The question of what constitutes sovereignty—the right to (legitimately) rule or govern oneself and/or another—has of late been called into question. What ish my nation? Ish a villain, and a bastard, and a knave, and a rascal? What ish my nation? Who talks of my nation?—Shakespeare, Henry V

Who or what rules over or governs whom or what? How does this rule or governance operate? Why does it operate in one way and not another? Does it operate in only one way? By what logic, what power, what logical power, or what powerful logic does it operate, if it indeed operates at all? What are its limits, if any? Who determines those limits, if they exist? Who benefits from those limits as determined in a particular fashion? What allows the beneficiaries to benefit and others not to benefit, if that occurs? Should the number of the beneficiaries of the limits of sovereignty themselves be limited? If the limitation of sovereignty necessarily limits its beneficiaries, should sovereignty be limited? Is the limitation of sovereignty necessarily linked to limited beneficiaries? And so on.

            Our goal in this class, then, is to begin to get a handle on what is at stake in this current discussion of sovereignty and to come to grips with whether we can answer any of Captain Macmorris’s (admittedly decontextualized) questions from Henry V with assurance. We will pursue this goal through four texts at the forefront of this discussion.