Constructing the People: Political Theology, the US Supreme Court, and the Myth of the Ontological Nation Restricted; Files Only
Allard, Silas W. (Fall 2025)
Abstract
One of the central questions of modern democratic politics concerns who is counted among the people that constitutes the democratic sovereign. This question concerns not only the legitimacy of a democratic state, but it forms the basis of political and legal exclusions from the political community. In this dissertation, I take up that question through a reading of three nineteenth-century United States Supreme Court cases, Worcester v. Georgia, Dred Scott v. Sandford, and Chae Chan Ping v. United States. Each of these cases effectuated legal exclusions from the national political community. I read these cases from the analytical perspective of political theology in their historical context. By applying a political-theological analytic to the cases, I reveal the Court’s appeal to a mythical imaginary of the ontological nation to ground its legal decisions on exclusion. By reading the cases in their historical context, I show that the appeal to the ontological nation effaces the historical conditions by which the people is actually constructed. I argue that the appeal to the ontological nation produces an antidemocratic image of the people, and I propose a negative political theology of nationality in response. The negative political theology of nationality responds to the antidemocratic image of the people by performing a determinate negation of the ontological nation. It does so through a praxis of idolatry critique in which the antidemocratic images of the people that the Court forms through its appeal to the ontological nation are rejected as false idols of the people. I conclude by arguing that a determinate negation of the ontological nation through idolatry critique is necessary for the preservation of democracy, and that the negative political theology of nationality would make possible an ethics of migration.
Table of Contents
Introduction 1
Chapter 1: Worcester v. Georgia and the Idol of Settler Nativity 30
Chapter 2: Dred Scott v. Sandford and the Idol of Citizenship 65
Chapter 3: Chae Chan Ping v. United States and the Idol of Kinship 96
Conclusion: Toward a Negative Political Theology of Nationality 127
Bibliography 158
Table of Figures
Figure 1: The Treachery of Images 6
Figure 2: The Boy of the Waxhaws 30
Figure 3: McPherson Monument 65
Figure 4: Fuzhou Ting 99
About this Dissertation
| School | |
|---|---|
| Department | |
| Subfield / Discipline | |
| Degree | |
| Submission | |
| Language |
|
| Research Field | |
| Keyword | |
| Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor | |
| Committee Members |
Primary PDF
| Thumbnail | Title | Date Uploaded | Actions |
|---|---|---|---|
|
|
File download under embargo until 12 January 2032 | 2025-11-17 22:37:42 -0500 | File download under embargo until 12 January 2032 |
Supplemental Files
| Thumbnail | Title | Date Uploaded | Actions |
|---|