BOOK LAUNCH: Birth of the State: The Place of the Body in Crafting Modern Politics

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We all live in states; yet how did the state come to be? And how are we to understand how we relate to it – or fail to? Might the body contain a few cues? Charlotte Epstein’s new book, Birth of the State: The Place of the Body in Crafting Modern Politics (Oxford University Press) uses the body to peel back the layers of time and taken-for-granted-ness and to reveal modernity’s two defining political forms, the state and the subject of rights. It traces, under the lens of the body, how the state and the subject mutually constituted each other all the  way down, by going all the way back, to their original crafting in the seventeenth century. It considers two revolutions. The first, scientific, threw humanity out of the centre of the universe, and transformed the very meanings of matter, space, and the body; while the second, legal and political, re-established humans as the centre-point of the framework of modern rights. 

The book covers a wide range of range of materials, from early modern Dutch painting, to the canon of English political thought, the Anglo-Scottish legal struggles of naturalization, and medical and religious practices.

Join the author for a roundtable discussion with Rune Lykkeberg from Information, Robin May Schott, Stefano Guzzini and Finn Stepputat from DIIS to celebrate and launch the book. Light refreshments will be provided at the reception after.

Speakers
Finn Stepputat, Senior Researcher, DIIS
Robin May Schott, Senior Researcher, DIIS
Stefano Guzzini, Senior Researcher, DIIS
Rune Lykkeberg, Editor-in-chief, Information
Charlotte Epstein, Senior Researcher, DIIS

Programme
16.00-16.10   Welcome and introduction to the book, Finn Stepputat
16.10-17.00   Comments from Robin Schott, Stefano Guzzini and Rune Lykkeberg
17.00-17.15   Response from author Charlotte Epstein
17.15-17.45   Questions from the audience
17.45-18.30   Reception

Recorded on Monday 22 November 2021, 16.00-18.30.