A generous post commenting on Terror and Territory, by Devin Shaw, can be found here. Very generous: it claims that my account of sovereignty is “more nuanced than Agamben’s”; and that for a take on the rhetoric of the neo-cons, it comes better from me “than Bob Woodward”. As Peter Gratton points out here, that’s something of an in-joke for those of us who endured one of the keynotes at the RPA, but no less kind for that (for Devin and Peter’s earlier takes on the RPA, see here and here). Devin wants to push my argument a bit further to take fuller account of the economic aspects. I don’t doubt that this can, and should, be done: as I tried to make clear in the introduction to the book, I saw my analysis as an attempt to complement the work already done by people like David Harvey, Giovanni Arrighi, and Neil Smith who had already shown these kinds of issues. On that aspect I felt I had little to add; on the question of territory I thought I had something to say.
He also offers an interesting suggestion that people might want to begin with chapter five which would provide a historical background. Of course authors are not in control of how people read their work, and though I try to make my books work as books, rather than as collections of pieces, it’s interesting to think about different orderings. I’d seen the arrangement as going through four relatively contemporary settings and then broadening the temporal span of the argument, but I can completely appreciate the different way of reading.
The reactions to Terror and Territory have been overwhelmingly positive. A more critical take can be found in this review in the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research by Oskar Verkaaik, which I first saw yesterday. Much of the focus is on what I say in chapter two, with the claim that “Elden convinces as long as he writes about the war on terror… When Elden writes on terror itself, his analysis becomes much weaker.”
I don’t follow the logic of some of the arguments being made here, and don’t recognise some of the descriptions of mine, though it is a strong defence of the work of people like Faisal Devji who I use, and criticise, in the book. But I’d certainly not describe people like Devji or Olivier Roy as my “adversaries”, which is far too strong a term.
