PANEL SESSIONS IV TUESDAY JUNE 26 2018 4.30 PM – 6.00 PM

Room: CPD-LG.36

  • BOOK DISCUSSION: ZORAN OKLOPCIC, BEYOND THE PEOPLE. SOCIAL IMAGINARY AND CONSTITUENT IMAGINATION (OUP, 2018)
    This panel will bring together leading scholars to discuss Zoran Oklopcic‘ recent book: Beyond the People. Social Imaginary and Constituent Imagination (OUP, 2018). Beyond the People develops a provocative, interdisciplinary, and meta-theoretical critique of the idea of popular sovereignty. It asks simple but far-reaching questions: Can ‘imagined’ communities, or ‘invented’ peoples, ever be theorized without, at the same time, being re-imagined and re-invented anew? Can polemical concepts, such as popular sovereignty or constituent power, be theorized objectively? If, as this book argues, the answer to these questions is no, theorists who approach the figure of a sovereign people must acknowledge that their activity is inseparable from the practice of constituent imagination.