ABSTRACT
As Étienne Balibar noted (1998: 219), the meaning of borders today has been changing, both in terms of their layout and their function, and this has impelled the discussion on sovereignty to move beyond the question of territory and external recognition by other states. The new terms of debate acknowledge the way sovereignty is exercised within states through discipline and violence (following philosophers such as Michel Foucault and Giorgio Agamben), as well as the simultaneous presence of sovereign agencies besides the state. The shift has proved useful in order to analyze sovereign power in colonial and postcolonial states (see Hansen and Stepputat 2005). Agamben’s understanding of sovereignty through the ideas of the exception, sacred life (homo sacer), and the camp is crucial in the present analysis, which considers a number of video installations by the contemporary Indian artists Navjot Altaf and Raqs Media Collective.
