ABSTRACT
There is widespread confusion about the nature of the contemporary world. Images of the international abound: some old, some new, some competing and incompatible, others intertwined and overlapping. The great narratives of Western modernity, with their constitutive reliance on the rise of the sovereign state in Europe and its gradual spread across the planet’s surface, have lost their power. Globalization, itself a deeply contested concept, is only the most prominent sign of our uncertainty-despite capital’s efforts to convince us otherwise. Overwhelmed with contradictory information, we literally do not know where we are.
