Progress in Political Economy have posted one of the papers on my book The Birth of Territory from a workshop in Sydney. My thanks to Charlotte Epstein for the thoughtful engagement, and Adam David Morton at PPE for posting this.

Last month the University of New South Wales hosted a one-day workshop entitled ‘Geopolitics, Geopower, Geometrics’, with Stuart Elden (University of Warwick) including a focus on his award-winning book The Birth of Territory (11 March 2015). The roundtable included Scott Sharpe (ADFA), Brett Neilson (UWS), and Charlotte Epstein (University of Sydney). This is the text of Charlotte Epstein’s presentation.

I’m very pleased to have this opportunity to engage with this rich and heady book. The Birth of Territory takes the reader on a genealogical journey upstream into the making of that ever pertinent political object, territory, whose emergence Elden traces by crossing together the two lenses of power, on one hand, with that of place, on the other hand. Territory and the genealogical mode of enquiry happen to be very much on my mind as well, for reasons I’ll hint at later, and so I readily embarked on this journey as fellow traveller-cum-genealogist, recognising the moves, the interrogations the text raises, and the answers. But also as someone who was genuinely curious to see what Elden had come up with, I am interested in regard to his nailing the origins of this key political concept, territory. [more]