Walled States, Waning Sovereignty (Zone Books)

Wendy Brown is a genius. I've read most of her previous works (including the early Manhood and Politics) and I've been continuously fascinated by the rigorousness and sophistication of her theoretical adventures. She has a singular capacity to explore the complexities of high theory in a way that is accessible and extremely engaging. In this respect, Brown's work is a 'must' for every young thinker, and particularly for young feminists. This book, Walled States, Waning Sovereignty is a good sample of Brown's theory-at-work. Its content (borders and identity) is not new, but as usual Brown is original: in a concrete intervention, she brings political philosophy very close to the kind of project that cultural studies historically pursues -that is, deconstructive analysis of cultural objects, in this case walls. Brown's specialty, here and elsewhere, is her psychoanalytic approach to the predicaments we face amidst neoliberal globalization. I highly recommend all of Brown's work to anyone wishing to understand the ethico-political importance of high theory in today's world.

An oracle for today's political context. Brown brilliantly foresaw the rise of Trump and anti-establishment right across the globe as a reaction to disintegrating sovereignty and the increased power and control of global capital. This text is air-tight and well-written. Highly recommended. Need a base-level understanding of political science, but it is not too challenging as to be impossible.

A sophisticated and fascinating take on the contradictions and challenges of the emerging post-Westphalian order.

For the longest time now, Wendy Brown has been writing about limits. The limits of rights, the limits of critique, the limits of liberalism. It was only a matter of time then, that the limit in its most palpable and tangible sense would be taken up by this intrepid borderland explorer, subject to her searing philosophical and political gaze: the limit of the border wall. And as with all her frontier travels, it's the political productivity of the limit-wall, the ways in which it shapes and even engenders the realities which it both bounds and is bound by, that constitutes the subject of this sharply argued book. And while plaited with insight from beginning to end, at its heart lies the thesis that walls, far from being emblems of state strength, indicate nothing less than the failing - or rather waning - sovereignty of just those self-same states. As literal monuments to the deterioration of state power, they nonetheless function to posture and project the very image of potency so valued and now lost. To these modern - and rather ineffective - totems of state protection one imagines asking: ‘who you trying to convince there buddy? Me or you?’. Yet ineffectiveness is not unproductiveness, and at stake in Brown’s book are precisely the ways in which walls are nonetheless generative of effects far in excess of their stated purposes. Hence Brown’s efforts to trace the ways in walls intensify and exacerbate the very energies of aggression and anxiety they are meant to check. Unable to safely cross, migrants now stay for ever-longer periods of time, while on the border itself violence and criminality have become all the more entrenched, ratcheted up by the increasing sophistication of smugglers and the growing vigilantism of self-organised border 'militias’. With an eye as ever fixed on political theory however, it’s to the implications on and of sovereignty that marks this book’s major contribution to the field. Diagnosed here as having been ‘detached’ from the nation-state, ‘Walled States’ attends to the changing shape of sovereignty in a world marked by ever growing transnational flows of people, goods, ideas and capital. Buffeted on all sides, it’s to its theological roots - so aptly theorised by Carl Schmitt - that sovereignty ‘turns’, affirming ever more hyperbolically its absoluteness, its inviolability, and its substantiality: witness the wall; or, as I write this seven years after the publication of this fine little tract - our contemporary condition.

I try to read everything written by Wendy Brown - not only is she one of the most important contemporary political theorists, but she (unlike many) also puts some effort so that her texts are understandable. Anyone who is interested in the topic and is capable of theoretical thinking will benefit by reading this book. At first I thought that this will be a book on walls in metaphorical sense, but it was not so. It is indeed a book about the physical object built on the borders of states. It is a highly theoretical text - Wendy Brown both referes to and engages in deep polemics with Carl Schmitt, Georgio Agamben. If these names mean nothing to you,I doubt you'll enjoy the book as much. The five ideas I found the most perceptive: 1) " Declining state sovereignty and the disappearing visibility of a homogeneous national imaginary redress each other at the site of walls. Visible walls respond to the need for containment and boundariesin too global a world, too unhorizoned a universe. 2) "Sovereign power carries the fantasy of an absolute and enforceable distinction between the inside and outside." 3) " Nation-state walls are modern-day temples housing the ghost of political sovereignty." 4) "the new walls often function theatrically, projecting power and efficaciousness that they do not and cannot actually exercise and that they also performatively contradict." 5) "Oficially aimed at protecting putatively free, open, lawful, and secular societies from trespass, exploitation, or attack, the walls are built of suspended law and inadvertently produce a collective ethos and subjectivity that is defensive, parochial, nationalistic, and militarized." The only thing I'm not quite certain about this book - whether the use of deep psychoanalytic theories (Anna Freud etc) is quite justified. I didn't feel that they add much insight to the subject. This might have been the case where simpler forms of explaining the world might have been justified and more illuminating (such as insights from contemporary experiment-based psychology).

needed it for a class. Good read.

This was a very interesting read. The writing is wonderful. It constructs a considered perspective on wall building and the post-Westphalian changes in states that prompt them. Recommended.

Interesting, challenging, informative and surprisingly readable to a lay person. Just keep chunking through the particularly academic bits.

Wendy Brown is a genius.

Arrived on time. It was like described.