Hostage Spaces of the Contemporary Islamicate World ─ Phantom Territoriality

Part of a series intended to elucidate the nuance of Islamicate thought beyond the simplifications and distortions of Western appropriation, this volume by Lukic (anthropology, Reed College) explores the political and cultural spaces of hostage taking in the postcommunist "geoscapes" of Bosnia, Albania, and Chechnya. "If there is a main argument," he writes "it is this one: the hostage taker invents and constructs a peculiar territory--a phantom territoriality. This she does through secrecy, biopotentiality, illegality, irregularity, relics, delirium, animality, strange forms of political economy, etc." He has conceived the work as "a conversation between myself and the hostage taker" that seeks to "give this figure a unique materiality with its own architectonics, laws, and climates of growth" and therefore "one should not really look for the subject of the book." Annotation c2013 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)