In this deceptively slim but deeply insightful work, Itty Abraham argues that the contemporary world has been in the thrall of a simulacral trinity: nation/territory/state. This ideal has demanded that a people occupy an enclosed territory and should be governed by a state seen as legitimate by all. In no historical instance have nation, territory, and state ever been consonant, and efforts to pulverize recalcitrant reality into conformity with that ideal have eventuated in the incredible violence—physical and epistemic—of the last few centuries. Ethnic cleansing, discrimination against minorities, majoritarian chauvinism, fractured communities, and communal violence are the indices of these vain attempts.
In the postcolonial world, given that inherited borders were often the detritus of polyglot empires, and decolonization was often amid a disorganized retreat by imperial powers after cataclysmic wars, these desired consonances were even more discordant than the flawed “originals” of the Western world. In this context, Abraham...
