conclude that we are increasingly living in a postmodern condition,
characterized by an increase in: spatial dislocation, the speed of
communication, the permeability of borders, and a decrease in the
ëmoderní pillars of society such as simple identities, hierarchical
political structures, and relatively clear notions of ëbelongingí and
ënationhoodí. Hence, Habermas argues that a ëstate-centred under-
standing of politicsí is no longer viable and in place of this he puts a
ëdiscourse theoryí whereby:
Proceduralized popular sovereignty and a political system tied in to the
peripheral networks of the political public sphere go hand-in-hand with the
image of a decentered society. This concept of democracy no longer needs to
operate with the notion of a social whole centered in the state and imagined as a
goal-oriented subject writ large.^23For Habermas: ëAccording to the republican view, the people are the
bearers of a sovereignty that cannot be delegated: I their sovereign
character the people cannot have others represent them.í^24 These
trends identified by theorists of international relations need to be
considered alongside the work of the poets, so as to establish the
political and ethical potential of a decentered model of identity for
post-colonial subjectivities.
In ëMoral Geographies and the Ethics of Post-Sovereigntyí
(1994), Michael Shapiro writes of the ënormalizing power of the stateí
and ëits control over identity and the interpretation of spaceí:
The practice of an ethic sensitive to what has been silenced and forgotten must
recognize that all fixed models of order produce marginalized forms of
difference. The new post-sovereign spaces of encounter, if they are not to
reinscribe forms of nonrecognition, must therefore allow for perpetual en-
counters [Ö] To allow a community to exist in this context is to seek replacing
the policing of identity with a politics of identity. It is an ethic that requires
encouraging encounters within a frame that recognizes and accepts the
ambiguities and instabilities of the codes through which different people create
their subjectivities and useful and intelligible spaces.^2523 Habermas, ëThree Normative Models of Democracyí, Democracy and
Difference, p.27.
24 Ibid., p.29.
25 Michael Shapiro, ëMoral Geographies and the Ethics of Post-Sovereigntyí,
Public Culture: Society For Transnational Cultural Studies, Vol.6, No.3,