ABSTRACT
Within social science, intellectual streams like governance theory, govern-mentality studies, and Actor Network Theory dissolve the unity of the state. The problem of the state's pretensions to universality has been a key question ever since the emergence of the modern state in Western Europe in the seventeenth century and remained urgent with the coming of constitutional democracy. The significance of this discourse is that it undermines the constitution of the state by rendering its universal-ism the outcome of contingent struggles and impossible totalizations. The theme of race-war discourse opens up the study of the formation of statehood around notions of national identity, the people, race, blood, and rightful inheritance. Law seeks to reinstate an order that has been violated, whereas discipline strives to prevent the unwanted from happening by normalizing bodies and actions. Hence, in its fundamental form, law targets the totality of subjects who inhabit a given territory.
