William E. Connolly' s Territoriality

-Subject and Sovereignty

Abstract

By analyzing the ambiguity of Connolly's theory of territoriality which contains the subject and sovereignty, this article aims to review their theoretical consistency. This article first locates the pathology of contemporary politics, which leads us to problematize territoriality in, as Connolly calls, the late modernity. At the same time, I would like to shed light on his alternatives to the current sovereign problematique. Then, this article composes a critical view on the new theory of sovereignty in agonistic democracy. In my view, Connolly's distinction between the dimension of expression and that of decision in the concept of sovereignty is, while it is useful in extracting the pluralistic character of sovereignty, repeating the similar failure in hiding the paradox of sovereignty by maintaining the idea of a unified sovereign territoriality. Agonistic democracy which is based on plural cognitions of territoriality causes only the change of the territorial range of sovereign state which is a unit of subjectification. The gap between the subject and sovereign power has not been filled up. However, his democratic theory may require accommodating territorial pluralism to multi-dimensional democratic accountability.