Sovereignty Knowledge Law

<p><em>Sovereignty, Knowledge, Law</em> investigates the notion of sovereignty from three different, but related perspectives: as a legal question in relation to the sovereign state, as a political question in relation to sovereign power, and as a metaphysical question in relation to sovereign self-knowledge. The varied and interchangeable uses of legal sovereignty, political sovereignty and metaphysical sovereignty in contemporary debates have resulted in a situation where the word ‘sovereignty’ itself has become something of a non-concept. Panu Minkkinen shows here how these three perspectives have informed one another, by addressing their shared relationship to law, and to the ‘autocephalous’ function of sovereignty; that is, the attempt to provide a single source and foundation for law, power, and self-knowledge. Through an effort to domesticate the intrinsically ‘heterocephalous’ nature of power, the juridical and jurisprudential aim has been to confine power within the closed vertical hierarchy of traditional legal thinking. <em>Sovereignty, Knowledge, Law</em> thus elaborates this heterocephaly, proposing new understandings of sovereignty, as well as of law and of legal scholarship.</p> <p>Introduction: An Unknown Origin <strong>Part 1: The Autocephalous State</strong> 1. Sovereignty and the Law 2. Sovereignty and the State 3. Sovereignty Postulated <strong>Part 2: Heterocephalous Power</strong> 4. The Ethos of Sovereignty 5. Constituent Sovereignty 6. Sovereignty, Discipline and Government <strong>Part 3: The Acephalous Subject</strong> 7. Sovereignty as Absolute Knowledge 8. Sovereignty as Non-Knowledge 9. Sovereignty as J<em>ouissance</em></p>