The Duty of the Benevolent Master: From Sovereignty to Suzerainty and the Biopolitics of Intervention

Abstract

Recent claims about humanitarian intervention express forms of domination that are both geopolitical and increasingly constructed around a biopolitical duty to relieve the suffering of brutalized peoples. This paper examines this presumed duty in the context of tensions between juridical-institutional accounts of sovereignty and practices of suzerainty in which intervention “outside” is accompanied by intervention “inside.”