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Georges Bataille's Concept of Sovereingty

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Georges Bataille's Concept of Sovereingty GEORGES BATAILLE’S CONCEPT OF SOVEREINGTY: AN ONTOLOGICAL APPROACH TO INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES OF MIDDLE EAST TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY BY METE ULAŞ AKSOY IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE DEPARTMENT OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SEPTEMBER 2009 I hereby declare that all information in this document has been obtained and presented in accordance with academic rules and ethical conduct. I also declare that, as required by these rules and conduct, I have fully cited and referenced all material and results that are not original to this work. Name, Surname: Mete Ulaş, Aksoy Signature: iii ABSTRACT BATAILLE’S CONCEPT OF SOVEREIGNTY: AN ONTOLOGICAL APPROACH TO INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS Aksoy, Mete Ulaş Ph.D., Department of International Relations Supervisor: Necati Polat September 2009, 322 pages The critical tradition in International Relations Theory has placed great emphasis on the metaphysical nature of sovereignty, the concept assumed to be pivotal to the modern states system. The present study offers an explanation for the metaphysics that characterizes the prevailing notion of sovereignty via insights provided by Bataille. The study focuses on the ontological implications to which Bataille’s formulation of sovereignty gives rise. Underlying this endeavor is to probe into the ways in which these implications enrich our understanding of sovereignty. One of the most important achievements of Bataille’s approach to sovereignty is that it does not treat sovereignty as merely an administrative and legal issue. This achievement is highly critical in the sense that it enables us to realize the metaphysical dimension of sovereignty. This metaphysics has an important potential to render the problematic points in sovereignty visible. Through the analysis of these points, this study iv elaborates on the historical development of political authority and state sovereignty. Taking the anthropological data provided by Bataille into account the study claims that with the emergence of modernity, there came into existence a new metaphysical representation of sovereignty. Keywords: Georges Bataille, Sovereignty, Second Death v ÖZ GEORGES BATAILLE’IN EGEMENLİK KAVRAMI: ULUSLARARASI İLİŞKİLERE ONTOLOJİK BİR YAKLAŞIM Aksoy, Mete Ulaş Doktora, Uluslar arası İlişkiler Bölümü Tez Yöneticisi: Prof. Dr. Necati Polat Eylül 2009, 322 sayfa Uluslarası İlişkiler Teorisindeki eleştirel yaklaşımlar, modern devletler sisteminde merkezi rol oynadığı kabul edilen egemenlik ilkesinin metafiziksel doğası üzerine vurgu yapmaktadır. Bu çalışma, Bataille’ın ortaya koyduğu yaklaşımlar aracılığı ile, egemenlik nosyonunu karakterize eden metafizik üzerine odaklanmayı amaçlamaktadır. Bu uğraşının temelinde yatan ise, bu çıkarımların egemenlik anlayışımızı ne şekilde zenginleştireceğini ortaya koymaktır. Böyle bir zenginleşme, egemenliğin metafiziksel boyutunu gözler önüne sermesi bakımından da büyük bir öneme sahiptir. Egemenlik çalışmalarındaki sıkıntılı noktaların ortaya çıkmasında bu metafizik boyutun rol oynadığı hesaba katılırsa, Bataille’ın egemenlik kuramının önemi daha iyi anlaşılabilir. Bu noktaların incelenmesi ile, çalışma özne ve egemenlik gibi kavramlardaki ontolojik boşluklara dikkat çekmeye çalışmıştır. Bu temelden hareketle, çalışma siyasal otorite ve devlet egemenliği kavramlarını ele vi almıştır. Antropolojik veriler ve Bataille’ın felsefi yaklaşımları ışığında, modernite ile birlikte, yeni bir metafiziksel egemenlik temsilinin ortaya çıktığı iddia edilmiştir. Anahtar Kelimeler: Georges Bataille, Egemenlik, İkinci Ölüm vii To My Parents, Lütfü Aksoy and Necla Aksoy and to my wife, Elif Aksoy viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank all who have helped and inspired me during my doctoral study. First and foremost, I would like to thank my supervisor, Necati Polat. I am indebted to him for his valuable criticisms, support and understanding. I would like to thank the committee members, Levent Köker, Nuri Yurdusev, Faruk Yalvaç and Dr. Cem Deveci, for their constructive comments and suggestions. I also wish to thank Ünal Nalbantoğlu for his help and inspiring conversations. I owe a great dept to Mine Çankaya, Reşide Adal Dündar, Onur Dündar, Feride Aslı Ergül, Murat Yurtbilir and Ruhi Dermiray for their friendship, hospitality and critical interpretations. I am also grateful to my friends Batuhan Kaygan, Serhat Gürcü, İsmet Yıldız, Mercan Efe and Halil İbrahim Zazaoğlu for their patience, moral support and fort he shared fun. I wish to express a special word of thanks for my dear friend Devrim Kınlı and Onur Kınlı for their kindness, encouragement, valuable comments, and intellectual support. I also want to thank İrem Özgören Kınlı, Barış Gürsoy and Seher Şen for their inspiring discussion. Many thanks go to Bülent Alan, Melahat Alan, Gönül Ayran, Şevket Işık, Şevki Hepaksaz, Engin Berber who extended great support. I thank them all for having shared thoughts with me. I feel a deep sense of gratitude for my family who have endured this long and painful process with me. I would like to thank my wife, Elif Aksoy, my mother, Necla Aksoy, my father, Lütfü Aksoy, to whom this study is dedicated, for their unconditional love and support. I also want to thank my brothers for their support. Without their love and support this study would not have been possible. ix TABLE OF CONTENTS PLAGIARISM.................................................................................................. iii ABSTRACT.....................................................................................................iv ÖZ...................................................................................................................vi DEDICATION................................................................................................ viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .................................................................................ix TABLE OF CONTENTS...................................................................................x CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION ................................................................................... 1 2. DEFINITION OF BASIC TERMS ..........................................................16 2.1 Homogeneity and Heterogeneity.................................................16 2.2 Taboo and Transgression ...........................................................25 2.3 Expenditure and General Economics..........................................32 3. BATAILLE’S CONCEPTUALIZATION OF SOVEREIGNTY .................42 3.1 The Schema of Sovereignty........................................................55 3.2 Transgression .............................................................................60 3.3 Historical Conditions of Sovereignty............................................62 3.4 The First Political Implications.....................................................72 3.5 Work and the Historical Forms of Sovereignty ............................79 3.6 Bataille’s Difference from the Political Realists in the Formulation of Sovereignty................................................86 x 3.7 The Royal and Feudal Forms of Sovereignty..............................94 3.8 The Present Day .......................................................................107 4. HEGEL, BATAILLE AND SOVEREIGNTY AS NEGATIVITY ............ 120 4.1 French Reception of Hegel.......................................................123 4.2 Hegel and Bataille ....................................................................127 4.3 Two Forms of Negativity and the Conceptual Background that Leads to these Forms....................................135 4.4 Consciousness and Sovereignty ..............................................146 5. SUBJECT, SUBJECTIVITY AND SOVEREIGNTY ..........................162 5.1 Subject and Subjectivity ...........................................................165 5.2 Subject and Its Consequences.................................................175 5.3 Sovereignty and Man as an End ..............................................185 5.4 Bataille’s Conceptualization of Subject and Its Background: Continuity and Discontinuity ....................193 5.5 Autonomy, Transcendence and Sliding....................................203 5.6 Anxiety and the Escape from Sovereignty................................209 5.7 Sovereignty and Communication .............................................218 6. THE SECOND DEATH OF THE SOVEREIGN ................................224 6.1 Sovereignty and Death.............................................................226 6.2 Phenomenological Threshold...................................................230 6.3 Deaths of the Sovereign...........................................................236 6.4 First Death of the Sovereign.....................................................242 6.5 Two Forms of Heterogeneity: Imperative Sovereignty vs. Base Sovereignty ..........................252 6.6 The Real (Physical) Death of the Sovereign ............................265 6.7 The Sovereign between Two Deaths xi or the Institutionalization of Sovereignty...................................273 6.8 The Second Death of the Sovereign ........................................279 7. CONCLUSION ...................................................................................291 REFERENCES ...........................................................................................304 APPENDICES ........................................................................................313
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