While the sovereign nation state is considered the world’s political norm, millions of colonial subjects, immigrants, refugees, and native peoples appear sovereignless. What claims have they to sovereignty? If they cannot ever constitute themselves into sovereign nation states, are they out of the political game? How, furthermore, can a framework like sovereignty, used historically to exploit, dispossess, and even exterminate people, also be part of struggles for political freedom?

Editor Frances Negrón-Muntaner and the contributors to Sovereign Acts engage in a critical debate around these questions with surprising results. Moving the idea of sovereignty beyond the narrow confines of the nation-state, beyond the concept of a power that one either has or lacks, this paradigm-shifting work examines the multiple ways that colonized people act as sovereign and the possible limits of such sovereign acts within the current globalized context. A valuable contribution to the debate around indigenous conceptions of sovereignty, Sovereign Acts goes further than legal frameworks, to investigate the relationships between sovereignty, gender, sexuality, representation, and the body.

From ancient Pacific practices such as canoeing to crossing national borders as “illegals,” the scholars and artists featured in this unique volume map out how people both disrupt modern notions of sovereignty and attempt to redefine what being sovereign means. Sovereignty, is more, after all, than a kingdom and a crown.

Frances Negrón-Muntaner, also editor of None of the Above, is an award-winning filmmaker, writer, scholar, and media activist. Her most recent films are War in Guam, released in 2010, and Regarding Vieques, due to be released in 2011. She has published widely on Latino culture, media, and politics.

For more information on her work, see her webpage, www.francesnegronmuntaner.net.