Unbundling the State: Iraq and the ‘Recontainerization’ of Rule, Production, and Identity

This analysis investigates the ‘recontainerization’ of state power, asking how the forms of ruling authority are being eclipsed around the world by ‘denationalization’, ‘detraditionalization’, or ‘destatalization’. The government of The Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq is an excellent case study in the recontainerizing rule, production, and identity on a different political scale and pace than that characteristic of many nation-states. This odd transitional regime points toward some of the material underpinnings and mobile resistances that one finds in the recontainerization of rule in today's networks of globalist governance. It explores how various unbundled nonstatal organizations and postnational identities work through markets and multinational military interventions to displace the authority of current state structures in determining who rules whom, what is produced where, and how identities are maintained.