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Who Sings the Nation-State?: Language, Politics, Belonging | 
 enlarge | Authors: Judith Butler, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
Publisher: Seagull Books
Category: Book
List Price: $19.95
Buy New: $12.30
You Save: $7.65 (38%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  4 reviews
Sales Rank: 55196
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 128
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.3 x 4.6 x 0.6
ISBN: 1905422571
Dewey Decimal Number: 300
EAN: 9781905422579
ASIN: 1905422571
Publication Date: November 13, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
In a world of migration and shifting allegiances--the state is a more provisional place and its inhabitants more stateless. What is contained in a state has become ever more plural while the boundaries of a state have become ever more fluid. No longer does a state naturally come with a nation.
This book is set in the form of a conversation between two renowned thinkers, Judith Butler and Gayatri Spivak, who discuss the fact that globalization has made things like national anthems and political boundaries obsolete. The result is a spirited and engaging conversation that ranges widely across Palestine, what Enlightenment and key contemporary philosophers have said about the state, who exercises power in today's world, whether we can have a right to rights, and even what the singing of "The Star Spangled Banner" in Spanish says about the complex world we live in today.
Book Description
In a world of migration and shifting allegiances, the state has become a more provisional place and its inhabitants more stateless. What is contained in a state has become ever more plural while the boundaries of a state have become ever more fluid. No longer does a state naturally come with a nation.
This book is set in the form of a conversation between two renowned thinkers, Judith Butler and Gayatri Spivak, who discuss the fact that globalization has made things like national anthems and political boundaries obsolete. The result is a spirited and engaging conversation that ranges widely across Palestine, what Enlightenment and key contemporary philosophers have said about the state, who exercises power in today's world, whether we can have a right to rights, and even what the singing of "The Star Spangled Banner" in Spanish says about the complex world we live in today.
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| Customer Reviews:
On Language, Politics, Belonging: Look Elsewhere March 16, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
This is not a good book. No contextual background is given for Butler and Spivak's theoretical dialogue on statelessness, and the dialogue itself is at turns pedantic (see Butler's punning on the word "state") and banal (see both critics' comments on the EU). The dialogue's alternating obfuscation and dullness may be accounted for by the fact that it appears to be a staged "conversation" between Butler and Spivak at a conference or symposium. Even on those terms, however, the book is a bit of a waste -- the pomp of the dialogue's tone is simply not matched by the critical points made in it. If you're looking for a much more engaged theoretical work on these issues, see Etienne Balibar's *We, the People of Europe?*
 Original, Brilliant March 15, 2008
5 out of 18 found this review helpful
Although short, this book is one of the only inquiries into sovereignty that moves beyond the theoretical framework of Agamben, and begins to explore new vocabularies for addressing postcolonial subjectivity. Butler and Spivak breathe new life into a text by Ardent, which they use to theorize the relationship between language and sovereignty and expose an underlying condition of statelessness. I immensely enjoyed these great thinkers, and would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in political theory.
 Scholarly status is not a general license December 24, 2007
29 out of 31 found this review helpful
Butler and Spivak have repeatedly earned respect for their scholarship. This (essays, dialogue, non-book?)"effort" seems to imply that their reputations will suffice in place of familiarity with the literatures of the central subjects on which they pontificate. They (ab)use well-established, still very much germane, concepts without regard to current usages by both mainstream and critical theory-grounded writers. It is as though they had invented their subjects yesterday: they make little effort to relate their comments to either the empirical or theoretical scholarship. The consequence should be treating this little volume the way its authors treat the bodies of relevant work on the theme they address; unfortunately a few persons may be sufficiently motivated by the names on the title-page to buy the book. Given its thin and airy (vacuous would not be too strong)content, however, is likely to be quickly forgotten. It fails to contribute to intellectual discourse
Poorly edited scholarly effort December 5, 2007
39 out of 43 found this review helpful
I have to second the previous reviewer's negative comments -- it accurately assesses the substantive shortcomings of this book -- and add my own 2 cents (and 2 stars) worth about some additional problems. The text is a apparently a transcript of a conference or panel discussion between Butler and Spivak, with some questions from audience members at the end of their exchange, but there is absolutely no introduction or even a brief statement to contextualize their statements. Was this in fact a conference or panel discussion? If so, where, and what was the conference title or topic? Without any of that information the reader is projected into the middle of a conversation without any explanation. It makes it hard to get one's bearings, and as the previous reviewer argues, there isn't much of substance to hang on to as you make your way through the book. Very disappointing effort from Spivak and Butler, as well as the editor/publisher of this book.
Simulacra Scholarship November 26, 2007
100 out of 108 found this review helpful
It is surely a reflection of the demand for the Latest on globalization and the nation-state from highly commodified theorists that this super-slender hardcover volume (with approx. 120 words per page) hit a sales rank consistently below 5,000 on Amazon.com for weeks prior to its release. The scandal is that neither Butler nor Spivak have an in-depth knowledge of globalization or nationalism, but their comments and sound-bytes will soon be the most widely cited on these topics. Their iconic status as all-purpose references is built on a simulacra of scholarship that depends on two factors: 1) an audience that is unwilling to do the in-depth reading to understand globalization but wants sound-bytes to stay current and relevant and 2) the license granted to some celebrity scholars to comment on subjects well beyond their expertise.
Butler comes up with the astonishing claim (p. 13) that hardly anyone writes about statelessness in the social sciences now (what has she been reading?!); and Spivak tops this with her declaration (p. 87) that "the European constitution is an economic document" (what happened to the articles on secularism, militarism, and human rights). In a revealing exchange, when Butler asks Spivak to clarify what she means by critical regionalism, Spivak careens from Evo Morales to East Asia to South Asia to Habermas, to undocumented workers in the United States, to Iran, to NATO, to Russia in 5 pages to make the wafer-thin conclusion: "It [critical regionalism] goes under and over nationalisms but keeps the abstract structures of something like a state." No other scholar would be allowed to hang an argument on this flimsy peg, but she can and does. Spivak dodges every call to define her terms or offer a sustained argument. Along the way, she tosses up terms like "critical regionalism" "sustainable exploitation" (when has exploitation not tried to be sustainable) which will soon be the buzzwords of the moment. Needless to say, there is a large body of work produced about the refigured regionalisms in Latin America, Asia, and Africa (often by scholars working in institutions in these regions) that makes Spivak seem superficial and glib. Indeed, the argument for regional human rights instruments has been made at least since the First World Conference on Human Rights in 1993, but of course this becomes citable only when it comes from a Spivak. The irony is that in humanities departments, it will be the Spivakisms that will circulate, while the other work will be strenuously ignored. To think that it was Spivak who first charged her interlocutors with "sanctioned ignorance."
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