Description: Rebecca Bryant and Mete Hatay develop the concept of the aporetic state to describe an entity that acts like a state even as nonrecognition renders it unrealizable. They argue that only by rethinking the de facto state as a realm of practice will we be able to understand the longevity of such states and what it means to live in them.
Review Quotes: "
Sovereignty Suspended is a treat. Organizing their analysis around concerns with perceptions and (in)visibility, with recognition and (non-)naming, and with agency and modes of getting by, Rebecca Bryant and Mete Hatay have prepared two gifts for us: a riveting historical ethnography of the Turkish Cypriot sovereignty project, now embodied in the
Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), and a sophisticated analytical toolbox to think through questions of sovereignty well beyond this 'de facto' state. What is particularly impressive is that those two contributions are developed in close interaction, giving the lie to the stereotypical division of labour between authors whose contribution is said to be 'theoretical' or 'regional' respectively...[R]ead Sovereignty Suspended. This is a big book: big on empirical insight, big on conceptualization...very big on inspiration. It's big on volume too, and worth every page of it.