Editorial: The Culture of Sovereignty – and War

Abstract

Why devote an issue of Culture and Dialogue to “war and sovereignty”? The dialogue is at the heart of the question of sovereignty, its possibility, its need and justification. Aspirations for sovereignty do not only concern territories and proprieties in the concrete sense of the terms. We find issues of sovereignty in all layers of life; academia, science, business, the judiciary, or religion, amongst others. Questions of sovereignty have affected individuals as much as groups of people of all sizes in all parts of the globe. Drives to establish sovereignty have mapped the history of humanity and continue to do so. In other words the question concerning sovereignty is universal, both in space and time. Any conception of sovereignty thought to be inalienable and indivisible, as for Jean-Jacques Rousseau amongst others, is fundamentally misled. Worse, such conception can be the trigger of one of the ugliest demeanours of human experience: war – whether or not it is justified when it serves a commendable purpose outside of itself, as Carl von Clausewitz believed. Just as there is no immutable identity in-itself, there is no such a thing as the inalienability or indivisibility of sovereignty. This is not to say that sovereignty (or identity, for that matter) is a flawed conception that should be thrown into the dustbin of alleged progressive civilisations. Rather, sovereignty should be understood in relational terms, practised ethically, and determined according to circumstances. By nature and by definition, sovereignty understood as the practise of authority in order to create, preserve, or impose a closure, is profoundly relational; sovereignty is established according to criteria that determine the inside and outside of its own closure. It is at this point that metaphysical conceptions of sovereignty can pave the way for conflicts and other atrocities. Depending on the chosen criteria, insiders may feel the need to define themselves as outsiders; conversely, outsiders may resist a sovereign’s will or strategy to convert themselves to being insiders. There can be neither any abstract Leviathan nor a supreme individual, as in Jean Bodin, who operates at will regardless of the relation and circumstances. In other words, sovereignty must remain ethical before being metaphysical. Sovereignty is fundamentally human, and as such it must be chosen and decided by the very humans who enact such a sovereignty, that is, not by other individuals, ideologies, or even the divine. But even in the form of contract as