Nations and Nomads: Critical Perspectives on State Power

Contemporary political debate often assumes that the world is carved up into a set of mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive political units, known as nation-states. In reality, however, many national groups are not defined along state borders and do not hold state powers. National and state borders can also be fluid or porous, and much political agency is wielded by movements that take no account of either national or state boundaries.

This seminar will be comprised of two different elements, each intended to offer a critical perspective on the specific form of power help by the nation-state. The first of these will be an introduction to the theory of state and nomadic power developed by the French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Feliz Guattari. The second will take the form of a film screening of selected extracts from the Iranian state propaganda films produced by Morteza Avini during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s.

By putting these two different elements alongside one another, the session will aim to provoke a discussion on the nature of the state and the specific kind of political power it holds. In particular, the session will aim to analyse the ways in which state power is generated and the relationship it has with other, non-state forms of social organisation.