Materialist State Theory and the Transnationalization of the Capitalist State

Abstract: In contrast to assertions that the capitalist state is either losing control or that it has returned, this article argues that during the last two decades the state itself has been reshaped. To understand the processes that the capitalist state is exposed to it is necessary to conceive of it as a series of form‐specific practices. Which practices form “the state” is not a result of pre‐given institutions but of conflicts and struggles. The capitalist state, separated as it is from the relations of production, must not be made synonymous with the national state. Only as a result of certain relations of force does bourgeois rule acquire the form of the national state. These relations between classes are currently being dissolved by the ruling classes. The capitalist state is being reorganized and is constructing new elements of a transnational network state, whilst the state itself is governed through new techniques—that is, those of governance.     

OPACITY AND TRANSPARENCY IN HISTORICAL REPRESENTATIONS

In his latest book Frank Ankersmit develops a comprehensive philosophical perspective on the problem of the truth and reference of historical representations. The approach and the wider perspective of the book largely belong to what could be called the postmodernist paradigm, in spite of some recent attempts to interpret Ankersmit's recent work differently. Since his 1983 Narrative Logic Ankersmit has propounded the view that individual statements that constitute historical representations may have reference, but that representations themselves do not. His most recent book remains faithful to this position and elaborates it further. This essay examines Ankersmit's arguments as well as the assumptions and implications of this view.