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The State as an Always-Unfinished Performance: Improvisation and Performativity in the Face of Crisis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 May 2018

Charles Tripp
Charles Tripp*
Affiliation:
Department of Politics and International Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, London, UK; e-mail: [email protected]
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Extract

The apparent fixity of the state has been produced by state-building projects, but also by the logic of state analysis that needs an object for its study. Encouraging critical reflection on the essentialism often associated with these processes, Pierre Bourdieu argued that these two aspects of “state formation” are contingently and epistemologically intertwined: “to endeavor to think the state is to take the risk of taking over (or being taken over by) the thought of the state.” Others, including Ellen Lust in her essay, have focused on state-making practices, and their symbolic and material effects that produce and reproduce the state as dominant idea and as ultimate institutional frame in a particular time and place. Taking this further, Kevin Dunn frames “‘the state’ as a discursively produced structural/structuring effect that relies on constant acts of performativity to call it into being.” It is this performative aspect of state making in all its variety that will be the focus here, echoing themes in the pieces by Lisa Anderson and Rabab El-Mahdi.

Type
Roundtable
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 50 , Issue 2 , May 2018 , pp. 337 - 342
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

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References

NOTES

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