Table of Contents

I: A Different Beginning: Theory as Imagination II: Constituent Imagination: Behind Popular Expectations III: Many, Other, Place, Frame: Beyond a Sovereign People IV: Hope, Telos, Xenos: Beyond Constituent Power V: Nephos, Scopos, Algorithm: Beyond Self-Determination (I) VI: The Nomos and the Gaze: Beyond Self-Determination (II) VII: Recursive Isomorphs: Beyond Foundational Authority VIII: Responsive Isomorphs: Beyond Constitutional Self-Government IX: An Isomorphic Pluriverse: Beyond Sovereign Peoples X: A New Hope: Image Wars and Eutopian Imagination

About the Author

Zoran Oklopcic is an associate professor at the Department of Law and Legal Studies at Carleton University. He earned his SJD from the University of Toronto. He has been a MacCormick Visiting Fellow at the University of Edinburgh; a member of the junior faculty at Harvard Law School's Institute for Global Law and Policy in Doha, Qatar; and a Hauser Global Research Fellow at NYU School of Law.

Reviews

This book is an erudite and fascinating journey through the powerful, complex, and often contradictory social imaginaries that the rich vocabulary of modern political thought evokes - and on to the possibilities of imagining otherwise today. It will be of interest to anyone working with the concepts of democracy, the people, self-determination, constituent power, and the state. * James Tully, Emeritus Professor, University of Victoria *
Beyond the People is provocative, original, and written in the spirit of drama. Driven by the desire to revamp the discipline, Zoran Oklopcic presents an impressive panorama of new ideas and a forceful polemic against conventional theorizing about constituent power. Combining theoretical inquiry with a trip to the social imaginary and a focus on perception, he succeeds in constructing a radically different stage for a 'People' we have not yet known. * Gunter Frankenberg, Professor of Law, Goethe-Universitat Frankfurt am Main *
This is an ambitious, brilliant, and difficult book. Instead of (yet again) calling for more imagination in legal and political thinking, it shows us what the exercise of imagination looks like. Full of metaphors, figures, and images, as well as dense engagements with modern theories about nationhood, this work invites us not to fix- again- the meaning of notions such as nation, people, or self-determination, but instead to view what happens in such fixing. As elusive as the world it seeks to map, this work offers less an agenda than sharp and original insight into the trajectories, openings, and limits of our inherited political imaginaries. As nationalisms are resurgent, this is surely welcome. * Martti Koskenniemi, University of Helsinki *