Stasis Before the State: Nine Theses on Agonistic Democracy

This book critiques the relation between sovereignty and democracy. Across nine theses, Vardoulakis argues that sovereignty asserts its power by establishing exclusions: the sovereign excluding other citizens from power and excludes refugees and immigrants from citizenship. Within this structure, to resist sovereignty is to reproduce the logic of exclusion characteristic of sovereignty.

In contrast to this "ruse of sovereignty," Vardoulakis proposes an alternative model for political change. He argues that democracy can be understood as the structure of power that does not rely on exclusions and whose relation to sovereignty is marked not by exclusion but of incessant agonism.

The term stasis, which refers both to the state and to revolution against it, offers a tension that helps to show how the democratic imperative is presupposed by the logic of sovereignty, and how agonism is more primary than exclusion. In elaborating this ancient but only recently recovered concept of stasis, Vardoulakis illustrates the radical potential of democracy to move beyond the logic of exclusion and the ruse of sovereignty.

Author: Dimitris Vardoulakis
Publisher: Fordham University Press
Published: 11/07/2017
Pages: 168
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.40lbs
Size: 7.30h x 5.00w x 0.50d
ISBN: 9780823277407

Review Citation(s):
Choice 06/01/2018

About the Author

Dimitris Vardoulakis is Associate Professor and deputy chair of philosophy at Western Sydney University.