Constructing the domain of freedom: thinking politics at a distance from the state

Abstract

Political emancipation in the twenty-first century must be conceived and achieved through establishing a 'distance' from the state and its practices. This article argues that in order to begin to understand politics 'at a distance from the state', we need to first understand politics as a collective thought-practice. The thought of an emancipatory politics exists only when collective subjectivities exceed the limits imposed by social place, identities and interests defined and reproduced by state expressive subjectivities. In order to think a new emancipatory politics for the twenty-first century, we must therefore 'absent the state in thought', in other words, begin to understand an excessive subjectivity and how it interacts with state subjectivities which are always expressive of place. Therefore, 'distance from the state' here refers to subjective distance rather than to institutional, physical or social distance.