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The world is a garden: Nomos, sovereignty, and the (contested) ordering of life

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 June 2019

Simon Mabon Open the ORCID record for Simon Mabon [Opens in a new window]
Simon Mabon*
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Department of Politics, Philosophy, and Religion at Lancaster University
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*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

Traditional approaches to questions about nomos in IR typically focus upon either its establishment and the formal structures that emerge through interaction within a clearly delineated spatial area, or an exploration of US hegemony in the post-2003 world. In this article I posit a different approach, building on the ideas of Giorgio Agamben, which grounds nomos as a spatialisation of the exception within conditions of neoliberal modernity. I suggest that within the global nomos are more localised nomoi. These localised nomoi are a consequence of the spatialisation of the exception and a fundamental tension between localisation and ordering. I argue that while sovereign power has been a source of contemporary scholarship, such explorations have paid scant attention to the regulatory power of normative values and their capacity to create order within space. Such norms allow for a greater awareness of how sovereign power can be mobilised in and of itself as a form of contestation. Locating such debates in the Middle East, I explore the concept of nomos to understand how struggle over the localisation and ordering of space helps us to better understand contemporary political life.

Keywords

NomosSovereigntySpaceAgambenMiddle East
Type
Research Article
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 45 , Special Issue 5: Special Issue on Populism , December 2019 , pp. 870 - 890
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 2019 

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