Southeast Asian Perspectives on Power by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction, Social & Cultural Studies, Social Science, Cultural Studies, Ethnic Studies, Anthropology, Political Science
ISBN: 9781136337178
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2012-05-04T04:00:00+00:00

State as fiction, phantom, fetish

To imagine the state as fiction or phantom has a long history within the discipline. In State Fetishism, for example, Michael Taussig traces the state’s ‘endless flight in modern times back and forth from the hard-edged thing to its ephemeral ghost and back again’ (1992: 111). Taussig draws on A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, who, in his preface to African Political Systems, suggests that the state is fictional:

In writings on political institutions there is a good deal of discussion about the nature and origin of the State, which is usually represented as being an entity over and above the human individuals who make up a society, having as one of its attributes something called ‘sovereignty’, and sometimes spoken of as having a will (law being often defined as the will of the State) or issuing commands. The State in this sense does not exist in the phenomenal world; it is a fiction of the philosophers.

(1970: xi in Taussig 1992: 112)

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