Defining the State

Abstract

The question of gender and sovereignty requires an analysis of the state. In order to reconstruct the concept of sovereignty, it is crucial to detach it from the state, and hence an argument is necessary as to why the state itself is an inherently patriarchal institution. In my view, the state cannot be feminized. Moving beyond the state is, as we shall see, a protracted process, but the state is a concept whose hierarchical logic links it to those concepts which I describe in Chapter 2 as ‘static’ in character.