ABSTRACT
When a state does not have political, economic, and military power, it turns to language to perform discursive sovereign power, which takes on an agential character because it produces consequences, thereby shaping the material and social world. As much as sovereign statehood is a matter of fact, it is also a textual practice and a by-product of the meaning attached to it via a multiplicity of discursive practices. Textual and contextual articulations can contribute to the prescription of sovereignty and can facilitate the birth of a new state. This chapter explores diplomacy as a discursive practice of knowing, envisaging, and talking about Kosovo’s statehood. It examines the language of stateness that Kosovo and its international partners have invoked while consolidating and enacting its sovereign statehood, illustrating how language and discursive modes of representation both enabled and constrained Kosovo’s diplomatic campaign. Putting emphasise on the everyday process of writing and wording sovereign statehood which formed the basis of Kosovo’s diplomatic discourse reveal that the narrative of why Kosovo deserved independent statehood and subsequent international recognition were in a constant flux of making and becoming actual are inter-textually influenced by other diplomatic narratives and inter-subjectively shaped by diplomatic practices.
