Kabir Tambar

Kabir Tambar will be working on a book about the politics of the enemy, both prior to the birth of the nation-state in the Middle East and in present-day Turkey. Rather than focusing primarily on the way that state authorities designate certain populations as enemies, the book examines how those who have been targets of state violence repurpose the category of the enemy to create new possibilities for solidarity. What sort of social contract is imaginable not in the statist discourse of national brotherhood but on the terrain of its historical exclusions? The book situates contemporary aspirations for a post-national politics in relation to political histories that preceded the foundation of the nation-state over a century ago.

Tambar is associate professor of anthropology at Stanford University. His research and teaching examine debates about secularism, minority recognition, and state violence primarily in Turkey and more broadly in Europe and the Middle East.