Non-domination and the State: A Response to the Subaltern Critique

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to create some positive conceptual space for the relevance of the instrumentalities of the state when it comes to the politics of religious and multicultural accommodation. The challenge is to steer a cautious middle course between two views about the role of the agencies of the state in enabling a regime of non-domination: One of these views decries any relevance of the agencies of the state in establishing accommodative schemes - owing to the negative consequences of the disciplinary power of statist institutions - whilst the other relies on state power without adequately accounting for the dangers attached to the employment of such power in schemes for addressing the justice-based claims advanced by non-hegemonic minorities.