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Abstract
This book introduces the concept of 'act of citizenship' and in doing so, re-orients the study of what it means to be a citizen. Isin and Nielsen show that an 'act of citizenship' is the event through which subjects constitute themselves as citizens. They claim that such an act involves both responsibility and answerability, but is ultimately irreducible to either.
This study of citizenship is truly interdisciplinary, drawing not only on new developments in politics, sociology, geography and anthropology, but also on psychoanalysis, philosophy and history. Ranging from Antigone and Socrates in the ancient world to checkpoints, euthanasia and flash mobs in the modern one, the 'acts' and chapters here build up a dynamic and wide-ranging picture. Acts of Citizenship provides important new insights for all those concerned with the relationship between individuals, groups and polities.
'Acts of Citizenship is itself an exuberant, startling, act of social theory about the acts that create and transform our bonds as citizens. The names of Derrida, Levinas, and Agamben fly from the pages, along with a range of figures such as the Tank Man of Tiananmen square, Socrates, Seneca and Pat Tillman. This is the book to read if you want to know where social theory is now.'
Stephen Turner, University of Southern Florida
'Without nostalgia or sentimentality, this volume revives even as it disseminates and complicates an appreciation of active citizenship. Philosophically rich, culturally wide-ranging and eminently readable, this is a marvelous, indeed inspiring book'
Wendy Brown, University of California
Engin F. Isin is Chair and Professor of Citizenship in Politics and International Studies at the Faculty of Social Sciences, the Open University. He is also director of the Centre for Citizenship, Identities, Governance at the Faculty of Social Sciences.His books include Cities Without Citizens (1992) and Being Political (2002).
Greg M. Nielsen is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Centre for Broadcasting Studies at Concordia University in Montreal.
Table of Contents
| Section Title | Page | Action | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Contents | v | ||
| List of Illustrations | vii | ||
| Preface | viii | ||
| About the Contributors | ix | ||
| Introduction | 1 | ||
| Acts of Citizenship | 1 | ||
| Politics, Ethics, Aesthetics | 3 | ||
| Citizens, Strangers, Aliens, Outcasts | 6 | ||
| Sites and Scales of Answerability | 8 | ||
| Conclusion | 10 | ||
| Part I: Politics, Ethics,\rAesthetics | 13 | ||
| Chapter 1 Theorizing\rActs of Citizenship | 15 | ||
| Citizenship in Flux: Subjects, Sites, Scales | 15 | ||
| Theorizing Citizenship: Status, Habitus, Acts | 17 | ||
| Orders, Practices, Acts | 19 | ||
| Theorizing Ethical Acts: Responsibility and Answerability | 28 | ||
| Theorizing Political Acts: Law and Justice | 35 | ||
| Investigating Acts of Citizenship: Becoming Activist Citizens | 37 | ||
| Acknowledgements | 39 | ||
| References | 40 | ||
| Chapter 2 Can an Act of Citizenship Be Creative? | 44 | ||
| Bergson’s Method of Intuition | 46 | ||
| The Habits of Citizenship | 47 | ||
| Creativity and the Act of Citizenship | 51 | ||
| Conclusion | 55 | ||
| Acknowledgments and References | 56 | ||
| Chapter 3 What Levinas Can and Cannot Teach Us About Mediating Acts of Citizenship | 57 | ||
| Thesis 1: The Impossible Passage from the Face-to-Face to the Third Party | 60 | ||
| Thesis 2: Whose Metaphysics, Whose Hospitality? | 65 | ||
| Notes and References | 70 | ||
| Acts I: Heroic Intrusions and the Body of Law\r | 73 | ||
| Act 1 Abraham’s Sacrifice | 75 | ||
| Act 2 Antigone’s Offering | 79 | ||
| Act 3 The Death of Socrates | 83 | ||
| Act 4 Euthanasia | 86 | ||
| Act 5 Pat Tillman: Soldier-Citizen-Hero? | 89 | ||
| Part II: Citizens, Strangers, Aliens, Outcasts | 93 | ||
| Chapter 4 Citizenship Without Acts? With Tocqueville in America | 95 | ||
| The Political and the Social | 96 | ||
| Equality, Association and Dissociation | 100 | ||
| Self and Other | 105 | ||
| Similarity and Difference | 109 | ||
| Notes | 116 | ||
| References | 119 | ||
| Chapter 5 Acts of Piety:The Political and the Religious, or a Tale of Two Cities | 121 | ||
| The Body and Religion | 124 | ||
| Justification and the City | 128 | ||
| Rituals of Intimacy in South-east Asia | 131 | ||
| Conclusion: the Global Umma and the Crisis of Secularism | 133 | ||
| References | 135 | ||
| Chapter 6 Arendt’s Citizenship and Citizen Participation in Disappearing Dublin | 137 | ||
| Citizen Participation and Dublin | 137 | ||
| Hannah Arendt, Democracy and Citizen Participation | 139 | ||
| Action and the Human Condition | 143 | ||
| Citizenship, Freedom and the Public World | 145 | ||
| Labouring, Work and Citizenship Acts | 149 | ||
| A Reflexive Analysis of the Tension between the Planning Discourse and the Culture of Dublin | 153 | ||
| Notes | 157 | ||
| References | 158 | ||
| Chapter 7 No One Is Illegal Between City and Nation | 160 | ||
| Acts of Non-Citizenship | 160 | ||
| Vocalizing Acts of Citizenship | 163 | ||
| Border Lives | 165 | ||
| Autonomous Acts of Self-Representation | 168 | ||
| Acts of Regularization: Between City and Nation | 171 | ||
| Mediating Acts of Citizenship | 173 | ||
| Conclusions | 177 | ||
| Notes and References | 179 | ||
| Chapter 8 Acts of Demonstration: Mapping the Territory of (Non-)Citizenship\r | 182 | ||
| Sangatte, 1999–2002 | 182 | ||
| Unauthorized Migration and Homo Sacer | 185 | ||
| The Autonomy of Migration | 188 | ||
| Mapping the Territory of (Non-)Citizenship | 194 | ||
| Notes | 204 | ||
| References | 205 | ||
| Acts II: Exclusions Without Names | 207 | ||
| Act 6 Promising to Become European | 209 | ||
| Act 7 Checkpoint Gazes | 211 | ||
| Act 8 The Romani | 215 | ||
| Act 9 Return to Guatemala | 217 | ||
| Act 10 Unintentional Acts of Citizenship \r(The Joke) | 221 | ||
| Part III: Sites and Scales of Answerability | 225 | ||
| Chapter 9 Citizenship, Art and the Voices of the City: Wodiczko’s The Homeless Projection | 227 | ||
| ‘The Voice of the City’ | 227 | ||
| Plato and Jacobs on the City | 228 | ||
| A City of Voices | 228 | ||
| Voices and Dialogic Hybridity | 230 | ||
| Citizenship and Art in the Multi-voiced City | 233 | ||
| Beyond Communitarianism and Political Liberalism | 240 | ||
| Notes | 242 | ||
| References | 245 | ||
| Chapter 10 Acts of Chinese Citizenship: The Tank Man and Democracy-to-Come | 247 | ||
| The Tiananmen Protest | 249 | ||
| Moments of Political Rupture for Justice and Democracy-to-Come | 251 | ||
| (Un)Making Political Identity | 257 | ||
| Conclusion | 262 | ||
| Acknowledgement, Notes and References | 264 | ||
| Chapter 11 Answerability with Cosmopolitan Intent: An Ethics-Based Politics for Acts of Urban Citizenship | 266 | ||
| Similarities and Differences | 267 | ||
| Defining Acts of Citizenship | 268 | ||
| Necessary Indifference and Answerability with Cosmopolitan Intent | 269 | ||
| Bakhtin: The Bus Uncle and the Limits of Dialogic Pluralism | 269 | ||
| Simmel: Cosmopolitan States of Co-being? | 274 | ||
| Derrida: Citizen Politics and the Political after 9/11 | 277 | ||
| Derrida and Simmel: Catching Acts between Law and Justice | 281 | ||
| Conclusion | 283 | ||
| Acknowledgements, Note and References | 285 | ||
| Acts III: Rituals and Performance | 287 | ||
| Act 11 Acts of \rCommemoration | 289 | ||
| Act 12 Non-Citizens’ Politics | 292 | ||
| Act 13 Flash Mobs | 295 | ||
| Act 14 Spike Lee’s \r25th Hour | 297 | ||
| Index\r | 300 |