This dissertation reinterprets Michel Foucault’s theory of sovereignty to offer an explanation and critique of repressive state violence. Commentators typically locate Foucault’s contribution to political thought in concepts of power that are irreducible to sovereignty or the state. In contrast, I draw on Foucault’s early genealogies of power to argue...
This dissertation argues that British and Ottoman literatures of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are linked and mutually informed in their representations of sovereignty. My study of the poetry, fiction, chronicles and travelogues from these periods demonstrates that both literary traditions respond to the rivalry between the British and Ottoman...
This dissertation investigates the relationship between melancholy and the development of American and Iranian literary discourses as responses to the crisis of postwar sovereignty. While situating itself against the complicated backdrop of US/Iran relations since the Second World War, it explores the impact of religion on the formation of political...