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Athens Revolting: Three Meditations on Sovereignty and One on Its (Possible) Dismantlement

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Abstract

In British and continental constitutional theory, the sovereign provides a mouthpiece for the law, helping present a unified body politic. For Hegel too the sovereign is a function for the unity of the people. But it is the subject’s desire, which brings the sovereign into existence as guarantor of the law’s coherence and closure. The spontaneous insurrection of December 2008 in Greece weakened the hold of the sovereign on the subject. The post-political condition was challenged by the unplanned actions of resistance and performance by people who have been excluded from political visibility.

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Notes

  1. For the difficulties of lawyers and political philosophers with the state of exception, see Agamben 2003.

  2. The following draws on previous work. See especially Douzinas 2000, pp. 329–330 and Douzinas 2005, pp. 20–22.

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Correspondence to Costas Douzinas.

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Douzinas, C. Athens Revolting: Three Meditations on Sovereignty and One on Its (Possible) Dismantlement. Law Critique 21, 261–275 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10978-010-9072-z

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