Davina Cooper
My research and writing over 30 years has approached transformative politics from two primary directions: conceptual and institutional. My conceptual writing addresses specific concepts (here: equality, the state, gender, power, and property are ones I repeatedly return to). In Everyday Utopias (2013) and since, my work has also turned more explicitly to rethinking what we mean by the concept – to foreground the relationship between imagining and actualisation; to consider what stimulates new conceptual imaginaries; and to explore their prefiguring. The second strand of my work is on institutional, governance and state activism. I am interested in governmental bodies acting “out of order” (through new normative orders, “insubordinately”, and against order). I also research and write about innovative grassroots structures (from radical schools to local currency networks); and I write about state prefiguration and its performative effects – where public bodies act as if their progressive proposals have the authority and legitimacy necessary to enact them. I have just completed an ESRC funded project on The Future of Legal Gender, which explores the implications, in Britain, of removing sex/ gender from formal legal personhood, and what we can learn about gender and law through a prefigurative law reform research project, see: https://futureoflegalgender.kcl.ac.uk/ From October 2022, I have begun a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship to write a book on conceptual activism, prefiguring meanings, and gender.
Address: Dickson Poon School of Law, King's College, Somerset House East Wing, WC2R 2LS, United Kingdom
Address: Dickson Poon School of Law, King's College, Somerset House East Wing, WC2R 2LS, United Kingdom
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Books by Davina Cooper
Is it possible to reimagine the state in ways that open up projects of political transformation? This interdisciplinary collection provides alternative perspectives to the ‘antistatism’ of much critical writing and contemporary political movement activism. Contributors explore ways of reimagining the state that attend critically to the capitalist, neoliberal, gendered and racist conditions of contemporary polities, yet seek to hold onto the state in the process. Drawing on postcolonial, poststructuralist, feminist, queer, Marxist, and anarchist thinking, they consider how states might be reread and reclaimed for radical politics. At the heart of this book is state plasticity – the capacity of the state conceptually and materially to take different forms. This plasticity is central to transformational thinking and practice, and to the conditions and labour that allow it to take place. But what can reimagining do; and what difficulties does it confront?
This book will appeal to academics and research students concerned with critical and transformative approaches to state theory, particularly in governance studies, politics and political theory, socio-legal studies, international relations, geography, gender/sexuality, cultural studies and anthropology.
How far should state institutions be able to assert and implement their moral, ethical, and religious visions without losing legitimacy? The book illustrates sites of tension that arise through a number of conflicts, applying socio-legal and political theory to original research. Governing out of order examines issues which include the way British courts have facilitated the privatization of local government, the Canada -- Spain fishing wars, how political and civil bodies struggle over national identity, homosexuality, education, hunting, and religious practice.
The book asks how governing can be both responsible and radical. It argues that governing principles should be ideologically explicit, prepared to contest and transgress divisions of authority to pursue a multi-cultural, egalitarian vision of political responsibility. Governing out of order raises questions and concerns echoed throughout liberal states.
Papers by Davina Cooper
Is it possible to reimagine the state in ways that open up projects of political transformation? This interdisciplinary collection provides alternative perspectives to the ‘antistatism’ of much critical writing and contemporary political movement activism. Contributors explore ways of reimagining the state that attend critically to the capitalist, neoliberal, gendered and racist conditions of contemporary polities, yet seek to hold onto the state in the process. Drawing on postcolonial, poststructuralist, feminist, queer, Marxist, and anarchist thinking, they consider how states might be reread and reclaimed for radical politics. At the heart of this book is state plasticity – the capacity of the state conceptually and materially to take different forms. This plasticity is central to transformational thinking and practice, and to the conditions and labour that allow it to take place. But what can reimagining do; and what difficulties does it confront?
This book will appeal to academics and research students concerned with critical and transformative approaches to state theory, particularly in governance studies, politics and political theory, socio-legal studies, international relations, geography, gender/sexuality, cultural studies and anthropology.
How far should state institutions be able to assert and implement their moral, ethical, and religious visions without losing legitimacy? The book illustrates sites of tension that arise through a number of conflicts, applying socio-legal and political theory to original research. Governing out of order examines issues which include the way British courts have facilitated the privatization of local government, the Canada -- Spain fishing wars, how political and civil bodies struggle over national identity, homosexuality, education, hunting, and religious practice.
The book asks how governing can be both responsible and radical. It argues that governing principles should be ideologically explicit, prepared to contest and transgress divisions of authority to pursue a multi-cultural, egalitarian vision of political responsibility. Governing out of order raises questions and concerns echoed throughout liberal states.
both institutions, this essay considers the part play might play in their retrieval (as a retrieval that is also necessarily a revisioning). It does so in two different ways. First, working from the premise that markets are not adequate structures for fairly and fruitfully organising the distribution of resources, the essay explores whether the
social architecture of the market has something to offer play, particularly playing with strangers. Speakers’ Corner is the focus for this discussion, which focuses less on the Corner’s famed status as a “marketplace of ideas” and more on its resemblance to other community marketplaces. Second, the essay considers whether imitative role-play, that deliberately revises or reverses the structures it imitates, can help to reimagine states and state institutional practices. With examples that range from “pretend” citizen republics to feminist academics “play-acting” judges, the essay asks what play can bring to critical state politics.
Published in POLITICA & SOCIETÀ ISSN 2240-7901
2/2017, 187-214
https://forms.office.com/e/m4At9U5Niw
The deadline for applications is December 5, 2023.