Birth of the State

One would hope that Epstein's book inspires others to explore such complementarity. Even though the topic is one that many might find complex, the book is open and inviting, well written and accessible. * Halvard Leira, Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, Norway, International Affairs *
In her clear and brilliant book, Epstein achieves two conceptual revolutions: to envisage the modern State and the subject of rights as a single relation, and to define this relation as a construction of bodies. This is an entirely original combination, from which she derives remarkable understandings. This is a must-read for every scholar in the field, and any contemporary who wonders where our States and our embodied rights are heading. * Etienne Balibar, author of Citizen Subject: Foundations for Philosophical Anthropology *
At once, a markedly original interpretation of Hobbes and Locke and a brilliant genealogy of the human that foregrounds the mutual constitution of bodies, rights-bearing subjects, and the state in modernity, Charlotte Epstein provides an erudite account and an impressive critique of our most taken-for-granted concepts * individuality, security, agency, liberty, property *
Charlotte Epstein has produced a defining work of scholarship in critical International Relations. I can think of no other scholar who could navigate with such rigour and originality the genealogy of the modern state and the subject of rights using the body as the defining lens. This is no neutral body however, but one that is constituted, in all its gendered and racialized forms, at the intersection of the epistemological, juridical, and political discourses of modernity. We continue to witness the implications to our present day. * Vivienne Jabri, King's College London *
Recent political work on gender and race has made the body in the body politic more central than ever before. But how should we conceptualize their relationship? In this fascinating intervention in the debate, Charlotte Epstein argues that we need to go back to 17th century Europe and recognize the co-constitution of the modern subject and the modern state. Anyone writing about these issues from now on will have to engage with this formidable and brilliantly conceived book. * Charles W. Mills, The Graduate Center, CUNY *
Birth of the State is an original and simply outstanding reconstruction of the emergence of the language of the modern state and the embodied subject of security, liberty, and property in the seventeenth century. This scholarly work on the major theorists from Grotius through Hobbes to Locke is indispensable for historians of political thought. It is just as important for contemporary political theorists to understand how this seemingly common sense web of concepts was crafted in the first place, cultivate a careful and critical distance from it, and perhaps think beyond it. * James Tully, University of Victoria *
States routinely inscribe their authority upon the bodies of citizen subjects, but only because states and subjects have already constructed each other through historical transformations in what it has meant to be a body. Charlotte Epstein traces these transformations through early-modern European understandings of nature, matter, temporality, spatiality, security, liberty, and property. In her wonderfully incisive and provocative analysis, the political lives of bodies finally come in from the cold. * R.B.J Walker, University of Victoria, Canada, and PUC-Rio de Janeiro, Brasil *
Charlotte Epstein has written the definitive account of how the state and the political subject emerged together in early modern England. ... Birth of the State makes major contributions to the fields of international relations (IR) and political theory. Not only does it provide a novel account of the origins and epistemological foundations of the modern state but the book also offers original interpretations of early modern political and scientific thought. * Perspectives on Politics *
[Epstein] illuminates how a new understanding of the human body in space helps craft the modern state. ... [The book is an] important reminder of the unique human capacity to create our common world. * Contemporary Political Theory *
Epstein's detailed genealogies of security, liberty, and property in the English 17th century are impressive. She guides the reader through the classics of modern political philosophy, judiciary cases, the history of modern science, and even art history with ease and scholarly acumen. ... Her work attests to a laudable practice of slow reading difficult to maintain in the academia of real-time output and impact measurements. * Tim Christiaens, Antipode *
Epstein undertakes a fascinating journey through security, liberty and property, making plain the processes of naturalisation so dominant that they now go unremarked. Epstein makes visible the concerns of the state and the body at the centre of law and politics * Aoife O'Donoghue, International Journal of Law in Context *
Reading Birth of the State is a dazzling experience... Covering the histories of political theory, knowledge, and science, Epstein's text displays an impressively broad subject matter while testifying to a strong engagement with philosophy and critical theory. * Willemijn Ruberg, The Low Countries Journal of Social and Economic History *