Sovereignty Disrupted

Spinoza and the Disparity of Reality

Gilah Kletenik

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Hardback

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English

Stanford University Press
21 October 2025

Philosophy; Philosophy: metaphysics & ontology; History of ideas

Series: Cultural Memory in the Present

Anthropocentrism, white supremacy, and cishetsexism remain with us. The intransigence of such oppressions, this book proposes, is stayed by the unrecognized force that sovereignty maintains across the domains of ""Western"" philosophy. To corroborate this original thesis, the book uncovers how the rationales of sovereignty secure dominant ""Western"" theories about the nature of reality, the promise of reason, and the status of humans. Such approaches rely on properties of sovereignty that essentialize difference, naturalize hierarchy, and valorize autonomy.

To redress these models and the supremacies they promote, Gilah Kletenik turns to Spinoza. Through a fresh reading of his Ethics, Kletenik develops an egalitarian alternative that starts with denaturalizing sovereignty. It is not a coincidence that Spinoza critiques the hegemonic rationales of ""Western"" philosophy nor that his doing so has eluded analysis. This is because his insurrection against ""Western"" sovereignties is sparked by the scintillas of immanence that he inherits from medieval Jewish and Islamic naturalism, the very philosophies that Christian, ""Western,"" thought has repressed. This book recovers these marginalized voices, exposing centuries of interpretations that assimilate Spinoza's program to the sovereignties he disrupts. Kletenik thinks with Spinoza to unmask the supremacies of colonialism, neoliberalism, and cishetsexism alongside the sovereignties anchoring contemporary theory. In critiquing ""Western"" philosophy, Kletenik limns a more ethical alternative, oriented by immanence and disparity.

By: Gilah Kletenik
Imprint: Stanford University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Edition: New edition
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm,
ISBN: 9781503644151
ISBN 10: 1503644154
Series: Cultural Memory in the Present
Pages: 432
Publication Date: 21 October 2025
Audience: College/higher education , Further / Higher Education
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Gilah Kletenik is Hazel D. Cole Postdoctoral Fellow, Stroum Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Washington.

Reviews for Sovereignty Disrupted: Spinoza and the Disparity of Reality

""Compelling, dazzling, and upbeat, Kletenik's Sovereignty Disrupted offers a fresh and inspiring new outlook on Spinoza's philosophical project as profoundly critical move to change the way we live and think. The best book on Spinoza I have read in many years."" --Willi Goetschel, University of Toronto ""It is rare to find a thorough and compelling reading of a great philosophical classic, Spinoza's Ethics, that upends some of the central presumptions about sovereignty that have populated standard readings for many years. Kletenik shows that sovereign rule functions neither as a political form nor as a model of conceptual mastery in that work. The implications of this thesis include the critique of anthropocentrism, and the socially idealized human form upon which it depends. The book offers a way to expose and criticize social inequalities in light of a political theology that prompts us all to question what we thought we know about what is and what ought to be."" --Judith Butler, University of California, Berkeley