Terror and Territory: The Spatial Extent of Sovereignty
Terror and Territory: The Spatial Extent of Sovereignty
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恐怖与领土：主权的空间范围
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发表时间：
2009
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
S. Elden
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文献类型：
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作者：
S. Elden
政治理论家倾向于优先考虑时间而不是空间。我们倾向于想象社会契约之前的自然状态，以及当代政治斗争之后乌托邦社会的胜利。但政治并不仅仅发生在过去和未来之间，它也发生在太空中和太空之上。约翰·阿格纽（John Agnew）、大卫·哈维（David Harvey）、布鲁斯·布劳恩（Bruce Braun）和吉尔罗德·奥图塔伊尔（Gearoid O 'Tuathail）等学者最近在政治地理学方面的工作，发展了复杂的政治空间理论分析。我很高兴地告诉大家，斯图尔特·埃尔登的《恐怖与领土》是对这一文献的重要补充，也是研究主权概念的政治理论家必须阅读的一部著作，因为它及时分析了空间实践如何塑造当代政治逻辑。埃尔登的作品分析了美国政府及其各种竞争对手在全球反恐战争中制定的各种空间实践。尽管最近关于领土与恐怖主义之间关系的许多文献都认为恐怖主义代表了战争的去领土化，但埃尔登为我们提供了一个更微妙的阅读反恐战争，因为它同时涉及去领土化和再领土化的实践。他审视了伊斯兰组织的领土战略，并思考了美国政府坚持维护伊拉克和索马里等国家领土完整的重要性。这本书一开始就观察到“领土”一词的拉丁词根是不稳定的。它可以是terra -指的是土地-或者terr% ere -指的是恐惧。埃尔登利用领土词源的这种模糊性来探索当代领土逻辑如何与恐惧逻辑交织在一起。正如埃尔登所说，如果领土确实植根于terr% ere，那么领土可能意味着人们被吓跑的地方，或者是一个行使恐惧的空间。这个定义反映了韦伯的定义
Political theorists tend to prioritize the temporal over the spatial. We tend to imagine states of nature before the social contract and the triumph of utopian societies after our contemporary political struggles. But politics does not simply occur between past and future, it also occurs in and over space. And recent work in political geography by scholars such as John Agnew, David Harvey, Bruce Braun and Gearoid O’Tuathail has developed sophisticated theoretical analyses of political space. I am happy to report that Stuart Elden’s Terror and Territory is an important addition to this literature, and a work that political theorists working on the concept of sovereignty must read because of its timely analysis of how spatial practices shape contemporary political logics. Elden’s work analyzes the various spatial practices enacted by both the US Government and its various rivals in the Global War on Terror. Although much recent literature on the relationship between territory and terrorism has argued that terrorism represents a de-territorialization of warfare, Elden offers us a more nuanced reading of the War on Terror as simultaneously being involved in practices of de-territorialization and re-territorialization. He looks at the territorial strategies of Islamic groups, and considers the significance of the US Government’s insistence on maintaining the territorial integrity of countries such as Iraq and Somalia. The book begins with the observation that the Latin root of the word territory is unsettled. It could be either terra – referring to land – or terr% ere – referring to frighten. Elden uses this ambiguity in the etymology of territory to explore how contemporary logics of territory are intertwined with logics of fear. As Elden suggests, if territory does have its root in terr% ere then territory could mean a place where people are frightened away from, or a space over which fear is exercised. And this definition reflects how – harking back to Weber’s definition