traced back to medieval and Roman law, which rested upon
hierarchy and authority principles. A bureaucratic organization has two fundamental
components:

1. Chains of command, and

2. Positional roles or functions in an organization

These two components form what’s called an Authority Hierarchy.

The importance of the Authority Hierarchy comes from the fact that it provides formalized rules
for who gets to give orders to whom within an organization. Naturally, this creates power
dynamics with those at higher levels giving commands to those lower down in rank within
formalized channels.

Principle of Formal Rules and Regulations

The Formal Rules and Regulations in an ideal bureaucracy are the guidelines that dictate how
things should be done. The documents on which these rules and regulations rest include manuals,
directives, handbooks, instructions, policies, etc. They provide a clear definition of what needs to
happen for an organization to function appropriately.

Principle of Division of Labour(Specializations)

Labor expert Adam Smith was the first to theorize about specialization . He wrote:

It is the great multiplication of the productions of all kinds which occasions, in a well-governed
society, such a plentiful addition to the general stock of the community.

Max Weber argued that a well-functioning bureaucracy that was been designed with the division
of labor in mind will be more efficient and productive than one without it.

Without labor division, people would have to do many tasks that they are not equipped for, and
everything becomes incomplete or unorganized because there isn’t enough time to complete
them all simultaneously as another task begins.

This makes productivity difficult and decreases efficiency. With specialization (division), quality
improves and costs decrease as only those qualified perform the tasks.

Principle of Impersonality
Bureaucracy should be autonomous, impersonal, and impartial to achieve the goals of a
bureaucracy. According to Weber, the relationship between employees must be professional. The
impersonal bureaucratic atmosphere is structured to foster decision-making solely on evidence
and critical thought.

The rules are well defined, clear and are applied in the same way to everyone across the board.
The rules are there to prevent favoritism, nepotism and the participation of outsiders or political
interference with the organization’s purpose.

Principle of Career Orientation

The principle of Career Orientation in ideal bureaucracy is that every employee has a unique set
of skills. It’s the employer’s responsibility to match their employees with the jobs that best suit
them.

In other words, employees should be given career paths where they can grow into different roles
over time, while still getting opportunities to try new things. This way, everybody wins!

Principle of Formal Selection Process

Another key concept in an ideal bureaucracy is that management can inspire workers to develop
a long-term career in the company by providing them with job security and performance-based
rewards.

The five steps of the formal selection process in an ideal bureaucracy are:

1. Bureaucratic jobs available which one should be applied to

2. Applying for these positions.
3. Interviewing for those openings
4. Selecting someone from this pool of applicants to get hired
5. Finding replacements as needed when there is a vacancy

Advantages

Bureaucracy is the use of rules and regulations to maintain order in an organization.

Bureaucracies are necessary for large organizations because they provide a way to make
decisions and allocate resources.

● Bureaucracies are important because they allow people who work within them to
specialize in specific areas, which can be more efficient than having everyone do
everything
● Advantages of bureaucracy include efficiency, predictability, and consistency
● The principle of unity or solidarity, which encourages people to work together as a team
with one goal in mind: efficiency and effectiveness
● The principle of consistency, meaning that bureaucracy must be applied uniformly across
all situations
 ● Rationality in bureaucracy means that bureaucracies are efficient because they have clear
procedures for employees’ jobs
● Hierarchy means that there are different levels within the organization, with people in
higher positions having more power than those in lower positions. This allows for an
efficient division of labor among workers who specialize in certain tasks
● Expertise in bureaucracy refers to the idea that bureaucrats need to be trained experts on
doing their jobs well, not making mistakes, or taking too much time doing things
● The principle of authority or power, which is delegated to those who are in charge.

Disadvantages

● The bureaucratic theory is a way of understanding organizations as systems that are

primarily characterized by hierarchical chains of command and control
● The principle of hierarchy & discipline, which requires that everyone follow orders from
their superiors without question. This can lead to an autocratic organization
● The bureaucratic theory’s limitations include its inability to account for the complexities
associated with organizational change, the lack of attention to informal power structures
in organizations, and an overemphasis on rationality
● The bureaucratic theory is a sociological perspective that emphasizes the need for order
and efficiency in society
● The theory’s proponents argue that bureaucracy can be used to address problems of
power, authority, hierarchy, and social inequality
● The other disadvantages of bureaucracy include slow decision-making processes,
inflexible policies, and red tape

Nayanika Mathur

● The author analyses the bureaucracy of the NGREGA scheme while using the

implementation of the NGREGA Scheme in Chamoli district.

● In Chamoli district even though a large percenatge of the people live under poverty the

MNGREGA scheme allotted funds have not been utilised. The MNGREGA officials and

the village incharge allege that Chamoli has a low demand for public work

programmes.The author find that these claims are not true through her study.
● The objective of the NREGA, in fact, is similar to that of the plethora of employment

schemes/public works programmes that has preceded it: provision of employment and

wages to rural citizens. Further, it swallows up extant schemes, allowing for the

establishment of a clear genealogy of rural employment programmes in post-1947 India.

Public works programmes in India have traditionally been associated with high levels of

corruption or, as the popular euphemism in policy circles goes: ‘leakages’This lead to a

call for transparency and the new MNGREGA act was passed alongside the RTI act.

● These acts were passed and strongly protested for because of the ‘diabolical significance’

attached to documents and files for the destinies of people in India. The RTI campaign, in

fact, was premised on the very belief that enabling citizens to inspect hitherto-

inaccessible state documents would result in a drastic reduction in corruption and, hence,

in the exploitation of people.

● Transparency is also based on a similar idea i.e oundational assumption that transparency

is materially produced or, in other words, transparent governance emerges from control

over and access to state documents and records. There is a belief that official information

– in its tangible, material form as a document – will allow anyone to, so to say, speak

truth to power. This is also characterized by the peculiar characteristic of the Indian

bureaucracy i.e its passion for paper. Despite innumerable and routine subversions,

rational-legal record-keeping about its decision-making process remains the hallmark of

Indian government. In a system created by the colonial government for internal

transparency and oversight, the paper trail is painstakingly laid out’ (2006, p. 18).

Baviskar goes on to note that ‘[i]t is this commitment to documentation that makes it

possible for the state to now be legible to its citizens’ (ibid.)

● To ensure transparency there are many procedures to be undertaken before the scheme

reaches its beneficiaries. The everyday life of the district and Block officials as well as

the village-level workers is spent labouring on producing these documents through which

the NREGS was endowed with an official reality. While all development schemes
 operate on similar bureaucratic principles, the NREGS is distinguished by the sheer

volume of paperwork and precision in detailing it requires.

● In short, ‘transparency’ is said to have been accomplished through the production and

circulation of the correct documents. Furthermore, in the attempt to make the state system

‘transparent’, a plethora of new documentary practices have been ushered in by this

legislation.

● Process of getting a NGREGA job - Job card.

● Transparency is a dominant ideal of all development efforts being undertaken in India

today.

● There is a dual system of checking and transparency whic is thought to have made the

MGNREGA scheme free from corruption. The first layer of transparency is insured by

the various bureaucratic procedures the second layer is insured by the job card ( this layer

is regarded to make the scheme completely transparent as the job card is a legal

document which is outside the State’s domain.

● Though the paper we discover how this is not true, we come across many examples of

how the job cards are manipulated, sold to nepali migrants, etc. This tells us that job card

has not fulfilled its purpose.

● Lastly Mathur’s main argument is that sheer amount of paperwork required to make the

MNGREGA scheme transparent has made it unimplementable.

● “Surely just paperwork could not make a scheme that was flush with funds

unimplementable? As I paid closer attention to the much-bemoaned paperwork, I came to

realize that it was not the volume of paperwork but rather the work that certain

transparent-making documents were doing that was creating a crisis of implementation.”

● This claim about the upsetting nature of transparent-making documents may be illustrated

through a comparison with what was described as the paramparik bandobast (traditional
 arrangement/system) through which rural employment programmes ran in Chamoli till

the advent of the NREGS. This system is colloquially referred to as the ‘Contractor Raj’.

Public works schemes, it was openly acknowledged, were primarily run by contractors.

For instance, the Sampoorna Grameen Rozgar Yojana (SGRY), which is what the

NREGS supplanted, was considered ‘easy’ to implement as the district faced no problem

in exhausting the annual budget allocated to it. The ease of implementation of such

schemes was directly related to the paperwork involved.The required documents under

previous schemes consisted merely of a work order, a muster roll, and receipts, all of

which could be handled by a contractor and/or his/her allies such as the local government

functionary.

● Thus, on paper, these previous schemes were easily implementable. Compare this easily

controllable and manipulable system to the documentary logic of the NREGA, in which

the muster rolls must be pukka and bear their unique registration number, be kept at the

worksite, be accessible to any who wish to inspect them, and must correspond precisely,

in the details of their entries, to the entries made in the job cards. Finally, this vital

document – the job card – is legally supposed to be, at all times, in the possession of the

household to which it has been issued. In effect, then, this law has created a stringent

system of double accounting: one involving not only a large number of mutually

corresponding documents that different state actors are required to produce but also,

crucially, a document that centrally attests to the truth of the scheme and resides outside

the domain of the state, in the hands of the labourer.

● In the NREGA’s quest for transparency this tiny job card has a central role to play. It is

described by the operational guidelines as ‘a critical legal document, which also helps to

ensure transparency and protect labourers against fraud’

● The fundamental purpose of the job card is to allow the labourer to verify what the state

claims it has officially paid him/her. Accordingly, this document carries a photograph of

the registered household as well as the core details: number of days and hours worked for
 the NREGS, and wages earned. All monitoring of the NREGS at the level of the village is

focused upon scrutiny of job cards. Entries in job cards are read against the official

muster rolls to check for any discrepancies in accounts. Hence, it is through an

examination of documents, especially of the job card, that the operations of the state are

believed to have been made transparent.

● Having said that, this transparent-making document was often described to me as

‘making NREGS very difficult’, ‘adding too much work’, ‘complicating the system’.. Job

cards were charged with affect, being described variously as a ‘headache’, a ‘pain in the

neck’, ‘dastardly’, ‘ridiculous’, and, even, ‘like an elephant that has gone mad’.

Contractors told me in direct terms that given this bizarre paperwork of NREGS, they

preferred to concentrate their energies on the myriad other development schemes that

continue to operate in Chamoli under the ‘older’ strictures, i.e., ones not demanding

transparency.

● In India, on the other hand, the introduction of a ‘social audit’ in NREGA and the

emphasis on monitoring, transparency, and accountability more generally have been

energetically celebrated in the official and activist literature on the RTI and NREGA.

These measures have been praised as giving birth to a new form of politics, and for

posing a challenge to the regular operations of state power.

● To conclude with in its quest to ‘make things auditable’ (Power, 1999, p. 68), NREGA

has converted easily-executed – at least on paper – public works schemes into

unimplementable ones even on paper.

Class Discussion

● India has colonial bureaucracy this differs from Max Weber’s subject of study, german

beauracary. The beauracrats are trained and are required to deliver to the public without
 fail. India in contrast has a post-colonial beauracary that is a residue of colonial practices

and procedures.

● A colonial state finds it difficult to convince the people that they are not imposing a

hierarchy. But in a post-colonial society they are more concerned with putting up

appearances to the general public.

● Partha Chatterjee’s treading point out two kinds of people dealing with the State. A group

which is included and one which is excluded. The group which is included is a part of

civil society and is a eductaed, financially better off. The group which is excluded exists

outside the grammar of legality. They go through their daily life while dealoing wit

imbalnaces of power. They do not have the luxury of opting for state approved formed of

dissent and are forced to take radical measures. The radical measures such as theft help

them cope when the negotiation fails.

● This goes against the image potrayed by the post colonial state i.e welfare state. The

image reveal happens when the excluded are not given then very things they were assured

of. The welfare schemes stop operating once the elections are done and the true nature of

the State comes into play.

● Post colonial state has inherited the apathetic nature of the state from its predecessors, the

colnisers. They deal with apathy and don’t cultivate personal relations with the

subjects.There is an ethos that surrounds all state infrastructure and is a characteristic of

post colonial ideology. This is a gift from the deep trauma and wounds from the colonial

state.

● The nature of the state in post colonial society constantly tries to be progressive but slip

up on their promises. The transparency clause becomes self defeating due to the circles of

bureaucratic procedures allowed. The red-tapism and the transparency of the state only

on paper defeats the very purpose of the NGREGA act.

● This leads to psychology of disenchantment in the excluded group. They become

disenchanted with the state and its welfare scheme due to its constant apathy.
 ● The reason for the apathy of the state is an effective envy. The lower beauracrats try to

mimic the activities of a high ranking beauracrat and end up making a mockery of the

actual purpose. The mockery makes the hierarchy more tolerable and affirms their belief

that they are valuable cog in state machinery.

● The Process of getting a NGREGA Job shows us how the bureaucracy operates in daily

mundane activities. The sheer process involved is akin to a bureaucratic trap for the

illiterate citizen.

● The transparency involved in keeping and creating bureaucratic paperwork defeats the

original purpose i.e accountability.

● The grey economy of the NGREGA system is controlled by the contractors. The scheme

was started to keep the contractors out of the equation but this is not the actual case. The

corruption flows through different levels and the final/remaing amount is very minimal

and keeps the underprivileged deprived. This petty corruption is difficult to keep track of.

This petty corruption is a way through contractors, low level beauracrats cope with the

hierarchies and the status quo. This petty corruption borders on illegality to gain an unfair

advantage. This becomes a way they navigate their social realities and survive the

existing inequalities and build networks within the state machinery.

● “Writing government letters (sarkari chitthi) was not something that just anyone could

do. It was an art (kala) or skill, to be learned gradually through experience…..”

Bureaucratic letter writing has a certain pattern and skill.

Class discussion (nachiketh)

Post-Colonial State Infrastructure

● The state infrastructure in post-colonial India differs from that in Germany, where
Weber's ideas were originally discussed.
● Post-colonial India has a residual colonial state, with racial and ethnic homogeneity in the
governing and governed populations.
● The colonial state tried to erase hierarchy, but now India is a representative democracy
with an electoral logic that emphasizes working for the public.
 ● Many people, especially those who are not upper or upper-middle class and educated, do
not interact directly with the state.
● Instead, they operate on the fringes of illegality and criminality and interact with the state
through power imbalances.
● This behavior is common in India, where a large percentage of the population is part of
the political society.
● Negotiating with the state often involves relying on social support systems to access
services.

Bureaucratic Apathy and Procrastination

● In an overburdened democracy, bureaucracy often procrastinates work and has no

personal relationship with beneficiaries/subjects.
● The colonial rule has caused trauma and pain that pervades both the public and private
systems, making it challenging to embrace the system enthusiastically.
● This constant failure is the reason why some states are considered failed states by
organizations like the UN and WB.
● This failure is not due to corrupt leaders, but due to the psychological wounds of
colonialism that prevent post-colonial states from achieving well-functioning democratic
states.

Access and Marginalization

● Access to the state and its benefits is easier for those who are folded/invested in the
system, like those who can protest with police security at their local town hall.
● Marginalized people lack this access and are usually indifferent towards the state.
● Petty corruption is prevalent in low-level bureaucracy and contractors, making it difficult
to keep track of and bordering on illegality to gain an unfair advantage.
● The apathy of the state is due to effective envy, where lower-level bureaucrats try to
mimic high-ranking bureaucrats, making a mockery of the actual purpose and affirming
their belief that they are a valuable cog in the state machinery.

Transparency and Accountability

● Transparency as a self-defeating purpose becomes more confusing and convoluted.

● Accountability is confusing, and the relegation of authority becomes more elaborate in
the interest of democracy's need for greater transparency, leading to a paper tiger effect.

Comparison with Other Post-Colonial States

● The performative capacity and psychology around statecraft differ in post-colonial

modern democratic states like China, Japan, and South Korea.
● Hierarchy is often practiced through affirming and mocking the person in authority,
making survival in the hierarchy more tolerable.
 Kar, Sohini. Relative Indemnity: Risk, Insurance, and Kinship in Indian

Mircrofinance.Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 23(2)(2017)

Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) and Risk Management

● MFIs engage in new forms of risk management by making collateral-free loans to the
●
●
● poor in India.
● Through the requirement of male guarantors, MFIs hedge on kinship even as they
speculate on the bottom of the pyramid as a new market of accumulation.

Gender and Microfinance

● Microfinance loans are made to women with the goal of economic and social
empowerment.
● Commercial MFIs in India require women to have male kin guarantors to access loans.
● Male kin guarantors can be the borrower's husband, adult son, brother, father, or father-
in-law.

Kinship and Financialization

● MFIs' stipulation for male guarantors brings kinship relations under the gaze of financial
institutions.
● The requirement for male guarantors both binds families together and discloses places
where they fall apart.
● "Relations of guarantee" call upon both borrowers and guarantors to continuously reflect
upon and provide signs of their relationship for MFIs to assess.
● They reveal how underlying familial relationships are speculated upon and transformed
by the process of financialization.
● Fieldwork in Kolkata, India.
● Jai, a loan officer, and the narrator are seated on a raised single bed in a small room
during a microfinance group meeting.
● A woman named Krishna wants a loan, and her jamai (son-in-law) will be her guarantor.
● Jai asks why Krishna's son can't be her guarantor, and she silently shakes her head,
unwilling to delve into the details of an absent son.
● Other group members suggest that the jamai be the guarantor if he is willing.
● Jai suggests that Krishna's daughter takes the loan instead, as it will make things easier
with her age and guarantor.
● Krishna agrees and goes to find her daughter to put in the loan application.

● The text explores the complex relationship between microfinance institutions, gender,
kinship, and financialization in India. MFIs' engagement in new forms of risk
management allows the poor to be enfolded into circuits of global finance through
collateral-free loans.
● However, the requirement of male guarantors for women borrowers reveals how kinship
relations are transformed by financialization.
● This transforms familial relationships into a speculative market, where the relationships
between borrowers and guarantors are continuously assessed by MFIs. The narrative
highlights the ways in which these relationships are scrutinized by MFIs during a
microfinance group meeting in Kolkata, India.
● The interaction between Jai, the loan officer, and Krishna shows how the requirement of
male guarantors can lead to an exploration of familial relationships, and how kinship ties
are implicated in the process of financialization

1. Commercial microfinance and social change

● Commercial microfinance has expanded rapidly in India in the past decade, aiming to
draw the poor into networks of financialized debt.
● MFIs offer small loans to poor women, with the intention of creating independent women
entrepreneurs and enabling social and economic empowerment.
● However, microfinance loans have also enabled the expansion of finance to the 'bottom
billion' of banking, and new forms of financial speculation are undergirded by and often
reinforce existing forms of social structure, including kinship.
2. Kinship and financial risk management
● Kinship and domestic life are wound into the concerns of systemic risk, becoming objects
and tools of financial risk management.
● The system of guarantors seeks to manage risk by reflecting and capitalizing on existing
patriarchal kinship structures.
● Borrowers use existing familial bonds to access loans and actively produce new or fictive
forms of relationality through debt.
● Kinship provides a kind of insurance against debt default, but even this is ultimately
financialized in life insurance policies.
 3. Financial speculation and systemic risk
● Commercial microfinance in India raises capital from a range of sources, including
commercial debt, private and public equity, and securitization of loans.
● MFIs extend this capital in the form of small loans to the poor with higher interest,
effectively profiting on the differential interest rates.
● By lending to or investing in MFIs, banks and other financial institutions can benefit
from the profitability of 'subprime' markets, while diversifying and minimizing their own
risks.
● The rapid expansion of finance into the lives of the poor has required speculation on a
new market, but it has also been accompanied by new mechanisms of risk management.
● The growth of the financial system has influenced not just economic life, but also
political decisions through monetary systems and everyday life through savings, credit,
and pensions.
● The growth of commercial microfinance poses new dangers of financial catastrophe with
systemic implications.
● The text argues that commercial microfinance in India is a complex and contested
phenomenon that cannot be reduced to a simple story of either empowerment or
exploitation.
● While microfinance promises social change, it also reinforces existing forms of social
structure, including kinship.
● Microfinance weaves through the complex networks of kinship relations as women
negotiate familial obligations to manage this debt, in terms of both access to and recovery
of loans.
● Ultimately, the growth of commercial microfinance poses new dangers of financial
catastrophe with systemic implications.
Themes:

● Microfinance and collateral-free loans

● The Grameen Bank model and Joint Liability Groups (JLGs)
● Excessive peer pressure among JLG members
● Individual Liability Method (ILM)
● Implementation of mandatory life insurance under ILM
● Fieldwork conducted with a non-banking financial company microfinance institution
(NBFC-MFI)
● Borrower demographics
● Passport-sized photographs used in microfinance as a particular form of ‘public-use’
photo

Microfinance and collateral-free loans

● Microfinance offers collateral-free loans to the poor, who are often excluded from formal
financial systems
● Instead of material capital, it uses social capital as collateral
The Grameen Bank model and Joint Liability Groups (JLGs)

● Lenders require women to form groups to access loans, thereby reducing the risk of
lending to the poor
● Joint Liability Groups (JLGs) hold borrowers accountable for each other’s loans
● Limitations to the JLG model, such as producing excessive amounts of peer pressure
among JLG members
● Slow speed at which MFIs can grow their operations under the JLG model

Individual Liability Method (ILM)

● Loans made to the individual, without requiring group members to be liable for each
other’s loans
● Faster to authorize and enable MFIs to more rapidly expand their outreach
● Increasing levels of labour on the part of loan officers to ascertain the creditworthiness of
borrowers
● Use of male guarantors for loans and implementation of mandatory life insurance as risk
management techniques under ILM

Fieldwork conducted with a non-banking financial company microfinance institution (NBFC-

MFI)

● Fourteen months of fieldwork conducted in Kolkata between 2009 and 2011

● Attended borrower group meetings and house verifications with MFI staff
● Interviewed MFI staff at the branch office and head office, as well as bankers and policy-
makers

Borrower demographics

● Majority of borrowers are Bengali Hindus of various caste backgrounds

● Migrant (non-Bengali) borrowers, both Hindu and Muslim, largely from the neighbouring
states of Bihar and Orissa, and with some from Uttar Pradesh

Passport-sized photographs used in microfinance as a particular form of ‘public-use’ photo

● All microfinance borrowers are issued a small passbook to document transactions

● Glued on the front page of every passbook is a ‘joint photo’, or a passport-sized
photograph of a man and a woman – the borrower and her guarantor
● Rarely does the loan officer check the photo against the borrower
● Pictures sometimes used as a tool for identification, but also raise questions about privacy
and the use of photographs in financial

Mandatory life insurance

 ● In the absence of material and social collateral, MFIs using the ILM must institute other
forms of risk management. One technique is the implementation of mandatory life
insurance, which serves as a way to insure against the risks of default and debt liability.
● By mandating that borrowers take out life insurance, MFIs can protect themselves from
losses in case of default, and ensure that the borrower's family is not left with the burden
of repaying the loan in case of the borrower's untimely death.
● During my fieldwork with DENA, I observed the implementation of mandatory life
insurance policies for borrowers. The insurance premiums were paid by the borrowers
themselves, with the cost of the premium being included in the loan amount.
● The policy was issued by a third-party insurer, and the borrower had the option of
choosing either a term policy or an endowment policy. In the case of a term policy, the
borrower's family would receive a lump sum payment in case of the borrower's death
during the term of the policy.
● In the case of an endowment policy, the borrower would receive a lump sum payment on
maturity of the policy, or in case of the borrower's death during the term of the policy.
● While mandatory life insurance policies can provide some degree of protection for
borrowers and MFIs, they also have several limitations.
● First, the premiums for these policies can be quite high, particularly for older borrowers
or those with pre-existing health conditions.
● Second, the payouts from these policies are often insufficient to cover the full amount of
the loan, leaving the borrower's family with a significant debt burden.
● Finally, the third-party insurers that issue these policies may be unreliable, and may
refuse to pay out claims in case of the borrower's death, leaving the borrower's family
without any protection.
Gendered Guarantee and Domestic interruptions

● Munni, a young Bihari woman, wanted a loan for her business selling ready-made clothes
● Munni demanded to know why she should be excluded from access to loans based on her
husband's income
● Mr. Guha, the deputy general manager at DENA, explained that they give loans to ladies
and almost every man is working
● Studies in microfinance have shown that the guarantor system did not challenge structural
and gendered forms of domestic inequality but actually capitalized on them
● Practices around seeking out and sustaining male guarantors make and unmake kinship
practices and relationships in new and sometimes unexpected ways
● Anand, the branch manager, is waiting outside the house for Daisy, who is hosting the
group meeting
● Another borrower, Kabita, turns up and says Daisy had gone to buy fish at the market
● Anand is concerned about Daisy's ability to pay off her loan because her husband just left
her and their child
● Anand observes Daisy's purchase of three types of fish as a way to understand if she has
enough money or not.
● Anand then goes on to explain how the MFI tries to work with borrowers who experience
domestic interruptions and economic hardship, but also acknowledges the difficulties of
balancing financial accountability with empathy and understanding for their borrowers'
lives.
● An important theme in this text is the intersection of microfinance and gendered power
dynamics.
● The requirement of male guarantors not only reinforces patriarchal social structures but
also exposes women to additional pressures during group meetings and loan repayment.
● It also fails to challenge the underlying structural and gendered forms of domestic
inequality that may prevent women from accessing and benefiting from microfinance.
● Additionally, the text highlights how microfinance can sometimes enforce or even
strengthen prevailing gender hierarchies and structures of inequality, despite its intended
purpose of empowering women.
● Another theme is the ways in which microfinance institutions try to balance financial
accountability with empathy and understanding for their borrowers' lives, particularly
during periods of domestic interruptions or economic hardship.
● Anand's observations about Daisy's shopping habits serve as a way to gauge her financial
situation, but he also shows concern and empathy for her when he learns about her
husband leaving.
● This highlights the challenges of working with vulnerable populations and the
importance of balancing financial goals with the realities of people's lives.
This provides a nuanced and critical perspective on microfinance and its impact on
gendered power dynamics and domestic life.
● It highlights the limitations of microfinance as a tool for empowerment and calls for a
deeper understanding of the complex social and economic contexts in which
microfinance operates.
● Lending to women as a tool for empowerment
● MFIs lend to women to facilitate their empowerment
● Poor men criticized for lacking financial and moral discipline
2. Seeking sisters as borrowers
● Poor men excluded from access to microfinance seek women to gain access to loans
● Abdul's case shows how the gendered practices of microfinance lending create
complicated debt relationships between siblings
3. Reinforcing dichotomy in access to credit
● MFIs reinforce the dichotomy in access to credit: small loans for women, large loans for
men
● Microfinance programs do not cover the gap in unequal access to formal credit by poor
women-headed households
4. Producing fictive kin
● Women mobilize channels of communication among friends and neighbors to create
fictive kin as guarantors
● The case of Panchali shows how women use fictive kin to access microfinance loans
1. Lending to women as a tool for empowerment
 2. Microfinance institutions (MFIs) in India typically lend only to women, with the notion
that access to credit facilitates women’s empowerment. This focus on women also
implies a critique of poor men. MFIs lend to women because of their focus on
responsibility towards the family. Poor Indian women cannot think about themselves
solely but think about their children. In contrast, men, particularly from the lower strata
of the population, tend to booze, drink, and gamble, making them incapable of ensuring
loan recovery. While male guarantors ensure income to repay the loan, women, as
borrowers, are expected to ensure fiscal discipline to repay the loans.
3. Seeking sisters as borrowers
4. Poor men who are excluded from access to microfinance programs seek out women to
gain access to loans. In Abdul's case, he wanted to get a new loan from DENA, but his
wife lived in a village in Bihar, and there was no MFI in their village. Abdul's mother
agreed to get the loan, but DENA required her to provide an official document as proof of
age. As Abdul went back and forth with the MFI staff about who would be the potential
borrower, he asked if his younger sister could get the loan. The branch manager
instructed Abdul to find his sister to access the loan. This situation shows how gendered
practices of microfinance lending create complicated debt relationships between parents
or in-laws and children, as well as between siblings.
5. Reinforcing dichotomy in access to credit
6. Microfinance, despite its emphasis on empowering women, reinforces the dichotomy in
access to credit. Small loans are given to women, while large loans are available to men.
Microfinance programs do not cover the gap in unequal access to formal credit by poor
women-headed households. In the emerging and expanding system of gendered debt,
poor men borrow from moneylenders and, where available, larger formal sector loans,
while poor women borrow from MFIs.
7. Producing fictive kin
8. While husbands and sons are the preferred guarantors by MFIs, they also accept other
male kin, including brothers. In the absence of any male kin who will serve as a
guarantor, women will mobilize channels of communication among friends and
neighbors to create fictive kin. In Panchali's case, she used Deepa-Didi's brother as her
guarantor to access the loan. This situation shows how women use fictive kin to access
microfinance loans.

Unintended consequences
The gendered and classed practices of microfinance lending can have unintended consequences.
For example, as poor men who are excluded from access to microfinance programmes seek out
women to gain access to these loans, it can result in complicated debt relationships between
siblings or in-laws.
This creates new forms of relationships and fictive kin. In addition, microfinance lending
reinforces the dichotomy in access to credit: small loans for women, large loans for men, and
does not cover the gap in unequal access to formal credit by poor women-headed households.

Concluding bits of the text:

 The text discusses the use of mandatory life insurance policies by microfinance
institutions (MFIs) in India. The use of life insurance helps MFIs manage the risk of
lending to the poor who have higher mortality rates.
● Life insurance premiums are attached to the loan as an additional fee, and the insurance
policy covers repayment of the loan in the case of the borrower's or guarantor's death.
Life insurance becomes a form of collateral that helps MFIs hedge against the loss of life
and wage labor.
● MFIs also manage insurance costs by using age limits for lending, which reduce the risk
of lending to older people with higher mortality rates.
● The text also highlights how the use of life insurance policies by MFIs transforms
relational ties between kin.
● With life insurance, the indemnity offered by the male guarantor is no longer an
abstraction, but a concrete policy coverage.
● Life insurance mitigates the loss of income within a family in case of death, and when
attached to microfinance loans, it becomes a form of collateral.
● The use of insurance by MFIs, however, fails to account for the realities of familial life
and household structures. MFIs encourage borrowers to get sons rather than older
husbands to serve as guarantors, which may not align with the realities of family life,
given high levels of youth unemployment in West Bengal.
● The use of life insurance policies also replaces ethical obligations with a calculative one,
and it fails to account for the precariousness of life.
● The main themes and headings that emerge from the text are:
● Use of life insurance policies by MFIs in India
● Life insurance is a requirement for a loan at some MFIs
● Higher mortality rates of the poor increase the risk of lending, making life insurance a
mechanism for MFIs to take on this risk
● Insurance premiums are attached to the loan as an additional fee
● Life insurance becomes a form of collateral that helps MFIs hedge against the loss of life
and wage labor
● Age limits to lending
● Implicit rationale of age limits is to reduce the risk of lending to older people with higher
mortality rates
● Cut-off for women to get loans is 50, while men could serve as guarantors until the age of
60
● Older women are encouraged to have sons serve as guarantors, even when their husband
is alive, to lower the mortality risks of the guarantor
● Transformation of relational ties between kin
● Life insurance transforms the indemnity offered by the guarantor into a concrete policy
coverage
● Insurance becomes a form of collateral that helps MFIs hedge against the loss of income
within a family
● Encouragement for borrowers to get sons rather than older husbands to serve as
guarantors may not align with the realities of family life, given high levels of youth
unemployment in West Bengal
● Use of life insurance policies by MFIs replaces ethical obligations with a calculative one
and fails to account for the precariousness of life.

The text discusses the increasing trend of microfinance institutions (MFIs) requiring
borrowers to purchase mandatory life insurance policies when obtaining loans.
● Life insurance is seen as a mechanism for MFIs to manage the risk of lending to the poor,
who have higher mortality rates.
● The insurance policy is often tacked on as an additional fee, leading to a proliferation of
financial products for the poor. In the absence of material and social collateral, MFIs use
insurance to hedge against the loss of life and implicitly of waged labor.
● The life insurance policy covers repayment of the loan in the case of the borrower’s or
her guarantor’s death, reflecting the centrality of the guarantor to the loan’s repayment.
● The guarantor is often a male relative, such as a husband or son, and the cut-off age for
men to serve as guarantors is 60, while for women it is 50.
● The text highlights that by enfolding the guarantor within the coverage of life insurance,
MFIs not only acknowledge the relationality of debt but also alter the ways in which life
insurance mitigates the loss of income within a family.
● Life insurance becomes a form of collateral, ensuring the financial security of the
lending institution more than that of the policyholder.
● However, the age limits to lending are used to manage higher insurance costs, which can
lead to unexpected outcomes, such as the inability of borrowers to claim insurance due to
the age of their guarantors.
● Furthermore, the text suggests that microfinance practices rework existing ideas of
relationality, and borrowers often seek out MFIs that offer life insurance as a way to
protect their families from the possible burden of debt. However, the financialization of
kinship relations through life insurance can replace ethical obligations with a calculative
one and fail to account for the precariousness of life.
● Thus, while borrowers seek to be part of the financialized system of debt, they also want
the MFI to recognize the social obligations that come with kinship ties.
Foucault, Michel. Governmentality. In The Anthropology of State: A Reader. Ch. 5

Reading notes:

Emergence of Problems of Government in the Sixteenth Century

Headings:

● Introduction of the problem of government

● Questions of government in the sixteenth century

 ● Characteristic problems of the sixteenth century

● Emergence of political treatises on the 'art of government'

Pointers:

● Sixteenth century witnessed the emergence of a multitude of problems related to

government.

● Questions of government included personal conduct, pastoral doctrine, pedagogy, and

state governance.

● These questions were characterized by their multiplicity and intensity.

● Emergence of political treatises on the 'art of government' from the mid-sixteenth to the

late eighteenth century.

● The focus shifted from advice to the prince to the art of government.

● The series of problems related to government included security, population, and

government.

● Two movements of state centralization and dispersion/religious dissidence shape the

problem of government

● Literature on government from the 16th to 18th century centers around the definition of
the political form of government
● Machiavelli's "The Prince" is a key text in this literature, initially honored but later
subject to explicit and implicit critiques
● Machiavelli's reemergence in the 19th century is within a context that includes the
Napoleonic era, the Revolution, and the problem of relations of force and calculation in
international relations
● The debate around Machiavelli's work should be seen as trying to define an art of
government centered on the state and reason of state
● Some authors reject this idea, labeling it as Machiavellianism.
● The reading discusses debates surrounding Machiavelli’s The Prince and the concern to
distance from the sole interest of the prince.
● It highlights that the politics of The Prince is characterized by the prince's singular and
external relationship with his principality, leading to a fragile link. The objective of
power is to reinforce, strengthen, and protect the prince's relation with his territory and
subjects.
 ● The reading also explains that the anti-Machiavellian literature seeks to replace the
prince's ability to keep his principality with the art of government, which is not the same
thing.
● An early text of this literature is the Miroir Politique, which explores the concept of the
art of government.
Forms of Government:

● La Perrie`re defines 'governor' as monarch, emperor, king, prince, lord, magistrate,

prelate, judge, etc.
● Others use the term 'governing' for household, souls, children, province, convent,
religious order, family.
● Immanence to the state or society characterizes these forms of government.
● La Mothe Le Vayer produces a typology of three types of government: self-government,
family government, and state government.

Continuity:

● The art of government is characterized by essential continuity between one type and the
other, both upwards and downwards.
● Upwards continuity means a person must first learn how to govern himself, his goods,
and patrimony to govern the state well.
● Downwards continuity means a well-run state will ensure that the head of the family will
know how to look after his family, goods, and patrimony, and individuals will behave as
they should.
● The pedagogical formation of the prince assures upwards continuity, and the police
downwards continuity.
● The government of the family is the central term of this continuity, termed economy.
● In this particular passage, Foucault is discussing the concept of government and its
relationship with economy and power.
● He argues that in the sixteenth century, the art of government was concerned with
managing individuals, goods, and wealth within the family, and making the family
fortunes prosper.
● In the eighteenth century, this idea was expanded to the level of the state, where good
government was equated with economic government, or the art of exercising power in the
form of economy.
● Foucault also highlights the importance of the word "things" in the definition of
government, as opposed to the concept of territory that was prevalent in earlier
definitions of sovereignty.
● He argues that government concerns itself with a complex composed of men and things,
including wealth, resources, means of subsistence, customs, habits, and accidents such as
famine and epidemics.
● The metaphor of the ship is used to illustrate this idea, where governing a ship means
taking care of both the sailors and the boat and its cargo, as well as reckoning with
external factors such as wind and storms.
● The text discusses the differences between sovereignty and government, focusing on their
respective ends and means. Sovereignty aims at obedience to the law, while government
aims at achieving specific objectives for the things that are to be governed.
● Sovereignty uses law as its instrument, whereas government employs a range of
multiform tactics to dispose things in a manner that achieves its objectives.
● The text also emphasizes that a good ruler, according to La Perrière, must have patience,
wisdom, and diligence, and does not need to resort to violence to exercise power.
● Wisdom is redefined as knowledge of the objectives that can and should be attained,
rather than knowledge of divine and human laws, justice, and equality.
The Emergence of the Art of Government
● The author discusses the emergence of the art of government as a specific and
autonomous practice. The author argues that as long as sovereignty was the basic political
institution and the exercise of power was conceived as an exercise of sovereignty, the art
of government could not be developed in a specific and autonomous manner.
● Mercantilism and the Art of Government:
● Mercantilism was the first sanctioned effort to apply the art of government at the level of
political practices and knowledge of the state. Mercantilism represents the first threshold
of rationality in the art of government. The author argues that mercantilism was blocked
and arrested because it took as its essential objective the might of the sovereign.
● Contract Theory and Art of Government:
● The art of government remained trapped within the inordinately vast, abstract, rigid
framework of the problem and institution of sovereignty. To derive the ruling principles
of an art of government, seventeenth-century jurists formalized or ritualized the theory of
the contract. Contract theory enabled the founding contract, the mutual pledge of ruler
and subjects, to function as a sort of theoretical matrix for deriving the general principles
of an art of government.
● Population and Art of Government:
● The art of government found fresh outlets through the emergence of the problem of
population. The development of the science of government enabled the notion of
economy to be recentred on that different plane of reality which we characterize today as
the 'economic'. Statistics, which in mercantilist tradition, only ever worked within and for
the benefit of a monarchical administration that functioned according to the form of
sovereignty, now becomes the major technical factor of this new technology. The
perspective of population, the reality accorded to specific phenomena of population,
rendered possible the final elimination of the model of the family and the recen- tring of
the notion of economy.
● The Emergence of Population as an Object of Government and Its Implications
● In this last pages, Michel Foucault discusses the emergence of population as a key object
of government and its implications on the development of political science and the
economy. He argues that population, in its larger sense, became an important factor for
governments to consider when making observations and interventions in the economy.
● Foucault explains that in the sixteenth century, the patience of the sovereign was
organized around population. This means that the population became the primary object
that the government had to take into account in all its observations and knowledge in
order to govern effectively. The development of political science was dependent on the
emergence of new networks of continuous and multiple relations between population,
territory, and wealth. The birth of political economy was a result of the perception of
these new relations, and it led to a type of intervention in the economy and population
that was characteristic of government.
● Foucault argues that the emergence of population did not mean that sovereignty or
discipline ceased to play a role. Rather, the problem of sovereignty was posed with
greater force as governments tried to derive a juridical and institutional form that could
be given to the sovereignty that characterizes a state. Likewise, discipline was never more
important than when it became necessary to manage a population. The managing of a
population requires attention to its aggregate effects as well as its depths and details.
● Foucault notes that the relationship between sovereignty, discipline, and government is
not one of replacement, but rather a triangle with population as the primary target and the
apparatuses of security as the essential mechanism. The emergence of population as an
object of government was closely linked to the development of political science and the
economy. These three movements - government, population, and political economy -
constitute a solid series that still exists today.

● Foucault concludes by stating that the emergence of population as an object of

government had far-reaching implications for the development of political science and
the economy. He suggests that the title of his lecture series, "The Birth of Biopolitics,"
should be revised to "Governmentality and the Emergence of Population as an Object of
Government."
● In the last page, the author discusses the concept of governmentality and its impact on the
state. The author notes that the governmentalization of the state is a paradoxical
phenomenon, as it both allows the state to survive and also creates political struggles and
contestation.
● Governmentality and State Survival:
● The author argues that the governmentalization of the state has allowed it to survive, as
the tactics of government make it possible to continually define and redefine the state's
competence, public versus private, and other factors. The state's survival and limits can
only be understood in the context of the general tactics of governmentality.
● Forms and Economies of Power:
● The author describes three forms of power in the West: the state of justice, the
administrative state, and the governmental state. The state of justice was born in a feudal
type of territorial regime, while the administrative state emerged with the territoriality of
national boundaries in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The governmental state is
defined by the mass of its population and the instrumentation of economic savoir, making
it a society controlled by apparatuses of security.
● Origins of Governmentality:
● The author suggests that governmentality was born out of two factors: the archaic model
of Christian pastoral and a diplomatic-military technique that was perfected with the
Treaty of Wesphalia. The author notes that specific instruments, known as police in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, were also crucial in the formation of
governmentality.

● Key words- Art of government, soverignity, territory/things, population. price and

principality, governmentisation, etatisation and economy.

Class Discussion

Title: Foucault's Ideas on Governance, Technocracy, and Biopolitics

● Introduction: The discussion revolves around Foucault's concept of governance and the

verb form of governance, which involves managing and arranging resources to ensure

maximum productivity. The current state of the managerial state, which is largely

facilitated by bureaucracy, is also discussed.

● Defining Governance: Foucault's idea of the government is the art of governing people

and things to ensure that the subjects live their lives according to their idea of a good life.
 The verb form of governance involves managing, arranging, and sorting resources to

maximize benefits.

● Economy: Economy refers to a set of principles that govern things in a rational and

principled way, including the careful management of available resources such as money,

natural resources, and people.

● Critique of Right to Disposition of Things: Foucault argues that the population is like

pawns on a chessboard to be used judiciously to protect other important parts of the

game, which is governance. The dominant/oppressive persons are even subjected to the

pressure points of power. Even those in power deploy rational techniques to ensure

optimal productivity of the population, same logic goes with people who are wealthy.

● Managerial State: The current state of the managerial state is a product of

industrialization and the rise of Western liberal democracy, secularism, and the

domination of science and technology. The state acts as a giant customer service entity

for people and things, and its sovereign lies in flexing its administrative power.

● Withdrawal from Traditional Forms of Management: The efficiency-driven state is a

more recent phenomenon that refines and builds upon medieval power dynamics. The

efficiency-driven state is largely facilitated by the onset of bureaucracy.

● Technocracy: Technocracy is the political will of the dominant class, depoliticization,

where politics does not go away necessarily but becomes hidden and latent. It is the

political sentiments of the dominant class disguised as a universal.

● Foucault's View on Technocracy: Foucault views technocracy as having a life and

personality of its own, a version of bureaucratic power arrangement that propagates

through the power grid structure, constantly moving and circulating like an architectural

scaffolding. If you rip apart the outer discoursing levels of state power, you see its

internal workings and the very structures that uphold the state's governance.
● Sinha's Example: Sinha gives the example of Pride Parades and CAA protests, where

critical reflections in society as much as certain elites show up, and the teeth of such

protests is cut by the state, and their real potential is never realized. The state is

ambivalent to such movements and does not consider them radical problems that contest

the arrangement of power structures. People do what they can with the circumstances at

hand, which are entrenched in such power dynamics.

● Biopolitics: Biopolitics can be understood as a political rationality that takes the

administration of life and populations as its subject, to ensure, sustain, and multiply life

and put this life in order. Biopower thus names the way in which biopolitics is put to

work in society and involves a profound transformation of the mechanisms of power of

the Western classic age.

● Risk-Averse Modern Citizens: Modern citizens are trained to avoid risk, and the

management of body and mental capacity is a set of strategies that the state employs to

ensure smooth functioning in the production complex and produce predictable productive

subjects. This acts as a great addition to the GDP and acts as a mortgage to ensure

stability of the future.

● Social Sciences and Classification: This method of knowing and constantly creating

classifications is essential to social sciences, aiding the modern state in understanding the

population, leading to the social scientification of our psychology.

● Common Good: Foucault is interested in the transactional nature of the arrangement of

the common good.

● Furthermore, Foucault emphasized the importance of examining the behavior of

individuals in a normative way, not just their conscious thoughts and beliefs. He believed
that individuals are shaped by social norms and expectations, which are not always
explicitly articulated but are internalized through various forms of socialization.
Foucault's approach to understanding power relations thus involves analyzing how people
behave, how they are classified and categorized, and how they are subjected to various
forms of discipline and control.
 ● One example of how this approach can be applied is Foucault's concept of biopolitics.
Biopolitics refers to the ways in which power is exercised over populations in order to
manage and control their lives. This includes practices such as monitoring health and
wellbeing, managing reproduction, and regulating behavior in order to ensure the smooth
functioning of society. Biopolitics is closely related to Foucault's notion of
governmentality, which refers to the ways in which individuals are governed and how
they govern themselves.
● In addition to his analysis of power and knowledge, Foucault was also interested in the
concept of the self. He argued that our understanding of the self is shaped by the
discourses and practices of our society, and that there is no fixed, essential self that exists
independently of these discourses. Instead, the self is constantly being constructed and
reconstructed through social interactions and practices.

Reading 14 - Achilie Mbembe

Reading notes

Mbembe uses a Foucoaltian lens of analysis more specifically biopower

● Mbembe starts with acknowledging that ultimately sovereignty resides in he who decides

on the who lives and who dies.

● Biopower according to Michel Foucault refers to that domain of life over which power

has taken control.

●
● For Mbembe war is very much a means of excersing sovereignty nistead of an

abberation, he acknowledges that the sovereign has the right to kill; the main aim that

mbembe has in writing this paper is to examine the role of life and death in human body

politocs.

● Mbembe starts discussing the state of exception and says that it is most often invoked

when discussing Nazism and other totalitarian regimes.

● He also mentions agamben who believes that in a state of exception subjects are divested

of their rights and reduced to mere bodies.

● Mbembe wants to highlight that modernity arose from this image of the sovereign. He

criticises late modern political theory for failing to observe this and embracing liberal

theory of democracy and freedom.

● Liberal theorists has seen men and women are posited as full subjects capable of self-

understanding, self-consciousness, and self-representation. Politics, therefore, is defined

as twofold: a project of autonomy and the achieving of agreement among a collectivity

through communication and recognition. This view is criticized by Mbembe.

● Liberal theory has been guilty of ‘romancing sovereignty’ because of its belief in the

contractarian argument that the subject is the master and the controlling author of his own

being. This self understanding subject goes on to create institutions and take support from

them to achieve their individual and social significance.

● Mbembe does not a deign to reiterate the criticisms to these theories and says that he is

mainly concerned with the generalized instrumentalization of human existence and the

material destruction of human bodies and populations.

● This feature of sovereignty is not just a characteristic of totalitarian regimes but

constitutes the very normal polirical sphere of liberal democracies.

● Politics, the Work of Death, and the “Becoming Subject”

● Instead of considering reason as the truth of the subject like liberal theory has done

Mbembe proposes that we use life and death as the bedrock of our analysis.
● Here he use Hegel’s discussion on death and its relation to becoming a subject. Hegel

says firstly human goes against nature and through ‘work and struggle’ he is able to make

the space of the negated nature productive. It is this grind, continuously struggling

against nature that causes death. Therefore death is a voluntary exercise undertaken by all

of us.It is this ‘grind’ that makes us a subject.

● It is the result of risks consciously assumed by the subject. According to Hegel, in these

risks the “animal” that constitutes the human subject’s natural being is defeated.

● Mbembe then discusses Bataille who thinks that death and sovereignty are outbursts of

exchange and superabundance. He uses a special term for this which is exchange.

● Initially, Bataille seems to say the same thing as Hegel on death and life.Rather, it is

essentially self-consciousness; moreover, it is the most luxurious form of life, that is, of

effusion and exuberance: a power of proliferation. Even more radically, Bataille

withdraws death from the horizon of meaning. This is in contrast to Hegel, for whom

nothing is definitively lost in death; indeed, death is seen as holding great signification as

a means to truth

● Second, Bataille firmly anchors death in the realm of absolute expenditure (the other

characteristic of sovereignty), whereas Hegel tries to keep death within the economy of

absolute knowledge and meaning. Life beyond utility, says Bataille, is the domain of

sovereignty. This being the case, death is therefore the point at which destruction,

suppression, and sacrifice constitute so irreversible and radical an expenditure—an

expenditure without reserve—that they can no longer be determined as negativity. Death

is therefore the very principle of excess—an anti-economy. Hence the metaphor of luxury

and of the luxurious character of death.

● Bataille also draws a realtion to sexuality with all of this and argues that sexuality comes

in two forms- excretion and appropriation.

● For Bataille, sovereignty therefore has many forms. But ultimately it is the refusal to

accept the limits that the fear of death would have the subject respect. The sovereign
 world, Bataille argues, “is the world in which the limit of death is done away with.”. The

sovereign,” he concludes, “is he who is, as if death were not. . . . He has no more regard

for the limits of identity than he does for limits of death, or rather these limits are the

same; he is the transgression of all such limits.”

● For Bataille excess is epitomized by the sovereign who acts as the arbiter of death and

violates the most basic prohibition against killing.Therefore despite the natural impulse to

avoid death it is essential for the soverign to maintain a risk of death.. Politics, in this

case, is not the forward dialectical movement of reason. Politics can only be traced as a

spiral transgression, as that difference that disorients the very idea of the limit.

● Mbembe and Biopower

● Mbembe moves on to discussing Foucaultian biopower.

● Firstly all power at its core often takes resources to exception, emergency, and a

fictionalized notion of the enemy. It also labors to produce that same exception,

emergency, and fictionalized enemy

● According to Foucault biopower is exercising power in demarcating people who deserve

to die and people who deserve to live. This further leads to a split in population and forms

groups, subgroups and finally leads to racism.Arendt locates their roots in the shattering

experience of otherness and suggests that the politics of race is ultimately linked to the

politics of death.

● Foucault states clearly that the sovereign right to kill (droit de glaive) and the

mechanisms of biopower are inscribed in the way all modern states function and indeed,

they can be seen as constitutive elements of state power in modernity

● . And here he goes against the popular beif of the liberal thought that the Nazi state was

an aberration and argues that it was instead the logical culmination of all modern states.

● The existence of the other is essential for the legitimacy of the modern state and it is

indispensable to the power of the sovereign.

● As an example Mbembe discuss the historical evolution of the enactment of death and

how it has become more industrail and serialized. He also links it to racism and says that

this was enabled by comparing the working classes as the savages of the colonial world.

● The aim of the sovereign in this is obviously death. The soverign artfully uses notions of

justice and the publics passion for blood.

● Next he critices Marx for making human emancipation contingent commodity

abolition.Marx blurs the all-important divisions among the man-made realm of freedom,

the nature-determined realm of necessity, and the contingent in history.

● Using arguments made by Stephen Lou, Mbembe shows how even the proletarian

state( which promises to do away with class divisions and promises to wither away) uses

the same logic of sovereignty as the modern states.. In other words, the subject of

Marxian modernity is, fundamentally, a subject who is intent on proving his or her

sovereignty through the staging of a fight to the death. Just as with Hegel, the narrative of

mastery and emancipation here is clearly linked to a narrative of truth and death. Terror

and killing become the means of realizing the already known telos of history

● Mbembe says that a discussion of slavery is indispensible to a analysis of the modern

state. He argues that slavery is the first depiction of a state of exception. “. The slave is

therefore kept alive but in a state of injury, in a phantomlike world of horrors and intense

cruelty and profanity.”

● Moving on Mbembe discusses how the logic of the modern state is embedded deeply in

colonialism.That the technologies which ended up producing Nazism should have

originated in the plantation or in the colony or that, on the contrary—Foucault’s thesis—

Nazism and Stalinism did no more than amplify a series of mechanisms that already

existed in Western European social and political formations (subjugation of the body,

health regulations, social Darwinism, eugenics, medico-legal theories on heredity,

degeneration, and race) is, in the end, irrelevant. A fact remains, though: in modern

philosophical thought and European political practice and imaginary, the colony
 represents the site where sovereignty consists fundamentally in the exercise of a power

outside the law (ab legibus solutus) and where “peace” is more likely to take on the face

of a “war without end.”

● In this order there is a juridical equlaity among all civilized states with regard to

declaring war and making peace and preserving territorial integrity. This equality os

however not accorded to the colonies populated by the savages. In the same context,

colonies are similar to the frontiers. They are inhabited by “savages.” The colonies are

not organized in a state form and have not created a human world. Their armies do not

form a distinct entity, and their wars are not wars between regular armies. They do not

imply the mobilization of sovereign subjects (citizens) who respect each other as

enemies. They do not establish a distinction between combatants and noncombatants, or

again between an “enemy” and a “criminal.”41 It is thus impossible to conclude peace

with them. In sum, colonies are zones in which war and disorder, internal and external

figures of the political, stand side by side or alternate with each other.

● Thus it was argued that it was impossible to establish a direct link between the ruler and

the subject which explains the absence of law.For all the above reasons, the sovereign

right to kill is not subject to any rule in the colonies. In the colonies, the sovereign might

kill at any time or in any manner. Colonial warfare is not subject to legal and institutional

rules. It is not a legally codified activity. Instead, colonial terror constantly intertwines

with colonially generated fantasies of wilderness and death and fictions to create the

effect of the real.

Necropower and Late Modern Colonial Occupation

● In colonial occupation sovereignty is asserted through geography and space.Space

was therefore the raw material of sovereignty and the violence it carried with it.

Sovereignty meant occupation, and occupation meant relegating the colonized

into a third zone between subjecthood and objecthood.

● Social, cultural and economic practices also had a significant role in this. The

township was an area of regulation from where the colonial hinterland was

controlled.

● Frantz Fanon describes the spatialization of colonial occupation in vivid terms.

For him, colonial occupation entails first and foremost a division of space into

compartments. It involves the setting of boundaries and internal frontiers

epitomized by barracks and police stations; it is regulated by the language of pure

force, immediate presence, and frequent and direct action; and it is premised on

the principle of reciprocal exclusivity.

● With regards to spaces occupied by the colonised it was thought that They are

born there, it matters little where or how; they die there, it matters not where, nor

how. It is a world without spaciousness; men live there on top of each other. The

native town is a hungry town, starved of bread, of meat, of shoes, of coal, of light.

The native town is a crouching village, a town on its knees.”52 In this case,

sovereignty means the capacity to define who matters and who does not, who is

disposable and who is not.

● The most accomplished example of this would be Palestine.

● In necropolitical power, like in Palestine the first step is territorial fragmentation

so as to make any movement and interaction between the coloniser and the

colonized impossible. Mbembe calls this a splintering occupation.

● The underground as well as the airspace are transformed into conflict zones.

There is no continuity between the ground and the sky. Even the boundaries in

airspace are divided between lower and upper layers. Everywhere, the symbolics

of the top (who is on top) is reiterated. Occupation of the skies therefore acquires

a critical importance, since most of the policing is done from the air. Various

other technologies are mobilized to this effect: sensors aboard unmanned air

vehicles (UAVs), aerial reconnaissance jets, early warning Hawkeye planes,

 assault helicopters, an Earth-observation satellite, techniques of

“hologrammatization.” Killing becomes precisely targeted.

● . Critical to these techniques of disabling the enemy is bulldozing: demolishing

houses and cities; uprooting olive trees; riddling water tanks with bullets;

bombing and jamming electronic communications; digging up roads; destroying

electricity transformers; tearing up airport runways; disabling television and radio

transmitters; smashing computers; ransacking cultural and politico-bureaucratic

symbols of the protoPalestinian state; looting medical equipment. In other words,

infrastructural warfare.

● As the Palestinian case illustrates, late-modern colonial occupation is a

concatenation of multiple powers: disciplinary, biopolitical, and necropolitical.

The combination of the three allocates to the colonial power an absolute

domination over the inhabitants of the occupied territory. The state of siege is

itself a military institution. It allows a modality of killing that does not distinguish

between the external and the internal enemy. Entire populations are the target of

the sovereign. The besieged villages and towns are sealed off and cut off from the

world. Daily life is militarized. Freedom is given to local military commanders to

use their discretion as to when and whom to shoot. Movement between the

territorial cells requires formal permits. Local civil institutions are systematically

destroyed. The besieged population is deprived of their means of income.

Invisible killing is added to outright executions.

War Machines and Heteronomy

● The continuation of conditions like this lead to a creation of war

machines.

● Mbembe mentions Zygmunt Bauman who believes that globalised warfre

is not about conquest but about hurting the enmy as soon as

 possible.Strategies like this intend to shut down the enemy’s life support

system and further the necropolitical logic.

● In this sense, contemporary wars are more reminiscent of the warfare

strategy of the nomads than of the sedentary nations or the “conquer-

andannex” territorial wars of modernity. In Bauman’s words: “They rest

their superiority over the settled population on the speed of their own

movement; their own ability to descend from nowhere without notice and

vanish again without warning, their ability to travel light and not to bother

with the kind of belongings which confine the mobility and the

maneuvering potential of the sedentary people.”63 This new moment is

one of global mobility. An important feature of the age of global mobility

is that military operations and the exercise of the right to kill are no longer

the sole monopoly of states, and the “regular army” is no longer the

unique modality of carrying out these functions. The claim to ultimate or

final authority in a particular political space is not easily made.

● And thus are creating war machines. These war machines often are

segmented into groups of armed men who split or merge as the need be.

They also involve complex links to state power and it is possible that the

state may itself turn into a war machine.

● Mbembe then moves on to discuss how globalization has tended to

concentrate liquidity and capital only in certain channels.As a result, the

number of individuals endowed with the material means to control

dependents through the creation of debts has abruptly decreased.

Historically, capturing and fixing dependents through the mechanism of

debt has always been a central aspect of both the production of people and

the constitution of the political bond.

● Second, the controlled inflow and the fixing of movements of money

around zones in which specific resources are extracted has made possible

the formation of enclave economies and has shifted the old calculus

between people and things. The concentration of activities connected with

the extraction of valuable resources around these enclaves has, in return,

turned the enclaves into privileged spaces of war and death.

● In most places, the collapse of formal political institutions under the strain

of violence tends to lead to the formation of militia economies. War

machines (in this case militias or rebel movements) rapidly become highly

organized mechanisms of predation, taxing the territories and the

population they occupy and drawing on a range of transnational networks

and diasporas that provide both material and financial support.

● The extraction and looting of natural resources by war machines goes

hand in hand with brutal attempts to immobilize and spatially fix whole

categories of people or, paradoxically, to unleash them, to force them to

scatter over broad areas no longer contained by the boundaries of a

territorial state. As a political category, populations are then disaggregated

into rebels, child soldiers, victims or refugees, or civilians incapacitated by

mutilation or simply massacred on the model of ancient sacrifices, while

the “survivors,” after a horrific exodus, are confined in camps and zones

of exception.

● The techniques of policing and discipline and the choice between

obedience and simulation that characterized the colonial and postcolonial

potentate are gradually being replaced by an alternative that is more tragic

because more extreme. Technologies of destruction have become more

tactile, more anatomical and sensorial, in a context in which the choice is

between life and death.

 ●

● Class Discussion

● If the sovereign per se is deciding who lives and who dies, what is the point of

creating a necropolitical sovereign?

The sovereign uses some version of reason even in putting people to death. In the necropolitical

sense, there is an economy of unreason.

● The prof takes us back to Nayanika Mathur and asks us to imagine instead of paper, an

economy of weapons. This is what necropolitics is.

● We also look at Bataille and explore how he theorised the relationship between death and

sovereignty.

● The first thing that was pointed out was his use of the word ‘excess’. Aumita mentions

how Bataille explains how the sovereign violates the essential fear of death and breaches

that limit.

● Prof says that you become sovereign, for Bataille, only if you overcome the fear of death.

A subject becomes sovereign expresses something in excess that is near to death.

● The author mentions Foucault using the term ‘biopower’ which means the domain of life

over which power has taken over.

● Mbembe radically alters the meaning of this term. She uses it to argue that at the core of

all sovereignty is the right to kill. All our actions are, in one way or the other, conditioned

by the fear of this power of the sovereign. This is what makes the body of the subject the

real battleground.

● Modernity is making the subject navigate the corridors of normalcy while ignoring all the

dead bodies on the margins.

● Hegel says that man is divorced from his own inner animality and that life is an economy

that minimises death. Bataille contradicts Hegel. The first thing he argues is that life

exists only in bursts or spells and in constant exchange with death. This fact might be

forgotten by some of us who live in risk - averse modern conditions but even here it

operates in subtle ways.

● This is relevant because the sovereign itself captures the power to distribute death.

● For Bataille and Mbembe, death is an anti - economy.

● Anyone who violates the orders of the sovereign, becomes the soveriegn himself because

he risks getting into a fight with the sovereign.

● Mbembe also theorises on race. They are metrics for killable bodies. It is the fulcrum on

which modernity is built and and is at the centre of the process of otherisation.

● Mbembe believes that for any discussion on terror at all in the modern world, one must

understand slavery. (Read page 11 of the pdf)

● Built on Foucault’s biopower is Mbembe’s idea of necropolitics which functions in the

colony where the occupier/colonist and the

● The existence of war machines, which are the alongside armies that do you not have an

imperative of their own.

● Page 34- The hazardous conditions of the mine, where the workers are forced to work,

there is no choice, its either work or death this is different from colonialsim, the entire

continent of SA is the norm and the population that is unarmed and cause interventions

with the ones who have arms.

● The wars are now outsourced and are increasingly not fought between two sovereign

states. The resource curse of Africa.

● The bodies are besieged and we are imprisoned in our workplaces, body has become

revolutionary from these kinds of occupation, the acts of suicide makes the body to

embrace an emancipatory possibility.

● They are romanticising self embracing death, according to Mathai this idea is beyond the

horizon of meaning where meaning exceeds itself. Death is the transgression against the

state, the ultimate escape and act of rebellion that frees an individual from the grips of

monopoly of cruelty.

● The acts of non rational killings, is an argument that is titillating for liberal audience.
1. Schmitt, Carl. 2005. Political Theology : Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty University

of Chicago Press ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Ch. 1, 2.

● - The term "borderline concept" is often misunderstood as a vague concept but it actually

refers to the outermost sphere.

● - This definition of sovereignty should be associated with a borderline case rather than a

routine case.

● - The exception being referred to here is a general concept in the theory of the state, not

just a construct applied to emergency decrees or states of siege.

● - The decision on the exception is a true decision that cannot be entirely derived from a

general norm or legal prescription.

● - The exception, which is not codified in the existing legal order, is a case of extreme

peril that cannot be circumscribed factually and made to conform to a preformed law.

● - The subject of sovereignty is made relevant by the exception because the precise details

of an emergency cannot be anticipated and the jurisdictional competence in such a case

must necessarily be unlimited.

● - The sovereign, who stands outside the normally valid legal system, decides whether

there is an extreme emergency and what must be done to eliminate it.

● - The elimination of the sovereign in this sense is a tendency in modern constitutional

development, but whether the extreme exception can be banished from the world is not a

juristic question.

● - Historical presentations on the development of the concept of sovereignty are like

textbook compilations of abstract formulas, and nobody seems to have scrutinized the

often-repeated but completely empty concepts.

● - The concept of sovereignty is related to the exception, as recognized by Jean Bodin in

his work "Of the True Marks of Sovereignty".

● - Bodin's analysis focused on the relationship between the prince and the estates, and the

extent to which the prince is bound by laws and commitments.

● - Bodin argued that in emergencies, the tie to natural law ceases and the prince has the

authority to violate commitments and change or suspend laws according to the

requirements of the situation.

● - Bodin considered sovereignty to be indivisible and the actual mark of sovereignty to be

the authority to suspend valid law.

● - The seventeenth-century authors of natural law also understood the question of

sovereignty to mean the question of the decision on the exception.

● - Sovereignty resides in deciding controversies and determining what constitutes public

order and security.

● The author discusses the concept of the "exception" in relation to sovereignty and the

legal order. The "exception" refers to a situation in which the existing legal order is

suspended and the state exercises unlimited authority.

● The author argues that the existence of the state is proof of its superiority over the legal

norm, and in the exception, the state suspends the law on the basis of its right of self-

preservation.

● The author also emphasizes that the exception is different from anarchy or chaos, as order

in the juristic sense still prevails even if it is not of the ordinary kind.

● While the ordinary jurisprudence concerns itself with the normative and the recopzable, it

is the exceptional situations that reveal the specifically juristic element of decision-

making in its absolute purity.

● The author highlights the importance of a normal, everyday frame of life as a prerequisite

for the applicability of legal norms. The norm requires a homogeneous medium, and

there exists no norm that is applicable to chaos.

● Therefore, it is the sovereign who definitely decides whether a normal situation exists,

and who has the monopoly over the last decision.

● This decision-making power is the essence of the state's sovereignty, which should be
defined as the monopoly to decide, not as the monopoly to coerce or to rule.
● In this passage, the author explores the concept of the "exception" in legal theory and
philosophy. The "exception" refers to a situation in which the normal operation of a legal
system or rule is suspended or overridden. The author notes that the treatment of the
exception has varied over time and between different schools of thought.
● In the seventeenth century, the doctrine of natural law reflected a vivid awareness of the
meaning of the exception. However, in the eighteenth century, as a relatively lasting
order was established, the concept of emergency law as no law at all became prevalent.
Immanuel Kant, a philosopher of the eighteenth century, also rejected the idea of
emergency law.
● The author notes that contemporary theory of the state reveals two opposing tendencies:
the rationalist tendency, which ignores the exception, and the natural law tendency,
which is interested in the exception and derives from a different set of ideas. The author
suggests that a neo-Kantian like Kelsen does not know what to do with the exception.
● However, the author argues that the legal system can anticipate the exception and
"suspend itself." This raises the question of how a norm or order can suspend itself in a
concrete case, which remains a juristic problem as long as the exception is
distinguishable from juristic chaos or anarchy.
● The author notes that the tendency of liberal constitutionalism is to regulate the exception
as precisely as possible, spelling out in detail the cases in which the law suspends itself.
However, the author questions how the law obtains this force and how it is logically
possible that a norm is valid except for one concrete case that it cannot definitively
determine.
● The author argues that a philosophy of concrete life must be interested in the exception
and the extreme case, rather than withdrawing from it. The exception can be more
important than the rule because it reveals the power of real life breaking through a
mechanism that has become torpid by repetition.
 ● The author cites a Protestant theologian who states that the exception explains the general
and itself, and that the exception is more interesting than the rule because it confirms not
only the rule but also its existence, which derives only from the exception.

Chapter 2
● The concept of sovereignty has been used to justify the power of absolute monarchs, to
establish the authority of newly formed nation-states, and to distinguish between the
powers of member states and the federal state in federations.
● However, as the author notes, the concept of sovereignty is not an adequate expression of
political reality. It is a formula, a sign, a signal that can be applied in many different ways
to serve various political interests.
● The concept is infinitely pliable and can be either extremely useful or completely useless
depending on the situation.
● Moreover, the idea of an irresistible highest or greatest power that operates according to
the certainty of natural law is not reflected in political reality, where power is distributed
and constantly contested.
● The author suggests that the concept of sovereignty is most influenced by actual interests
and political power struggles. Its development has not been logical or dialectical but
rather shaped by changing political conditions and sociological interests.
● While new realities can bring about a reaction against formalistic methods of treating
public law, there is also the possibility of achieving scientific objectivity through a firm
formal method of treatment that separates juristic treatment from changes in political
conditions.
● As such, the concept of sovereignty remains a contested and evolving concept in public
law.
● The author appears to be critical of the simplistic either/or approach that some scholars
have taken in attempting to define sovereignty as purely sociological or purely juristic.
The author argues that a more nuanced definition is necessary, one that takes into account
the essential elements of jurisprudence.
● The author discusses the work of Kelsen, who argued that the state is nothing but the
legal order itself, and that all other perceptions to the contrary are personifications and
hypostatizations. For Kelsen, the state is a system of ascriptions to a last point of
ascription and to a last basic norm. The highest competence in the state cannot be traced
to a person or to a sociopsychological power complex, but only to the sovereign order in
the unity of the system of norms.
● The author appears to be critical of Kelsen's approach, arguing that the problem with
Kelsen's conception of sovereignty is precisely its emphasis on unity. The author suggests
that a monistic view of sovereignty is not necessarily desirable, and that a more nuanced
 approach is needed to understand the complex relationship between the legal system and
the state.
● Analysis of Hans Kelsen's "Pure Theory of Law" and his approach to the problem
of sovereignty.
● Kelsen's "Pure Theory of Law" aims to establish a normative science of jurisprudence
based on pure logic and reason.
● Kelsen believes that law is a self-contained system with its own internal logic and
validity, independent of moral or political considerations.
● Kelsen's concept of the "basic norm" is a hypothetical postulate that underpins the
validity of all positive laws in a given legal system.
● Kelsen sees the unity of a legal system as an "independent act of juristic perception"
rather than a natural or political reality.
● Kelsen argues that objectivity in jurisprudence is possible, but not necessarily linked to
positivity.
● Kelsen negates the concept of sovereignty and argues that it is law, not the state, that is
sovereign.
● Kelsen's approach has been criticized for being overly formalistic and ignoring the
political and social context of law.
Notes on Krabbe's Theory of Sovereignty
● Krabbe's theory shares ideological root with Kelsen's result, but there is no connection
between Krabbe's exposition and Kelsen's epistemological and methodological
distinctions.
● Krabbe sees the modern idea of the state as replacing personal force with spiritual power,
and that the legal order's basis is found in men's feeling or sense of right.
● Krabbe engages in essentially sociological explanations about the organizational
formation of the modern state, in which the professional civil service identifies with the
state, and the civil service status is represented as pertaining specifically to public law.
● Krabbe radically denies the distinction between public and private law, as it rests on a
difference in the reality of subjects.
● Krabbe believes that it is not the state but law that has power, and that the only task of the
state is to "make law," that is, to establish the legal value of interests.
● Krabbe argues that the state is confined exclusively to producing law and ascertaining
the legal value of interests, but it does not produce the content of law.
● Krabbe's theory is limited by a double limitation: a limitation on law, in contrast with
interest or welfare, and a limitation on the declaratory but by no means constitutive act of
ascertaining.
● The text discusses the association theory, which challenges the concept of sovereignty
and rejects the idea that the will of the state or sovereign is the final source of law.
According to the founder of the association theory, Otto von Gierke, both law and state
are independent factors of human communal life, but one cannot be conceived of without
the other, and neither exists before or through the other.
● He argues that the personal will of the ruler is spliced into the state, but law and state are
equal powers. In the case of revolutionary constitutional changes, there is a legal breach
that can be ethically required or historically justified, but it remains a legal breach that
can be repaired through some sort of legal procedure that will satisfy the legal
consciousness of the people, such as a constitutional agreement, plebiscite, or the
sanctifying power of tradition.
● The text also mentions the role of Kurt Wolzendorff, a newer representative of
association theory, who believes that law and state need each other but that law holds the
state in check in the final analysis. The state is the original power of rule, but it should
intervene only when the free individual or associational act proves to be insufficient,
remaining in the background as the ultima ratio. Wolzendorff attempts to use the theory
to solve "the problem of a new epoch of state."
● The concept of form and its significance in contemporary theory of the state.
● - The term "form" can have different meanings, such as the transcendental condition of
juristic cognition, regularity derived from professional reasoning, and technical
refinement governed by the ideal of frictionless functioning.
● - Technical form refers to a specification governed by utility, and it does not touch the
"judicial form," which is governed by the legal idea and the self-evolving law in the
widest sense.
● - The legal form requires a particular organization and form before it can be translated
into reality. It is governed by the legal idea and the necessity of applying a legal thought
to a factual situation.
● - In contemporary theory of the state, neo-Kantian formalism has been thrown aside, and
a form is postulated from an entirely different direction. The form should be transferred
from the subjective to the objective.
● - The concept of sovereignty in contemporary theories of the state requires objectivity
and the elimination of personal elements. The personal and command elements belong
together, and the personal right to command is considered an intrinsic error in the theory
of state sovereignty.
● The passage is discussing the relationship between personality and formal authority in
legal decision-making. The author argues that the concept of personality in this context is
not derived from absolute monarchy, as some have suggested, but rather from a juristic
interest in the essence of legal decision-making.
● The author explains that every legal thought brings a legal idea, which in its pure form
cannot be applied directly to a concrete situation. Rather, a legal decision must be made
that takes into account the specific circumstances of the case. This means that there is
always a moment of indifference in the decision-making process, as the decision cannot
be traced solely to its premises. Additionally, the specific circumstance that requires a
decision remains an independently determining factor.
● The author argues that this aspect of legal decision-making is particularly important in an
age of intense commercial activity, where commerce is often more concerned with a
calculable certainty than with the specific content of a decision. However, the author
notes that this concern for certainty should not be confused with the juristic interest in the
decision itself, which is rooted in the character of the normative and is derived from the
necessity of judging a concrete fact concretely.
● The author goes on to explain that the legal interest in the decision as such should not be
mixed up with calculability. Rather, it is rooted in the character of the normative and is
derived from the necessity of judging a concrete fact concretely, even though what is
given as a standard for the judgment is only a legal principle in its general universality.
This means that there is always an auctoritatis interpositio, or an intervention of
authority, present in the decision-making process.
● The author notes that the determination of which individual or body can assume such
authority cannot be derived from the legal quality of a maxim alone. This is a difficulty
that some have ignored.
● Finally, the author argues that the instance of competence that renders a decision makes
the decision relative, and in certain circumstances absolute and independent of the
correctness of its content. This means that the decision becomes instantly independent of
argumentative substantiation and receives an autonomous value.
● The author points out that this has important theoretical and practical implications, as it
is revealed in the theory of the faulty act of state, where legal validity can be attributed to
a wrong and faulty decision. However, the author also notes that there can never be
absolutely declaratory decisions inherent in the idea of decision-making.
● Class discussion:
● General definition of an exception: An exception occurs when the general rule does not
apply. The professor illustrates this using a series of vertical lines with a horizontal line at
the end to represent the exception.
● Juridical order exception: The juridical order exception can be understood as a
suspension of normal legal rules and procedures. It is a question of whether the exception
is temporal or spatial in nature.
● The contradiction of sovereign power: The exception represents the raw expression of
sovereignty, where the sovereign possesses the power to suspend the order from which
their own power arises. This contradiction arises from the fact that the sovereign both
inaugurates and can suspend power. The sovereign can declare a situation as exceptional
and make decisions accordingly.
● Checks and balances on sovereign power: In liberal democracies, there are usually checks
and balances on sovereign power to prevent its arbitrary use. However, Schmitt argues
that these checks and balances do not truly apply, as long as the decisions fall within the
sovereign's ambit. The sovereign can hide behind the facade of legality and wield raw
power through the exception, leading to a fearful and magnificent experience of power.
● Hidden autocratic possibilities within democratic setups: Schmitt highlights the presence
of hidden autocratic power within democratic systems. The constitution, which is
considered sacrosanct in legal terms, can contain provisions that allow for exceptional
 measures. The example of the Indian state of emergency in the 1970s is cited as an
instance where autocratic power was invoked under the guise of constitutional provisions.
● Illusion of participation in sovereignty: Schmitt argues that individuals may be deluded
into believing they participate in sovereignty until the exception is invoked. During a
state of peril or exception, basic rights and privileges can be suspended, revealing the
distinction between being a citizen and a subject. Citizens may no longer enjoy their
rights and become insecure.
● The spectrum of sovereignty and contestation: Sovereignty is cloaked under the legal
framework, deriving its power and character from it. The sovereign has the authority to
protect its own might and strength. Schmitt illustrates a sliding scale representing
increasing sovereignty and the ability of subjects to contest the sovereign's power.
● The logic of exception and the constitution: The exception is masterfully crafted within
the framework of the constitution. The sovereign decides the limits and application of the
exception, including the respect for parliamentary norms. Checks and balances conceal
the true seat of sovereign power and provide a sense of security, but ultimately, the
sovereign holds the decision-making power.
● Cessation of the idea of the State: Schmitt argues that the State loses its power when it
loses the ability to invoke exceptions. The intention of the sovereign versus the legal
reality becomes crucial in determining the true nature of sovereignty.
● Schmitt's disagreement with Kelsen: Schmitt disagrees with Kelsen's perspective that the
state is nothing but the legal order itself. He criticizes Kelsen for negating the question of
sovereignty by reducing it to a mere legal construct. According to Schmitt, law is a
veneer born out of the sovereign's power, not the other way around.
● Law and the decision of the sovereign: Law does not always determine the decision of
the sovereign. For Schmitt, the decision of the sovereign is indifferent to the law.
Sovereignty manifests itself as apparent in the interaction between law and fact.
● These refined notes highlight the key points discussed in the reading, expanding on each
point and providing a clearer understanding of Schmitt's concepts of exception and
sovereignty.
Agamben, Giorgio. 2005. State of Exception. Translated by Kevin Attell. Ebrary. Chicago:

University of Chicago Press. Ch. 1. Click here to read.

● 1. Carl Schmitt's Definition of Sovereignty and the State of Exception:

● - Carl Schmitt, a prominent political theorist, proposed that the sovereign is the one who
holds the power to decide on the state of exception.
● - The state of exception refers to a situation where the normal legal order is suspended and
extraordinary measures are taken.
● - This definition of sovereignty emphasizes the sovereign's authority to determine when
exceptional circumstances warrant the suspension of normal legal rules.
● 2. Ambiguity and Borderline Nature of the State of Exception:
● - The state of exception exists in a zone of uncertainty and ambiguity, situated between
politics and law.
● - It is considered a "point of imbalance" between public law and political reality, similar to
civil war, insurrection, and resistance.
● - This ambiguity arises because the state of exception lies at the intersection of legal and
political domains, making it challenging to define its exact nature and scope.
● 3. State of Exception as a "Legal Civil War":
● - The state of exception is closely related to civil war, insurrection, and resistance.
● - In the example of the Nazi State, Hitler declared a decree that suspended constitutional
personal liberties shortly after assuming power.
● - This decree, known as the Decree for the Protection of the People and the State, was never
repealed, effectively establishing a state of exception throughout the entire Third Reich.
● - Modern totalitarianism can be seen as the establishment of a "legal civil war" through the
state of exception, enabling the elimination of political opponents and marginalized groups.
● 4. State of Exception as a Paradigm of Government:
● - The state of exception is increasingly becoming a dominant paradigm of government in
contemporary politics.
● - It challenges the traditional distinction between different constitutional forms of
governance.
● - The transformation of the state of exception from a temporary measure to a technique of
government has significant implications for the structure and meaning of constitutional
forms, blurring the line between democracy and absolutism.
● 5. Biopolitical Significance of the State of Exception:
● - The state of exception has immediate implications for biopolitics, which is concerned with
the governance of life.
● - The "military order" issued by the US president after 9/11 is an example where noncitizens
suspected of terrorism were subjected to indefinite detention and trial by military
commissions.
● - These measures erased the legal status of individuals and created a category of individuals
who were neither prisoners of war nor individuals charged with a crime, leading to a state of
indeterminacy.
● - The state of exception allows the law to encompass and control living beings by suspending
legal protections and normal judicial oversight.
●
● 6. Terminological Uncertainty:
● - Different legal theories and languages employ varying terminologies to refer to the state of
exception.
● - In German theory, terms like "state of exception" (Ausnahmezustand) or "state of necessity"
(Notstand) are commonly used.
● - Italian and French theories often use terms like "emergency decrees" or "state of siege"
(political or fictitious).
● - In Anglo-Saxon theory, "martial law" and "emergency powers" are more prevalent terms to
describe similar concepts.
● Notes on "The State of Exception as a Paradigm of Government":
●
● Theme: Terminology and its implications
● - Terminology reflects the poetic moment of thought and is never neutral.
● - The choice of the term "state of exception" implies a position on the nature of the
phenomenon and the logic for understanding it.
● - "State of siege" and "martial law" are inadequate terms to define the phenomenon and
should be qualified as political or fictitious.
● - The state of exception is not a special kind of law but a suspension of the juridical order
itself, defining law's threshold or limit concept.
●
● Theme: Historical development of the state of exception
● - The term "fictitious or political state of siege" originated from the French doctrine and
Napoleon's decree of 1811.
● - The state of siege initially applied to military strongholds and ports but later extended to
municipalities and became a measure to deal with internal sedition and disorder.
● - The modern state of exception is a creation of the democratic-revolutionary tradition.
●
● Theme: Full powers and expansion of executive powers
● - The expression "full powers" refers to the expansion of the government's powers,
particularly the executive, during the state of exception.
● - It derives from the notion of plenitudo potestatis, suggesting a return to an original state of
indistinction among different powers.
● - The state of exception is characterized by an emptiness of law, not a state of nature, and full
powers describe one mode of action for the executive.
●
● Theme: The theory of the state of exception and constitutional dictatorship
● - Between 1934 and 1948, the theory of the state of exception gained attention during the
collapse of Europe's democracies.
● - Constitutional dictatorship became a topic of debate, examining emergency powers granted
to the executive during crises.
● - Various scholars explored the expansion of executive powers during the world wars and the
state of exception as a paradigm of government.
● - The gradual erosion of legislative powers and the delegation of legislative power to the
executive were observed, leading to the "liquidation" of democracy.
●
● Main Points:
● - The state of exception has become a technique of government rather than an exceptional
measure.
● - The state of exception challenges the distinction among legislative, executive, and judicial
powers.
● - Scholars recognized the dangers of constitutional dictatorship but saw it as an immanent
necessity in times of crisis.
● - The state of exception has become the rule, potentially leading to lasting peacetime
institutions.
● In our discussion of the state of exception, we have observed the confusion between acts of
the executive power and acts of the legislative power, which is a defining characteristic of the
state of exception.
● This confusion is exemplified in extreme cases such as the Nazi regime, where the words of
the leader carried the force of law.
●
● However, the specific contribution of the state of exception, from a technical standpoint, lies
not so much in the confusion of powers but rather in the separation of the "force of law" from
the law itself. It establishes a "state of the law" in which, on one hand, the legal norms are in
effect but not applied (they lack "force"), and on the other hand, acts that do not possess the
value of law acquire the "force of law." In other words, in exceptional situations, the "force
of law" becomes an indeterminate element that can be claimed by both the state authority
(acting as a commissarial dictatorship) and a revolutionary organization (acting as a
sovereign dictatorship).
● The state of exception creates an anomic space where the crucial aspect is a force of law
without law, which can be represented as "force-of-law."
● This force-of-law exists as a mystical element or a fiction through which the law attempts to
annex anomie itself.
● However, it raises the question of how to conceive of such a "mystical" element and its
functioning within the state of exception. This is the problem that requires further
clarification.
● In essence, the state of exception introduces a state where the normative order is suspended
or distorted, allowing for the emergence of a force-of-law that operates beyond traditional
legal frameworks.
This concept highlights the complex dynamics of power and authority during exceptional
 circumstances and calls for a deeper examination of the relationship between law,
sovereignty, and anomy.
●
● The Autonomy of Norm and Decision
● Revealing the Formal Element: In the state of exception, the suspension of the norm brings
forth the pure essence of the decision as a juridical element.
● Autonomy of Norm and Decision: Both norm and decision demonstrate their independence
within the juridical order.
● Minimum Decision in Normal Situations: In normal circumstances, the autonomous moment
of decision is minimized.
● Annulling the Norm in Exceptional Situations: The exceptional situation leads to the
annulment of the norm, yet it remains accessible to juridical knowledge.
●
● 2. State of Exception as a Theory of Sovereignty
● The Sovereign's Role: The theory of the state of exception is presented as a theory of
sovereignty.
● Anchoring to the Juridical Order: The sovereign, who can decide on the state of exception,
ensures its connection to the juridical order.
● Standing Outside and Belonging: The sovereign, while standing outside the normally valid
juridical order, simultaneously belongs to it.
● Responsibility for Suspending the Constitution: The sovereign is responsible for determining
whether the constitution can be entirely suspended.
●
● Topological Structure of the State of Exception
● Being Outside: The state of exception is characterized by being outside the ordinary juridical
order.
● Belonging to the Juridical Order: Despite being outside, the sovereign belongs to the juridical
order.
● The Paradox of Sovereign Identity: The sovereign's logical definition is shaped by the
exception, resulting in the oxymoronic state of ecstasy-belonging.
● The examination of the state of exception in "Political Theology" reveals the distinctive
relationship between the norm and decision within the juridical order.
● The theory of sovereignty emerges as the sovereign, through the power to decide on the state
of exception, maintains the connection to the juridical order while operating outside of it.
● This topological structure highlights the paradoxical nature of the state of exception, wherein
the sovereign simultaneously exists outside and belongs to the juridical order.

● Title: Aporias of Necessity: Fact, Law, and Subjectivity in the State of Exception
● The state of exception and revolution create a zone of ambiguity where de facto proceedings
and extra- or antijuridical actions transition into law, blurring the boundaries between
juridical norms and mere facts. This indeterminate threshold gives rise to undecidability,
where fact and law become intertwined and difficult to distinguish.

1. The Undecidability of Fact and Law

● Fact Converted into Law: In the state of exception, fact is transformed into law, as "law
arises from fact." Extra- or antijuridical proceedings acquire legal status.
● Law Suspended and Obliterated in Fact: Conversely, in the state of exception, law can be
suspended and erased in the face of exceptional circumstances. The distinction between
factum (fact) and ius (law) becomes blurred.
● Threshold of Undecidability: The interplay between factum and ius creates a threshold where
undecidability arises, making it challenging to categorize actions as purely factual or
juridical.
●
● **2. Aporias of Defining Necessity**
● Ratification and Approval: If a measure out of necessity is already a juridical norm, why does
it need to be ratified and approved by a law? The need for legislative validation raises
questions about its nature.
● Retroactivity and Fiction: The retroactivity of ratification is seen as a fiction. Its legal effects
should logically start from the moment of ratification, rather than retroactively.
● Subjectivity of Necessity: Necessity is subjective and depends on the desired outcome. It is
not an objective situation but a subjective judgment based on the preservation or disruption of
the existing juridical order.
● Moral and Political Evaluation: Necessity entails a moral or political evaluation where the
worthiness of preserving or strengthening the juridical order is weighed against possible
violations. It is inherently a revolutionary principle.
●
●
● Necessity as an Undecidable Decision: Attempts to equate the state of exception with the
state of necessity face serious aporias. Necessity is ultimately a subjective decision, and the
undecidability of fact and law complicates its nature.
● Subjective Evaluation of Necessity: Necessity relies on subjective judgments and
evaluations based on the aim and belief in preserving or disrupting the existing order.
● Revolutionary Principle of Necessity: The principle of necessity, in every case, implies a
revolutionary stance, as it challenges the existing juridical order in favor of new exigencies.
● The concept of the state of necessity encounters aporias when attempting to explain the state
of exception. The undecidability of fact and law, the subjective nature of necessity, and the
revolutionary implications of necessity contribute to the complexity of understanding and
resolving these issues. The state of exception remains an enigmatic space where fact and law
intertwine, and necessity navigates a precarious realm between subjective judgment and
objective evaluation.
● Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution: Its Role in Hitler's Rise to Power
● Understanding Hitler's ascent to power in Germany between the wars requires an analysis
of Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution and its uses and abuses between 1919 and 1933.
This article, with its broad emergency powers granted to the president of the Reich,
played a significant role in shaping the political landscape of the time. Its origins can be
traced back to Article 68 of the Bismarckian Constitution, which granted similar powers
to the emperor in times of threatened public security.
● The Emergence of Article 48
● Precedent in Article 68: Article 68 of the Bismarckian Constitution allowed the emperor
to declare a part of the Reich to be in a state of war in cases of threatened public security,
following the conditions outlined in the Prussian law of 1851 regarding the state of siege.
● Inclusion in the Weimar Constitution: Amid the post-war disorder and riots, the National
Assembly, with input from legal experts like Hugo Preuss, included Article 48 in the new
constitution. This article granted the president of the Reich extensive emergency powers.
● Provisions of Article 48
● Authority of the President: Article 48 empowered the president to take necessary
measures, including the use of armed forces, to restore security and public order if they
were seriously disturbed or threatened in the German Reich.
● Suspension of Fundamental Rights: In pursuit of restoring order, the president was
allowed to partially or wholly suspend certain fundamental rights established in specific
articles (114, 115, 117, 118, 123, 124, and 153) of the constitution.
● Absence of Detailed Law: The article stated that a law would define the conditions and
limitations of the president's emergency powers. However, this law was never enacted,
leaving the extent of these powers ambiguous.
● Controversies and Abuses
● Presidential Dictatorship: The broad and vague nature of Article 48 led theorists to label
it as a form of "presidential dictatorship." Its indeterminate powers allowed presidents to
exercise significant control.
● Ease of Legalizing a Coup d'État: In 1925, Schmitt argued that the Weimar Constitution
had made it incredibly easy to legitimize a coup d'état due to the loose interpretation and
application of Article 48.
● Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution granted the president of the Reich extensive
emergency powers to restore order in times of serious disturbances or threats to public
security. However, the lack of specificity and the absence of a detailed law regulating
these powers allowed for abuses and controversies. The ambiguous nature of Article 48
contributed to the ease with which Hitler and his party exploited it, ultimately leading to
Hitler's rise to power. Understanding the implications and consequences of Article 48 is
crucial to comprehending the historical context of Germany during this period.
● Understanding the state of exception requires a deeper analysis beyond the simple
topographical opposition of inside and outside. Questions arise regarding how a
suspension of the juridical order can still be contained within it and how an anomie can
 be inscribed within the legal framework. Furthermore, the issue of defining the state of
exception lies in a threshold or zone of indifference where the distinction between inside
and outside becomes blurred.
● 1. Suspension Within the Juridical Order
● The Suspension of the Norm: The state of exception involves a temporary or partial
suspension of the juridical order, but this does not mean its complete abolition.
● Anomie and the Juridical Order: The zone of anomie established by the state of exception
is not unrelated to the juridical order. It claims a connection rather than complete
detachment from legal principles.
● 2. Complex Topological Relations
● Challenging the Topographical Opposition: Theories like Schmitt's introduce a more
complex topological relationship that complicates the inside/outside dichotomy.
● The Limit of the Juridical Order: The central focus is on the very limit of the juridical
order, where the state of exception resides.
● Locating the State of Exception
● Localization or Illocalization: Understanding the state of exception requires determining
its proper localization or lack thereof.
● Dispute over Locus: The conflict surrounding the state of exception revolves around its
correct placement within the legal framework.
● Conclusion
● The state of exception transcends the simple distinction between inside and outside the
juridical order. It involves a suspension of norms without their complete elimination and
establishes a zone of anomie that maintains a connection to the legal system. The
complexity of topological relations challenges the conventional understanding of the state
of exception, and the key problem lies in determining its precise location within or
outside the juridical order. Resolving this dispute over the locus of the state of exception
is essential for a comprehensive understanding of its implications.

Class Discussion
● Introduction:

● Giorgio Agamben, an Italian philosopher and political theorist, delves into the notion of

necropolitics, emphasizing the proliferation of death in the modern world and its significance.

His exploration centers on the oppressive nature of the State and the marginalization of

individuals labeled as dispensable. This discussion will provide a comprehensive analysis of

Agamben's ideas, exploring the role of migrant workers as an example and the implications

of being stripped of juridical rights. Additionally, we will examine Agamben's

conceptualization of the sovereign power and its implications for individuals caught between

compliance with the law and the State's coercive measures.

● Necropolitics and the Dispensability of Life:

● Agamben's central focus lies in exposing the politics of death prevalent in contemporary

society. He argues that the State, through its oppressive practices, exercises a form of power

that not only governs but also determines who lives and who dies. Agamben sheds light on

the plight of marginalized groups, such as migrant workers, whose deaths are rendered

inconsequential due to their lack of legal status. These individuals become victims of the

State's dispensable label, reducing their lives to mere biopolitical bodies.

● The Concept of "Bios" and Stripping of Political Character:

● To illustrate the plight of those deprived of legal protection, Agamben introduces the term

"bios," referring to individuals whose existence is subject to the whims of the State. These

individuals are stripped of their political character, devoid of any rights, and left at the mercy

of the ruling power. Agamben's critique highlights the precariousness of their situation and

aims to provoke a reevaluation of the moral and ethical responsibilities of the State towards

its citizens.

● Agamben's Elaboration on the Sovereign Power:

● Agamben builds upon the ideas of Carl Schmitt, a prominent political theorist, who

conceptualized the sovereign power as an abstract and characterless entity. Agamben

provides a more specific description of this power, uncovering the mechanisms through

which it operates. By doing so, he seeks to expose the coercive nature of the State's punitive
 measures. Agamben argues that while adhering to the directives of the law may provide a

sense of safety and stability, deviating from this path forces individuals to confront the

oppressive actions of the State.

● Towards Ensuring Juridical Rights for the Disempowered:

● Agamben's work also highlights the need to extend juridical rights to those who lack the

means to enforce them. He calls for a reconfiguration of legal and political systems to ensure

that all individuals, irrespective of their social or legal status, have access to fundamental

rights. This shift towards inclusivity and empowerment aims to counter the necropolitical

tendencies of the State, providing a more just and equitable society.

● Conclusion:

● Giorgio Agamben's exploration of necropolitics and the oppressive nature of the State offers

a thought-provoking analysis of the modern world. By shedding light on the dispensability of

certain lives, Agamben challenges us to reevaluate our ethical responsibilities towards

marginalized individuals. His elaboration on the concept of bios and the description of the

sovereign power deepens our understanding of the coercive measures employed by the State.

Ultimately, Agamben's work serves as a call to action, urging society to ensure the protection

of juridical rights for all, regardless of their social standing or legal status, thereby fostering a

more inclusive and humane future.

● The state of exception is a concept in political philosophy that refers to a situation in

which the normal legal order is suspended in order to deal with a crisis or emergency.

● The state of exception was first theorized by Carl Schmitt, who argued that it is a

necessary power of the sovereign to suspend the law in order to protect the state.

● The state of exception has been used by governments throughout history to justify a wide

range of repressive measures, including the suspension of civil liberties, the detention of

individuals without trial, and the use of torture.

● In recent years, the state of exception has become increasingly common, as governments

have responded to threats such as terrorism and pandemics by declaring states of

emergency.
 ● The increasing use of the state of exception has raised concerns about the erosion of

democracy and the rule of law.

● The state of exception is a paradox. It is a legal measure that suspends the law. It is a

sovereign power that is exercised outside of the normal legal order.

● The state of exception is a dangerous power. It can be used to justify a wide range of

repressive measures. It can be used to erode democracy and the rule of law.

● The state of exception should be used sparingly and only in the most extreme

circumstances. It should not be used as a way to circumvent the law or to suppress

dissent.

Darryl Li

"The Universal Enemy: Jihad, Empire, and the Challenge of Solidarity"

Reading Notes:

● The text explores the phenomenon of Muslims traveling long distances to fight under the

banner of jihad and the misconceptions surrounding them as the universal enemy. The

author argues that such jihads are more usefully thought of as universalist projects in their

own right and explores how universalist claims are made and enacted. The book is an

anthropology of universalism that attempts to understand how universalist claims are

made and enacted, especially by people who are not ordinarily associated with ideas of

the universal.

● - Jihad and the Misconceptions Surrounding It: The text explores the misconceptions

surrounding jihad and Muslims who travel to fight under its banner. It challenges the idea

that such individuals are the enemy of mankind and argues that their claims to the

universal can be understood as universalist projects in their own right.

● - Solidarity and Violence: The text explores the relationship between armed forms of

solidarity and violence, specifically how participating in armed forms of solidarity

 without the permission of any nation-state is treated as suspect in a world order that

favors the model of the citizen-soldier as the paradigm for legitimate violence.

● - World Politics and Protagonists: The text tells the story of the jihad in Bosnia by tracing

a series of peregrinations between the Balkans, the Middle East, and elsewhere as they

intersect with and shed light on a shifting world order. It highlights how the protagonists

of world politics move beneath and between governments.

● - Fadhil's Story: The text explores the life of Fadhil, a Bosnian Muslim who spent much

of his life in the country. Fadhil's story reveals larger issues at stake, including his

participation in jihad, study, work, marriage, prayer, waiting, and imprisonment, both

figurative and literal. His experiences underscore that the story of the jihad in Bosnia is

simultaneously one of settling in a particular place and getting to know its people, in

encounters shaped and reshaped by much larger forces.

● - Universalist Projects: The text argues that jihads can be understood as universalist

projects in their own right and that exploring such issues allows us to rethink and connect

conversations about Islam, international law, empire, race, and war in unexpected ways.

● - Non-Aligned Movement and Global Islamic Community: Fadhil's trajectory has been

marked by the Non-Aligned Movement and attempts to incarnate some notion of a global

Islamic community (umma), and by the myriad interventions of the US-led "International

Community."

● - Violence and Citizenship: The text highlights how participating in armed forms of

solidarity without the permission of any nation-state is treated as suspect in a world order

that favors the model of the citizen-soldier as the paradigm for legitimate violence.

● - World Politics: The text tells the story of the jihad in Bosnia by tracing a series of

peregrinations between the Balkans, the Middle East, and elsewhere as they intersect with

and shed light on a shifting world order. It highlights how the protagonists of world

politics move beneath and between governments.

● - Jihad and transnational solidarity

● - Feeling of strangeness and estrangement

● - Universalism and the making of claims

● - World politics and shifting world order

● The text discusses the experiences of Fadhil and the feeling of foreignness and

estrangement that suffused his life.

● It explores the concept of the universal enemy and how Muslims who participate in

transnational jihads are often viewed as the enemy of mankind.

● The book argues for an anthropology of universalism to understand how universalist

claims are made and enacted, especially by people who are not associated with ideas of

the universal.

● The text also discusses the world order and the issue of armed solidarity without nation-

state permission, favoring the citizen-soldier as the paradigm for legitimate violence.

● Fadhil's story is an anomaly that unsettles prevalent assumptions about jihad.

● The book tells the story of the jihad in Bosnia by tracing peregrinations between the

Balkans, the Middle East, and elsewhere as they intersect with and shed light on a

shifting world order.

● The passage discusses the world order established after the fall of the Soviet Union,

characterized by the unipolar dominance of the United States, which extended its

influence over weaker countries through various means, including debt, military

assistance, and development aid.

● The primary ways of characterizing armed conflicts in this world order were localized

ethnic wars and globally threatening militant Islam. The former was seen as peripheral

and destabilizing, while the latter produced the figure of the terrorist as an enemy that the

world must band together to defeat.

● These two framings represented conjoined and mutually justifying aspects of the world

order, with the management of ethnic conflict impelling action in the register of
 compassion, while the Global War on Terror mobilized the language of self-protection,

elided into a defense of all humanity.

● He further exemplifies this relationship between the two intertwined understandings of

war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, which captivated the attention of the West during the

Yugoslav Wars.

● He argues that the dominant literature on the Yugoslav Wars has largely neglected the

region's links to darker-skinned peoples to the south and east, ultimately leaving few

tools for probing the region's actual connections to them.

● The passage discusses the Boumediene case, which involved the abduction and

imprisonment of six Algerian men by the United States government. The author argues

that understanding the historical and cultural context surrounding the case is crucial to

making sense of it.

● The men were captured in Bosnia, which was a site of pan-Islamic mobilizations and

attracted attention from Muslims worldwide due to its large Muslim population. The

presence of foreign Muslim fighters and aid organizations during the Bosnian War stirred

controversy and debates between different nationalistic factions in Bosnia.

● The author suggests that the concept of universalism is helpful for understanding the

contentious phenomenon of the jihad in Bosnia. Universalisms, however, are shown to

entail violent hierarchies and erasures, and this particular universalism is deeply

masculinized and excludes women.

● The author employs an ethnographic history from below approach to shed light on

universalist projects, such as the Non-Aligned Movement, United Nations peacekeeping,

and the Global War on Terror, and to compare them in terms of their shared structural

dilemmas.

● THE PRACTICE OF UNIVERSALISM

● The text discusses the notion of universalism and its relationship to religion, specifically

Islam, and politics. The author argues that critiques of universalism as a flattening of
 human differences and a coercive political project are not always useful in accounting for

invocations of the universal whose provenance is not necessarily Western.

● Rather than simply an ideology or theory, universalism can also be understood as a

practice. The author uses the example of two British men of Jamaican origin fighting

with the Taliban in Afghanistan, one of whom reminisces about fish and chips, to show

that the impulse to refute universalism overlooks the effects of universalism as a structure

of aspirations.

● The author argues that a given situation must be considered in terms of who is speaking

in the name of the universal and what makes it possible for them to do so.

● The author also discusses the experience of Ismail Royer, a white middle-class Christian

from St. Louis who converted to Islam and traveled to Bosnia for jihad. Royer's

experience highlights the challenges and dilemmas of the constant redefinition of the

universal and the particular and the line that both divides and conjoins them.

● The text discusses universalisms, which are sets of ideals directed at all of humanity that

can be drawn from various sources, such as religion or theoretical texts. However, the

discussion of universalism should not be limited to the level of an idiom, but rather

approached as something specific and concrete. Universalism requires identifying a

horizon of belonging, which includes some people and theoretically treats all others as

capable of incorporation.

● The text examines the practices and institutions that enabled a group of Muslims in

Bosnia to stand together and fall out with each other. Social cleavages and antagonisms

were not ignored but rather repolarized and managed in various ways.

● Universalisms require some theory of authority that can regulate the use of violence and

adjudicate which differences are contingent and which mark an absolute limit. Speaking

in the name of the universal is more effective when attached to an institutional formation,

such as the Katiba for the jihad in Bosnia.

● The nation-state is a common institutional form for making universalist claims.

Internationalisms are state-based universalist projects that are explicitly organized on an

inter-state basis. The second half of the book discusses three internationalisms in

particular: socialism in the states of the Non-Aligned Movement, United Nations

peacekeeping, and the US-led Global War on Terror.

● The text highlights that the best-known universalisms tend to be state-based and

examines universalisms beyond pathos and morality, following the practice of

universalism to make the jihad in Bosnia legible in terms beyond pathos and morality.

● The author of the text emphasizes that universalist claims are often more effective when

attached to an institutional formation, such as a nation-state or a group like the Katiba in

Bosnia. The nation-state, despite its xenophobic tendencies, is a common institutional

form for making universalist claims.

● Internationalism, which are universalist projects organized on an inter-state basis, is

another form of universalism that is often studied in international law.

● The second half of the book focuses on three internationalisms in particular: socialism in

the Non-Aligned Movement, United Nations peacekeeping, and the US-led Global War

on Terror. Through transregional ethnographic history from below, the author aims to

reveal new dimensions of these internationalisms.

● The text also discusses critiques of international law, which has been accused of being an

instrument of imperialism. C.H. Alexandrowicz and Carl Schmitt both challenged the

notion of an international legal order limited to Western states.

● Alexandrowicz provided evidence of non-European participation as sovereign equals in

the international legal order of the early modern period, while Schmitt warned that

invocations of universal categories could provide new justifications for violence against

the excluded. Both of these critiques have influenced the author's work in this book.

● Overall, the author seeks to present a different kind of universalism through ethnography

and history, in order to develop a more robust account of universalism in practice. The
 author also acknowledges the role of international law in their intellectual formation and

in shaping this reading.

● ETHNOGRAPHIC LAWYERING IN THE GLOBAL WAR ON TERROR

● Title: Notes on "Introduction" - Anthropology, Lawyering, and the Global War on Terror
● 1. Background and Research Setting:
● - The author recounts their first research trip to Bosnia in December 2006, where they
met Abu Hamza, a Syrian who represented Arab ex-mujahids in the country.
● - Bosnia provided a unique environment where veterans of transnational jihad
movements could openly meet with journalists and researchers.
● - The context of the Global War on Terror influenced the dynamics of the research, with
the revelation of secret CIA prisons and arrests of Arabs in Bosnia.
● - Abu Hamza expressed caution and requested a "token of friendship" [ʿarabūn al-ṣadāqa]
to establish trust, leaving the form of the token open to interpretation.
● 2. Research Duration and Locations:
● - The author spent a total of one year in Bosnia, primarily between 2009 and 2012, with
visits until 2018.
● - The research involved living in various neighborhoods of Sarajevo, including both
affluent and working-class areas, as well as being based in downtown Zenica.
● - Zenica was significant during the war as a major center for foreign Islamic solidarity
efforts.
● - The core research was based on a biographical database of over two hundred non-
Bosnians who participated in the jihad, using archival documents, primary sources, and
interviews with interlocutors.
● 3. Research Methodology and Fieldwork:
● - The author engaged in repeated, extended, and open-ended conversations with twenty-
eight self-described mujahids (seventeen foreign, eleven Bosnian) and other individuals
such as Arab aid workers, Bosnian clerics, war veterans, journalists, and intellectuals.
● - Interviews were conducted in coffee shops, private homes, and the immigration
detention centre at Lukavica.
● - The author supplemented interviews with archival research, primarily using Bosnian
army documents collected by the UN war crimes tribunal.
● - The proximity of the research to the war allowed for the direct incorporation of archival
documents into interviews.
● 4. Dual Identity as Anthropologist and Lawyer:
● - The author initially intended to keep their roles as an anthropologist and lawyer
separate, but the realities of the Global War on Terror required their integration.
● - The Global War on Terror was characterized by legal frameworks and litigation, leading
the author to be perceived with suspicion and racial curiosity.
● - The author found that embracing their role as a human rights lawyer facilitated
engagement with potential interlocutors.
● - The book can be seen as an anthropology of law and ethnographic lawyering,
combining technical skills, reasoning, discourses of authority, and legal habits.
● - The author's experiences as an attorney included working on a legal clinic specializing
in cases related to the Global War on Terror and representing a detainee at Guantánamo.
● - The Guantánamo case involved extensive investigation, interviews, and court filings,
contributing to the development of the research questions and lines of inquiry for the
book.
● 5. Ethical Dilemmas and Roles:
● - The author discusses the challenges of maintaining ethical research practices while also
fulfilling professional obligations as an attorney.
● - The author's work as an amicus curiae, representing "friends of the court," allowed for
engagement with legal cases without taking a specific stance on the a
● ctions of the parties involved.
● - The author also engaged as a human rights advocate, developing a relationship with a
local NGO, the Helsinki Committee, and providing consultations for detainees in
immigration detention.
● - Balancing the roles of researcher, advocate, and attorney posed constant challenges and
required navigating different responsibilities and relationships.
● 6. Limitations of Litigation and Potential Contributions (continued):
● - Litigation in the context of the Global War on Terror often involves issues of national
security, classified information, and government secrecy.
● - These factors restrict the ability to present ethnographic evidence and limit the
transparency and accountability of legal proceedings.
● - Despite these limitations, the author argues that ethnographic research can contribute to
legal cases by providing contextual understanding, humanizing individuals, and
challenging dominant narratives.
● - Ethnography can offer insights into the social, cultural, and political dynamics that
shape the lives of individuals involved in the Global War on Terror.
● - It can challenge preconceived notions, reveal power dynamics, and expose the
complexities of identity, agency, and belonging.

● - The book explores several key themes related to the Global War on Terror and its
impact on individuals and societies:
● a. Transnational jihadism and the networks of solidarity and support that emerged
during the Bosnian war.
● b. The experiences and motivations of foreign fighters who joined the jihad in Bosnia
and the aftermath of their involvement.
● c. The complexities of identity and belonging for individuals caught between multiple
allegiances and conflicting narratives.
● d. The intersections of law, politics, and violence in the context of the Global War on
Terror.
● e. The challenges and dilemmas faced by anthropologists and lawyers engaged in
researching and litigating issues related to the war.
● 8. Significance of the Research:
● - The author emphasizes the importance of understanding the lived experiences and
perspectives of individuals affected by the Global War on Terror.
 ● - By providing nuanced insights and challenging simplistic narratives, the research
contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of the complexities of transnational
conflicts and their aftermath.
● - The author argues that ethnographic research can inform legal frameworks, policies, and
interventions aimed at addressing the consequences of the Global War on Terror.
● - It highlights the value of interdisciplinary approaches that bridge anthropology, law, and
human rights advocacy to shed light on the multifaceted dimensions of contemporary
conflicts.
● Note: These notes provide a detailed overview of the points covered in the "Introduction"
of the book. They offer insights into the research setting, methodology, the author's dual
role as an anthropologist and lawyer, ethical dilemmas, and the potential contributions of
ethnographic research in the context of litigation and understanding the Global War on
Terror. The identified themes demonstrate the significance of the research in providing a
nuanced understanding of transnational conflicts and their implications for individuals
and societies.

Class discussion:

● Political theology: The concept of political theology suggests that the logics of political

rule derive from the logics of divinity. In the context of the reading, it helps us

understand how claims of universalism in jihad are intertwined with religious and

political ideologies.

● National identity not foremost priority: The reading challenges the notion that national

identity is the primary concern for individuals. Instead, it argues that transnational

universal identities play a significant role, transcending national boundaries and asserting

broader affiliations and solidarities.

● Balkanisation: Balkanisation refers to the division and fragmentation of a region into

smaller, often hostile, political units. The Balkans, specifically Bosnia-Herzegovina,

serve as a backdrop for understanding the complexities of universalism and competing

ideologies.
● Soviet repression and the Cold War: The Soviet Union's repression of identity markers

such as culture, language, and religion had a lasting impact on the region. Additionally,

the Cold War, with its power struggles and geopolitical interests, had initial destabilizing

effects on the Middle East.

● Universalism of freedom: The idea of freedom is presented as a universal concept that

resonates with people across different contexts. It is often more easily embraced than

other ideologies such as consumerism or capitalism.

● Colonial legacies and universals: The reading highlights how certain particulars of

colonizing nations, such as the English language, are elevated to the status of universals.

Conversely, ideas from colonized states are often understood as particulars, reinforcing a

power imbalance.

● Battle of competing universals: The clash between different universalist projects and their

moral values is described as a battle. The reading prompts us to consider how individuals'

own ideas and ideals may come into conflict with the universals promoted by others.

● Disagreement and taking the other seriously: The act of disagreeing requires taking the

other person's ideas seriously and engaging with their context. Merely dismissing

opposing views limits understanding and constructive dialogue.

● Racialized peddling of ideas: The reading points out the racialized nature of promoting

certain ideas and ideologies. It suggests that the way in which ideas are presented and

marketed can perpetuate power imbalances and reinforce hierarchies.

● Military-industrial-ideological complex: This term refers to the interconnectedness of the

military, industrial, and ideological systems. It suggests that these systems work in

tandem, often serving the interests of those in power.

● Discrimination against Islamic subjects: The reading argues that Islamic subjects face

discrimination because their ideologies may be seen as threats to the universals of the

West. This discrimination is often used to justify Western imperialism.

● Coercion in the perpetuation of universals: While the idea of freedom itself may not be

an issue, the reading highlights the problem of perpetuating universals through coercive

means. It raises questions about the ethics of imposing universal ideologies on others.

● Universals and their travel: Universals are presented as concepts that can be applied to

everyone, transcending geographical and cultural boundaries.

● Miracles and solidarity: The reading explores the notion of miracles in the context of

jihad. It suggests that miracles serve as a source of solidarity and connection among the

mujahideen, breaking national boundaries and emphasizing the importance of universal

values.

● Neocolonialism and the battle of influence: The term neocolonialism refers to the

ongoing influence and control exerted by former colonial powers over previously

colonized regions. It is seen as a battle for dominance and influence over local

populations.

● Washington Consensus: The Washington Consensus is a set of economic policy

prescriptions promoted by institutions such as the International Monetary Fund, World

Bank, and U.S. Department of the Treasury. These policies were often advocated for

crisis-ridden developing countries and represented a standard reform package. The term

"Washington Consensus" reflects the level of agreement among these institutions on the

recommended policies.

● Miracle discourse and the mujahideen community: The reading explores the concept of

miracles within the context of the mujahideen community. Miracles are seen as divine

interventions, fostering solidarity and breaking down national boundaries. This

phenomenon challenges the significance of the nation-state and competes with the

universals propagated by the West.

● Schmittian sovereignty and solidarity: The reading draws parallels between miracles and

sovereignty. While Schmittian sovereignty is characterized by centralized authority and

exceptional power, the miracles experienced by the mujahideen reflect a different form of
 authority—solidarity. The mujahideen assert the rights of individual Muslims to

participate in jihad without seeking permission from governments, challenging the

preference for state-authorized violence.

● The role of miracles in war: Miracles, in the context of jihad, are not only theological but

also serve practical purposes in the material realm of war. They inspire and provide

solace to fighters who may face death, instilling a sense of spiritual fulfillment and the

promise of a reward in paradise (jannat).

● Power of miracle and freedom discourses: The reading emphasizes that the discourse

surrounding miracles is powerful, much like the discourse of freedom. Both compete as

universal concepts, but with different moral values and implications. The fight for faith is

contrasted with the fight for freedom, revealing the complexity of competing universals.

● Katiba and autonomous identity: A katiba refers to a mujahideen group, which, while not

the direct army of a nation-state, operates as a distinct unit within the Bosnian army. The

katiba's autonomy grants it an almost sovereign identity, reminiscent of groups like the

Wagner Group, which operates in a similar manner.

● Political theology and logics of divinity: The reading suggests that the logics of political

rule derive from the logics of divinity, leading to the intertwining of religious and

political ideologies. It highlights the role of political theology in understanding the claims

of universalism made by various actors.

● Sovereignty and different embodiments: The reading explores the idea of sovereignty

resting in both mortal and immortal bodies. Sovereignty can be found in the mortal body

of the state, represented by a permanent sovereign, as well as in the individual ruler. This

distinction highlights the complexity of authority and power dynamics within different

contexts.
Sur, Malini. 2021. Jungle Passports : Fences, Mobility, and Citizenship at the Northeast India-

Bangladesh Border. The Ethnography of Political Violence. Philadelphia: University of

Pennsylvania Press. Ch. 5, 6. Click here to read.

● Reading notes:

Title: Fear, Borders, and Altered Relationships: Tales from the Northeast India-
Bangladesh BorderIntroduction:
● The Northeast India-Bangladesh border is a landscape plagued by fear and tension. It is
marked by the construction of a new border fence, reminiscent of the Great Wall of
China, which is rumored to be charged with electricity. This looming barrier instills dread
in the retired Garo Bangladeshi border commander, Achin, as he contemplates the
implications for his daughter's ability to visit him. The fear extends beyond humans,
disrupting the harmonious relationship between elephants and villagers. These stories of
fear, violence, and altered relationships at the border shed light on the complex dynamics
of border control and its consequences.
● 1. The Specter of the Border Fence:
● a. Achin's apprehension: Achin's experience as a border commander and his encounters
with dangerous individuals on both sides of the border have made him wary. The news of
an electrified border fence adds a new dimension of fear to his concerns.
● b. Ali's warning: A Bangladeshi youth, Ali, highlights the dangers associated with the
new border fence. His cautionary words about guards shooting and killing anyone who
comes into contact with the wall paint a grim picture of the border's militarized
environment.
● 2. Disrupted Relationships and Ecological Consequences:
● a. Trampled rice fields and destroyed houses: The construction of the border fence
disturbs the natural habitat and migration routes of elephants. These distressed tuskers
descend from the degraded forests, wreaking havoc on villages and crops.
● b. The installation of floodlights: Floodlights on the border exacerbate the fear among
undocumented border crossers, particularly Muslim men whose livelihoods depend on
navigating the porous border. The uncertain future creates an atmosphere of anxiety and
apprehension.
● 3. Infrastructures of Fear and Global Apartheid:
● a. Territorial boundaries and normalized enforcement: The unequal relationships between
nations and impoverished border crossers result in detention, deportation, torture, and
death. The nation-state's power to demarcate territories strengthens the concept of global
apartheid.
● b. The state of exception: The visibility of excessive force at borders creates zones of
legal void, where individuals are reduced to "bare life." Giorgio Agamben's concept
highlights the tensions created by the suspension and imposition of laws, leading to a
dehumanized existence.
● 4. Violence, Anticipation, and Porous Borders:
● a. The anticipation of violence: Violence extends beyond physical force; it becomes a
force of anticipation, influencing people's actions, perceptions, and relationships. The fear
of torture and death pervades the lives of border villagers and undocumented travelers.
● b. The disorientation and reconfiguration of relationships: Fear alters prior relationships
of trust, deference, and civility between border villagers, troops, and even animals. The
once-revered elephants become metaphors for a fearful nation, and relationships
deteriorate into terror.
●
● The next part of the text describes the experiences of the author and their companion,
Chandra, as they navigate the forests of the Garo borderland between India and
Bangladesh. The author's disorientation and reliance on Chandra's guidance highlight the
complexities of the border region, where Garo Christian and Bengali Muslim villagers,
border patrol agents, intelligence officers, and wild elephants coexist. The intertwined
 themes of disorientation, reverence, and fear shape the interactions and perceptions of the
people living in this unique landscape.
●
● 1. Spatial Disorientation and Cultural Knowledge:
● - The author's inability to make sense of the routes on maps underscores the need for
Chandra's assistance in accessing remote border villages.
● - Chandra's intimate knowledge of the landscape and precise location of boundary pillars
contrasts with the author's disorientation, highlighting their reliance on local expertise.
● - The shifting boundaries between Indian and Bangladeshi territories further contribute to
the disorientation, as the author struggles to distinguish between the two.
● 2. The Presence of Elephants and Reverence:
● - The author and Chandra frequently encounter elephants during their journeys through
the borderland, adding an additional layer of anxiety and respect to their experiences.
● - The Garo villagers revere elephants, addressing them with deferential terms such as
"ambi acchu" (grandparents) or "mama" (maternal uncle) to show respect and avoid
angering them.
● - The blurred boundaries between humans and elephants reflect the blurred national
boundaries, emphasizing the interconnectedness of the natural and human worlds in the
Garo borderland.
● 3. Border Patrol and Fear:
● - The presence of border patrol agents and intelligence officers creates an atmosphere of
fear and surveillance, affecting the author's sense of safety and freedom.
● - The incident at the outpost, where the author's belongings were mistaken for a bomb,
highlights the heightened tensions and suspicions surrounding the border.
● - The author's constant vigilance and suspicion towards the border troops indicate the
reciprocal fear between the villagers and the armed forces.
●
● 4. Cultural Practices and Mitigating Danger:
● - Villagers engage in coded courtesies and respectful exchanges with the border troops to
establish peaceful coexistence and mitigate potential dangers.
● - The deference shown towards the troops arises from a combination of fear, respect, and
shared dependence on forest resources.
● - The semantic overlap between elephants and the Indian border forces reveals the
evolving dynamics and uncertainties in the borderland, with both entities inspiring
reverence and caution.
● Twisted Bodies:
The passage you provided is an excerpt from a book or article that explores the
experiences of individuals crossing the India-Bangladesh border.
● It highlights the increased risks and fears faced by border crossers, including Garo
Christians and Muslim workers. The author describes how transporters and individuals
navigating the border develop heightened senses to detect potential dangers, such as
border troops.
● The new border infrastructure, including electrified fences and armed guards, creates
emotional and spatial disorientation, leading to anxious mobility.
●
● Religious charms and heavenly protection become increasingly incorporated into the
border crossing rituals as individuals seek safety and guidance.
● The excerpt includes personal accounts of individuals reciting prayers, clutching rosaries,
and relying on amulets for protection during their journeys.
● Despite these precautions, there is a pervasive sense of uncertainty and the
acknowledgment that even the best preparations may not guarantee safe passage.
●
● The passage also highlights the experiences of Muslim border crossers who face
heightened fears and concerns due to the classification of Bangladeshis as "pre-modern"
Muslim enemies by Indian forces.
● The closure of border gates leads to unemployment and economic hardships, disrupting
the livelihoods of individuals who relied on cross-border activities. Waiting becomes a
political predicament, extending indefinitely and causing boredom, chronic poverty, and
a sense of being excluded from the horizons of modernity.
●
● The author also describes the materiality of the border, including the construction of a
new border fence and the presence of barbed wire.
● The new fence is described as a formidable infrastructure that instills fear in border
crossers. The intricate process of constructing the fence is detailed, emphasizing its
function as a physical and symbolic boundary.
● The presence of twisted wires and the texture of barbed wire evoke a sense of extreme
power asymmetry and reinforce the disruptive presence of the nation in the lives of the
people living along the border.

● In the offices of Tribunals X1 and X2, Sujala Das and Samar Bhoumik play vital roles as
custodians of the crucial register of records. This register holds the power to initiate the
judicial proceedings that determine the citizenship claims of suspected individuals. As the
narrative unfolds, we witness the intricate workings of the tribunals and the significance
of the documents and files involved in this process.
● The blue register maintained by Sujala Das becomes the focal point of attention for
many. Its pages hold the key to scheduling court hearings and guiding the progression of
the citizenship claims. Das meticulously notes down crucial details, including serial
numbers, dates, names, addresses, gender, and case status.
● These entries serve as the foundation for case statistics, court summons, trial dates, and
judgments. The judge's signature and seal lend authority and authenticity to each entry,
underscoring the significance of the register as a catalyst for the judicial process.
● Case files represent the comprehensive compilation of evidence and documentation
pertinent to each citizenship claim. These files encompass a range of materials, including
police interrogation reports, case diaries, court summons, and petitions.
● As the accused individuals submit petitions, often drafted by lawyers, the files grow in
size. The inclusion of identity documents further contributes to their bulkiness. These
documents, predominantly typed in English, become crucial in proving Indian
citizenship.
● The ability to produce a variety of mandatory identity papers becomes pivotal, with
electoral lists, land registration records, citizens' registration papers, and birth, marriage,
and school-leaving certificates serving as vital evidence.
● The processes of writing, form-filling, and creating case files within the tribunals play a
central role in adjudicating Indian citizenship. These bureaucratic actions and the paper
documents involved are far from mundane; they are fundamental to making societies
legible and facilitating democratic functioning.
● They exemplify the interconnectedness between state machinery and its influence on
governance. The generation of intricate paper economies not only supports state actions
but also shapes the state itself.
● Identity documents, emerging from bureaucratic practices, hold uncertain and violent
characteristics but possess life-giving properties.
● The relationship between people and rules becomes apparent through official papers,
illustrating the complexity of political subjectivities.
● Title: Citizenship and Illegality: The Rights and Predicament of Individuals in Assam
●
● - Rights of Citizens and Stateless Suspects:
● - Citizens and suspects rendered stateless in Assam face a significant loss of rights and
legal protection.
● - They are denied the privileges and entitlements associated with citizenship, including
access to education, healthcare, employment, and political participation.
● - Statelessness leaves them vulnerable to discrimination, exploitation, and
marginalization.
●
● - Marital and Property Rights in Citizenship:
● - Marital and property rights play a crucial role in determining citizenship claims.
● - Lack of proper documentation for land ownership, marital relationships, and labor
contributions can hinder individuals' ability to prove their Indian citizenship.
● - Without these documents, their claims to membership in the nation are challenged,
further exacerbating their stateless status.
●
● - The Dual Predicament of Assam:
● - Assam faces the challenge of being a perpetually shifting internal and external frontier
of Indian democracy.
● - The presence of Bangladeshi suspects highlights the complex issues of unauthorized
migration, land loss, and citizenship.
● - Despite judgments from the tribunal, confusion and social suspicion persist, failing to
resolve the underlying tensions.
●
● - Historical Context and Surveillance:
● - Partition, evictions, deportations, and the Assam Movement forced many Muslim
peasants of Bengali origin into East Pakistan and Bangladesh.
● - The surveillance of unauthorized Bangladeshis in Assam perpetuates fear and
suspicion through the imposition of judicial borders, police surveys, trials, detentions,
and digital surveillance.
● - The proliferation of identity cards, property papers, and biometrics aimed at proving
citizenship often adds to the confusion rather than resolving questions of land loss and
identity.
●
● - Suspicion and Politics of Belonging:
● - Suspicion becomes a tool used by the state and its institutions to determine the
boundaries of citizenship.
● - It leads to harassment, extortion, manipulation of documents, and the settling of
personal scores.
● - The label of "Bangladeshi" maligns and dispossesses individuals, polarizing society
and fueling fears of undocumented Bangladeshis swamping the region.
●
● - The Role of Policing and Judicial Systems:
● - Modern state policing and judicial systems often presume suspicion, creating
uncertainties and ambiguities.
● - Suspicion permeates intimate spaces, straining relationships among family, friends,
and neighbors.
● - Laws designed to encourage vigilance in determining citizenship thresholds contribute
to the prevailing climate of suspicion and uncertainty.
● The predicament faced by citizens and suspects in Assam underscores the complexities
and challenges of adjudicating citizenship. The denial of rights, the role of marital and
property rights in citizenship claims, and the pervasive suspicion within the state
apparatus contribute to the confusion and social tensions surrounding the issue. Resolving
the dilemmas requires addressing the historical context, ensuring fair and transparent
processes, and fostering a sense of inclusivity and understanding in Assam's diverse
society.
● Class Discussion:

During our class discussion, we explored the themes of fear, borderlines, walls, fences,

and frontiers, delving into the complex dynamics of living in international border areas

marked by conflict and heavy militarization.

● We analyzed the zones of exception, where the necropolitical power of the state is

conspicuously present and operates.

● One key insight that emerged from our discussion was the humanization of the army. We

recognized that the individuals serving in the army are people themselves, simply

fulfilling their duties.

● They continuously negotiate the inherent violence and moral complexities that come with

their roles. This perspective added depth to our understanding of the actors involved in

border conflicts.

● The concept of an incomplete border that engenders fear, particularly in the Northeast

India-Bangladesh border, intrigued us. Barbed wires, metal pillars, and concrete outposts

were highlighted as tangible symbols that create and perpetuate fear.

● These structures not only delineate the border but also function as fear-distributing

objects. We reflected on the shifting arrangements of these structures, which give rise to

violent events within a specific political and temporal framework.

● Our discussion touched upon Giorgio Agamben's notion of the state of exception, where

the alternating suspension and imposition of laws generate tensions and create zones of

legal void. In such conditions, individuals are often reduced to a state of "bare life,"

devoid of human qualities and political recognition.

● It became evident that in extreme circumstances of social and political dispossession,

killing is not regarded as a crime. This raised important questions about the arbitrary

nature of exceptions and the role of race and orientalism in justifying these decisions.

● The term "infrastructure" emerged as a key element in our discussion. We recognized that

infrastructure serves as a means to access and produce fear, and it is constantly generated

and distributed throughout militarized zones.

● We examined the intricate interplay between infrastructural arrangements and

psychological factors, which blur the lines of responsibility for generating fear. T

● his perspective, when compared to Darryl Li's work, highlighted the complexities and

ambiguities surrounding the question of who generates fear in these contexts.

● In summary, our class discussion delved into the multifaceted dynamics of fear,

borderlines, and the militarization of frontiers.

● We examined the human side of the military, the impact of infrastructure in generating

fear, and the blurred lines of responsibility. These nuanced discussions shed light on the

complexities of border conflicts and the social, political, and psychological dimensions at

play.
Jean and John Comaroff. Law and Disorder in the Postcolony. Social Anthropology (2007) 15: 133-

152. Click here to read.

Class discussion:

- Postcolonial nations are often depicted as lawless and violent, reinforcing European archetypes

of underdevelopment and ethnic strife.

- The portrayal includes child bandits in Africa, drug lords in the Andes, intellectual piracy in

China, and e-fraud in India, creating a narrative of political and economic chaos.

- The distinction between the political and the criminal becomes blurred in postcolonial nations,

and violence is seen as a means of production.

- The question arises: Are postcolonies experiencing more unregulated violence and corruption

compared to other 21st-century nation-states? Is there something distinctive about the criminality

and coercion in postcolonial contexts?

- There is a presumption that postcolonies are excessively disorderly, sinking further into chaos,

and in a chronic state of being.

- However, it's important to consider a deeper underlying issue related to the interplay of

violence, sovereignty, and legality in the global context.

- Paradoxically, many postcolonies have a fetish for the law, despite its frequent mockery,

suspension, or bending to suit those in power.

- The law remains central to everyday life, authority, citizenship, power dynamics, and

governance.

- New constitutions are written, rights are claimed, and appeals to the judiciary are made to settle

differences.

- The paradox lies in the fact that while rulers may suspend the law in emergencies, the

fetishization of the law persists.

- Walter Benjamin's thesis on the interrelation between violence and the law provides a

framework for understanding this paradox.

- Achille Mbembe argues that in African postcolonies, a shift towards "private indirect

government" has occurred, where sovereignty diffuses into privatized forms of power and

accumulation.

- The rise of transnational criminal networks and the entanglement of postcolonial nations in a

parallel, pariah economy are observed in Africa, the former Soviet Union, and Latin America.

- The portrayal of postcolonial nations as apocalyptic may overlook the complexities of their

conditions and the profitable neocolonial endeavors taking place.

- Foreign direct investment in sub-Saharan Africa has yielded high returns, indicating a "new

scramble for Africa" by northern nation-states.

- The blurred line between profit and plunder in these endeavors, as well as collaboration

between north and south, complicates the geographies of criminal violence in postcolonial

contexts.

● In our class discussion, we examined the themes of lawlessness, violence, and the

paradoxical relationship between postcolonial nations and the law.

● The common portrayal of postcolonial nations as disorderly and sinking further into

chaos, questioning the underlying assumptions and considering alternative perspectives.

● By exploring the interplay of violence, sovereignty, and legality, we delved into the

complexities of governance, power dynamics, and the social imagination in postcolonial

contexts.

● The paradox emerged when we examined the fetishism of the law in postcolonial nations,

despite its frequent suspension or bending by those in power.

● We considered the role of constitutions, appeals to rights, and the reliance on the

judiciary in settling disputes. Walter Benjamin's concept of the interrelation between

violence and the law provided a framework for understanding this paradox and its

implications.

● We discussed Achille Mbembe's perspective on the rise of "private indirect government"

in African postcolonies, where sovereignty diffuses into privatized forms of power. We

also examined the entanglement of postcolonial nations in a parallel, pariah economy on

a global scale, involving transnational criminal networks and neocolonial endeavors.

● This highlighted the complexities of criminal violence and the blurred line between profit

and plunder in postcolonial contexts.

 ● Our class discussion challenged conventional narratives and emphasized the need for a

nuanced understanding of postcolonial nations, moving beyond simplistic portrayals of

disorder and

● disorder and recognizing the multifaceted dynamics at play.

● We explored the economic interests driving neocolonial ventures and how they intersect

with local power structures, sometimes involving illicit means and collaboration between

actors from the global North and South.

● Rather than accepting preconceived notions of disorder and violence, we examined the

social, political, and economic factors shaping these contexts.

- Ruling regimes in postcolonial nations have relinquished their monopoly over coercion to

private contractors who plunder and enforce on their behalf.

- Banditry in some African, Asian, and Latin American contexts transforms into low-level

warfare as a means of accumulating wealth and allegiance.

- Postcolonial nations exhibit new cartographies of disorder, with spaces of privilege connected

by slender corridors amidst zones of strife, minimal governance, and contested sovereignties.

- The reach of the state is uneven, leading to a complex mix of police, paramilitaries, private and

community enforcement, gangs, vigilantes, highwaymen, and outlaw armies.

- Communication in these contexts lacks authority, with "dark rumors" signifying lurking danger

beneath the surface and occasional graphic assaults on individuals and property.

- Capricious violence often follows predictable patterns, such as rape in South Africa, killing of

homeless youths in Brazil, and sectarian slaughter in Sri Lanka, asserting savage sovereignties.
- Deregulation and democratization have not eliminated older-style oligarchs; they have only

changed the resources and rhetoric they command.

- Postcolonial nations with colonial pasts and economies based on extraction are well-equipped

for the twilight markets fostered by liberalization, where contraband cultivation and illicit

enterprises flourish.

- Twilight economies also expand in service sectors, providing employment opportunities for

marginalized individuals, including conveying contraband and engaging in cybercrime and data

theft.

- Postcolonial societies have become associated with counterfeit modernity, producing fake

documents, objects, and stolen intellectual property.

- The ability to control the migration of people and goods is crucial for profit, and criminal

phantom states exploit the means of replicating bureaucratic authority.

- Postcolonies have a growing industry of fabricating fake credentials, exploiting the cache of

first-world brands and bridging the gap between global desires and immediate capacities.

- Scams and frauds, such as the Nigerian 419 scam, are prevalent in postcolonial nations,

capitalizing on crises of value and dissolving accepted indices of truth.

- Fakery permeates the state itself, giving rise to a politics of illusion, simulated government, and

bogus bureaucracy.

- The concept of the shadow state, with clandestine rule, irregular soldiers, and occult economies,

characterizes African political economy and challenges the notion of the European state as a

chimera.
Notes on fetishism of the law:

- The modern nation-state and classical Greece built upon legal frameworks.

- The post-Cold War era witnessed the fetishization of law, despite increasing walls in

postcolonies.

- National constitutions have multiplied since 1989, shifting toward a neoliberal model

emphasizing civil and political rights.

- Over 100 new national constitutions since 1989, mostly in postcolonial countries.

- Constitutions are seen as tools to establish equitable and ethically-founded societies.

- Change in constitutional content, favoring civil and political rights and the rule of law.

- The importance of constitutionality, even when violated or distorted.

- The unconstitutional transition of power in Togo after Eyadéma's death in 2005.

- The military replaced him with his son, Faure, against the constitutional procedure.

- West African states demanded adherence to the old constitution, leading to Faure's resignation

and a national ballot.

- Togo maintains the appearance of constitutionality despite the underlying authoritarian rule.

- Africa often portrayed as not committed to constitutionalism, despite enacting 36 new

constitutions since 1989.

- The notion of a "culture of legality" permeates postcolonial societies, becoming ingrained in

everyday life.
- The rise of law-oriented NGOs encouraging citizens to address problems through legal means.

- Litigious tendencies in postcolonial societies, even among those who break the law.

- Conflicts that were traditionally resolved through political means are increasingly taken to the

judiciary.

- Class struggles transforming into class actions, uniting people with common grievances and

identities.

- Litigation between citizens, governments, and corporations becomes commonplace, involving

tort law, human rights law, and criminal law.

- Examples of legal battles involving the Bhopal disaster, Argentinian elections, and indigenous

rights violations.

- States face legal actions demanding accountability for various issues.

- Examples include the South African government's struggle against AIDS sufferers and Brazil's

high court ruling against the government for the suffering of indigenous people.

- Advocacy groups use legal strategies to combat neoliberalism and hold powerful entities

accountable.

- Historical acts of colonialism and imperialism are brought to court, seeking justice and

reparations.

- Lawsuits against Britain for acts of atrocity in its African empire highlight the criminalization

of colonialism.
- The concept of lawfare emerges, indicating the use of legal instruments for political coercion

and erasure.

- Lawfare as political displacement, particularly visible when state actors manipulate legalities

against citizens.

- Zimbabwe's Mugabe regime passing laws to suppress political opponents, exemplified by

"Operation Murambatsvina.”

- The fetishism of the law in postcolonial societies manifests through an increased focus on

constitutionalism, legal NGOs, litigious tendencies, and the migration of politics to courts.

- Historical injustices are being fought in the legal arena, seeking accountability and reparations.

● - Lawfare serves as a tool for political coercion and erasure, both in colonial and

postcolonial contexts.

● The comparison between postcolonies and other regions raises the question of whether

the criminal violence often associated with postcolonies is truly unique, as well as the

fetishism of the law and the dialectic of law and disorder itself. There is evidence that

countries like Russia exhibit similar patterns of criminality and corruption.

● The Russian underworld controls a significant portion of the economy, bribes are

commonplace, and organized crime preys on the private sector. However, even in these

contexts, the structures and values of legality are still upheld, and lip service is paid to the

importance of the law.

● Furthermore, countries like Germany, often seen as paragons of corporate respectability,

have also experienced revelations of corruption.

● The Enron scandal in the United States exposed financial malpractice within the heart of

capitalism. These examples demonstrate that rising crime, violence, and disorder are not

limited to postcolonial regions.

● Some argue that the downside of neoliberalism is an escalation in global lawlessness due

to state retraction, opportunities for outlaw activities resulting from deregulation, the

market for violence, and the criminalization of race, poverty, and counter-politics.

● It is increasingly evident that the line between order and disorder is delicate, and anxiety

over rising crime exists in countries across the globe, including developed nations.

● Home Office statistics in the UK, for instance, indicate a sharp increase in property crime

and crimes of violence. Moreover, the United Nations' tally of all recorded crime for

2000 reveals that seven of the most crime-ridden reporting countries are not postcolonies.

● Organized crime has also expanded its reach into the global north, establishing forms of

governance that mimic the law and engaging in profitable partnerships with respectable

corporations and political figures.

● Corporations and political elites in non-postcolonial regions are not immune to

questionable practices either. The first election of George Bush was heavily influenced

by "lawfare," and subsequent government actions have legitimized corruption.

● Similar cases of corruption have occurred in various European countries. Illicit and licit

business practices intertwine and can be challenging to distinguish, often bleeding into

each other.

● The global north, like the south, experiences the judicialization of politics and the

pressure toward sovereign fragmentation.

● While there are undeniable differences between postcolonial and non-postcolonial

regions, the similarities are striking. Criminal violence serves as an imaginative vehicle

for contemplating the nation's fears, and the discourse of disorder often diverts attention

from the social and material effects of neoliberalism.

 ● The postcolony can be seen as an exaggeration of the contemporary world at large,

where shifts in the order of things occur first, most visibly, and most horrifically. It

represents an ongoing historical process rather than a transitional phase.

● As such, postcolonies provide crucial sites for theory construction in the social sciences,

reflecting the foreshadowing of a planetary future shaped by rising neoliberalism. It is in

these contexts that the limits of social knowledge demand engagement.

Girish Karnad : Tughlaq

Why is Karnad writing this play?

● One reason to show the gap between policy and actual implementation

● The fail of idealism? Can sovereigns aim for perfection?

Perfection is a luxury for sovereigns.

● This is a piece of attire and therefore Tughlaq is a caricature who represents

contemporary politics. The irony in Karand’s work can be shown through Azeez

● He was an extremely devout King, his indecisiveness can be attributed to him looking for

divine help. There is a complicated relationship with the Islamic law. The Islamic law is a

divine law which gives authority to the king. Tughlaq has to navigate through the divine
 law and the his role as the King. This can be seen in the example of him banning praying

in public places.