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Birth of the State: The Place of the Body in the Crafting of Modern Politics By Charlotte Epstein, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. 327 pp. ISBN: 9780190917630 £22.00 (paperback)
International Journal of Law in Context ( IF 0.6 ) Pub Date : 2021-08-17 , DOI: 10.1017/s1744552321000458
Aoife O'Donoghue 1
Affiliation  

Within legal debate, the state and the body are discourses at once apparent and buried. Amongst international legal scholars, the state is all-consuming while the body is unimportant whereas, in the domestic sphere, state ascendency precludes the study of its existence, while the body as the liberal autonomous rational agent of consent is the principal preoccupation. Neither of those constructs bears much analysis. Trends within global, comparative and transnational legal debate endeavour to deconstruct the state and the body, but often do so in ways that cannot challenge, subvert or disrupt the character of either body or state, or to consider their intimacy in patterns of historic conditioning. In particular, we are so inured to ideas now considered common sense that tracing how perceptions of law, legitimacy and authority were naturalised via the body and state is very difficult. Within the canon, the male White body, as Epstein argues, remains the core and the naturalised state the subject of the modern world (p. 261). From this premise, Epstein undertakes a fascinating journey through security, liberty and property, making plain the processes of naturalisation so dominant that they now go unremarked. Epstein makes visible the concerns of the state and the body at the centre of law and politics. While this is not a traditional book review, I begin by noting the quality of scholarship and writing in the Birth of the State. Do we need another deep dive into Locke and Hobbes? Epstein’s answer is an emphatic ‘yes’, and the book amply shows what may be achieved in doing so. Moving from security to liberty and finally to property, the book deftly sets out how ideas that were not obvious or natural, and indeed were in some incidences alien to the medieval ideas that preceded them, were articulated so as to become naturalised. It does so by embracing the work of Foucault, Butler, Skinner and others, but not uncritically. The book shows the limitations in embracing one theoretical view and how a pluralism of critical approaches unbeholden to one methodology, particularly when examining the history of ideas, often achieves more than the sum of its parts. Naturalisation is at the core of book, namely how ideas become naturalised so that we no longer see them for what they are, constructs, but regard them as a priori matters of objective fact. Reading Birth of the State from another discipline – a process that requires care and attention to disciplinary, linguistic and methodological contexts – two of the book’s features come to the fore: first, the methodological choices and, second, the substantive arguments and where they are amenable to disrupting legal debate. Foucault, Agamben, Haraway and others are usefully and thoughtfully embraced amongst some legal scholars. Epstein fruitfully puts such scholarship to work in combination with her close textual analysis of Hobbes, Locke, Grotius, Suarez, Pufendorf, Bacon and others, bringing to the fore the processes of naturalisation of key concepts related to the state and the individual that ensued. In particular, it draws attention to the processes of Othering that underscored these naturalisations, where the non-White body, the women’s body, the body of the criminal, the

中文翻译:

国家的诞生:现代政治中身体的位置 作者:夏洛特·爱泼斯坦,牛津:牛津大学出版社,2021 年。327 页 ISBN:9780190917630 22.00 英镑(平装本)

在法律辩论中,国家和身体是既明显又被掩埋的话语。在国际法学学者中,国家是无所不包的,而身体并不重要,而在国内领域,国家优势排除了对其存在的研究,而身体作为同意的自由自主理性代理是主要关注点。这些结构都没有太多的分析。全球、比较和跨国法律辩论中的趋势试图解构国家和身体,但这样做的方式往往不能挑战、颠覆或破坏身体或国家的特征,或者考虑它们在历史条件模式中的亲密关系。特别是,我们已经习惯于现在被认为是常识的想法,以至于追踪对法律的看法,合法性和权威性通过身体和国家归化是非常困难的。正如爱泼斯坦所说,在经典中,男性白人身体仍然是现代世界的核心和归化状态(第 261 页)。从这个前提出发,爱泼斯坦开始了一段穿越安全、自由和财产的迷人旅程,清楚地说明了入籍过程如此占主导地位,以至于现在它们都被忽视了。爱泼斯坦在法律和政治的中心使国家和机构的关注显而易见。虽然这不是传统的书评,但我首先要注意学术质量和《国家诞生》中的写作。我们是否需要再次深入了解洛克和霍布斯?爱泼斯坦的回答是肯定的,这本书充分展示了这样做可能会取得的成就。从安全到自由,最后到财产,这本书巧妙地阐述了那些不明显或不自然的思想,在某些情况下确实与之前的中世纪思想格格不入,如何被表达以使其自然化。它通过接受福柯、巴特勒、斯金纳和其他人的工作来做到这一点,但并非不加批判。这本书展示了接受一种理论观点的局限性,以及不受限于一种方法论的批判方法的多元化,特别是在研究思想史时,往往取得的成就超过其各个部分的总和。自然化是本书的核心,即思想是如何自然化的,以至于我们不再看它们是什么,构造,而是将它们视为客观事实的先验事项。从另一个学科解读国家的诞生——这个过程需要对学科的关注和关注,语言和方法论背景——本书的两个特点脱颖而出:首先,方法论的选择,其次,实质性的论点以及它们在哪些方面可能会破坏法律辩论。福柯、阿甘本、哈拉维和其他人在一些法律学者中得到了有用和深思熟虑的拥护。爱泼斯坦将这种学术研究与她对霍布斯、洛克、格老秀斯、苏亚雷斯、普芬多夫、培根等人的密切文本分析相结合,将与国家和个人相关的关键概念的自然化过程带到了前台。特别是,它提请注意强调这些归化的他者化过程,其中非白人的身体,女性的身体,罪犯的身体,方法选择,其次是实质性论点,以及它们在哪些方面可能会扰乱法律辩论。福柯、阿甘本、哈拉维和其他人在一些法律学者中得到了有用和深思熟虑的拥护。爱泼斯坦将这种学术研究与她对霍布斯、洛克、格老秀斯、苏亚雷斯、普芬多夫、培根等人的密切文本分析相结合,将与国家和个人相关的关键概念的自然化过程带到了前台。特别是,它提请注意强调这些归化的他者化过程,其中非白人的身体,女性的身体,罪犯的身体,方法选择,其次是实质性论点,以及它们在哪些方面可能会扰乱法律辩论。福柯、阿甘本、哈拉维和其他人在一些法律学者中得到了有用和深思熟虑的拥护。爱泼斯坦将这种学术研究与她对霍布斯、洛克、格老秀斯、苏亚雷斯、普芬多夫、培根等人的密切文本分析相结合,将与国家和个人相关的关键概念的自然化过程带到了前台。特别是,它提请注意强调这些归化的他者化过程,其中非白人的身体,女性的身体,罪犯的身体,Haraway 和其他人在一些法律学者中得到了有用和深思熟虑的拥护。爱泼斯坦将这种学术研究与她对霍布斯、洛克、格老秀斯、苏亚雷斯、普芬多夫、培根等人的密切文本分析相结合,将与国家和个人相关的关键概念的自然化过程带到了前台。特别是,它提请注意强调这些归化的他者化过程,其中非白人的身体,女性的身体,罪犯的身体,Haraway 和其他人在一些法律学者中得到了有用和深思熟虑的拥护。爱泼斯坦将这种学术研究与她对霍布斯、洛克、格老秀斯、苏亚雷斯、普芬多夫、培根等人的密切文本分析相结合,将与国家和个人相关的关键概念的自然化过程带到了前台。特别是,它提请注意强调这些归化的他者化过程,其中非白人的身体,女性的身体,罪犯的身体,将随之而来的与国家和个人相关的关键概念的自然化过程带到了前台。特别是,它提请注意强调这些归化的他者化过程,其中非白人的身体,女性的身体,罪犯的身体,将随之而来的与国家和个人相关的关键概念的自然化过程带到了前台。特别是,它提请注意强调这些归化的他者化过程,其中非白人的身体,女性的身体,罪犯的身体,
更新日期:2021-08-17
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