Towards a Global History of the Concept of State: Otto Brunner and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

This essay aims to explore what it takes to globalize conceptual history by dealing with two analyses of the concept of state that in different ways and with different objectives called for a reassessment of its history and for the need to make a step beyond ‘methodological nationalism’. One is that of Otto Brunner, who, based on the not-yet of the European modern state, assesses the need to disentangle constitution from statehood to be able to comprehend the social and political forces producing unity and order. The other one is that of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak who starts from colonial and postcolonial state to investigate the non-correspondence of the global history of statehood to the history of its concept and to affirm the need to understand them against the backdrop of global capitalism. Contrasting Brunner’s and Spivak’s positions allows highlighting some of the major theoretical challenges that a global stance on conceptual history entails.