Modern proponents of free speech maintain that the value of expression resides in its authenticity-making power, which generates political legitimacy. They simultaneously concede that the value of expression is not without abridgments, no matter how deeply felt or authentically fulfilling such expression may be. Given these commitments, how can free speech be valued for its authenticity-making power, and yet also conditionally regulated? This chapter explores a resolution based on an interpretation of Aquinas’s thought on speech and expression. First, Aquinas clarifies Aristotle’s distinction between vox (animal expression) and loquutio (logical discourse) as an irreducible relationship of explanandum and explanans: loquutio is uniquely disposed to comprehending what is just or unjust within what is pleasant or painful. Second, Thomistic loquutio is directed to truth while permitting false claims as logical-temporal constituents of discourse, requiring above all a “discursive situation” that avoids both contradiction and epistemically unjustified conviction. These characteristics of Thomistic loquutio are supported by his treatment of angelic communication, which is not revelatory so much as consultatory from a second-person perspective and clarificatory from a first-person perspective. Ultimately, this interpretive Thomistic account rejects the modern commitment of authenticity without absolutism, while affirming certain aspects of what makes speech politically valuable.

This chapter addresses the topic of legacy and its relevance in the work of Pablo Neruda. Thus, starting from the rescue of 2,000 refugees from the Spanish Civil War on the steamship Winnipeg, it explores the relationship of the Spanish language with death in poems from Residencia en la tierra, and its re-emergence in Canto general, exemplified in “Alturas de Macchu Picchu.” The essay argues that the writing of this poem implies the reconciliation of the Spanish language, which is marked by the violence of its imposition in the Americas, with its speakers. It also looks at the relationship between Nerudian poetry and César Vallejo, who, in España, aparte de mí este cáliz, saw in each letter of the imposed language the origin of punishment, thus making reconciliation impossible. Returning to the Winnipeg, the essay concludes that the legacy of Pablo Neruda’s work is immeasurable because it is a debt, that which our time has with his poetry.

The reawakening of the Black Lives Matter movement in the summer of 2020 ignited a wave of racial and social consciousness that prompted many arts-based organizations to consider the larger implications of their programmatic visions. As a composer known to, but under-programmed in, the mainstream classical music establishment, the music of Florence Price was thrust into an even greater spotlight. This chapter considers what it means to meaningfully celebrate the rediscovery of Price’s manuscripts and her revival in the mainstream. It models discourse that ensures that more African American composers are recognized and that the communities that kept names and works alive are remembered in the historical record.

This chapter explores Bowen’s relation to Ireland in literary and cultural criticism over the past half century. It charts how developments and trends in literary criticism – the rise of postcolonial studies and Irish studies, the development of ‘Irish modernism’ as a critical category – have shaped how we understand Bowen as an Irish writer, and her fiction as Irish literature, in the twenty-first century. In particular, it examines whether Bowen’s work readily corresponds to the nationalist and statist concerns that the category of Irish literature often implies. Through a reading of how Bowen figures Ireland and Irishness in A World of Love (1955), I suggest that Bowen’s Irish modernism operates beyond the limits of national and nationalist history, a circumstance that enables a reconsideration of some of the limits and ideologies of the category of Irish literature.

Chapter 5 reanimates social theoretical accounts of the state, particularly those of Carl Schmitt, Max Weber, and Pierre Bourdieu. Bringing together common elements of their work and context and linking these with al-Wardi’s work and context reveals profound resonances in the Iraqi experience of state consolidation. It argues that the state is an order that is consolidated through two main factors: a state’s ability to dominate population and territory, and the sociological legitimacy of the state as the arbitrator of collective life. Domination is a prerequisite for legitimacy, and establishing legitimacy is a historically contingent process. When these two elements come together sufficiently, a state may appear as a reified actor that is coherent, bounded, and autonomous in its actions. But this appearance is an effect of the state’s disciplinary power rather than a reflection of a sociological reality. At the same time, this effect is necessary for the maintenance of state consolidation.

The Epilogue tells the story of how a 2024 proposal to amend the Iraqi family law (Personal Status Law (PSL)) came to pass in early 2025 and outlines the objections to it in the context of this book’s main thesis about how and why state consolidation matters. The Epilogue highlights the main objections to the amendment, coming from Iraqi critics, which are focused on the social justice implications of introducing a legal structure wherein an authority is granted decision-making power over an aspect of public life that is parallel to, and outside of, the state’s authority. Critics see this as a canonization of state fragmentation and the underlying ethno-sectarian power-sharing arrangement on which it rests. The epilogue illustrates through this political and legal contestation the connections that run through sites of state fragmentation, attempts to consolidate a political order, historical legacies of state consolidation, and social justice. What the PSL story suggests is that who decides on public life is consequential to the political possibilities of justice.

The chapter examines the representation of Cold War nuclear threat and international politics in The Little Girls. The triangular relationship of the three girls over time, from the burying of the box before the First World War until the Cold War setting in 1962, plays out a Macbeth-inflected version of the international relations governing the nuclear world. Bowen had registered the shape and dangers of those relations at the Paris Peace Conference in 1946, which she attended with her lover, the Canadian diplomat Charles Ritchie. The rule of three governing the girls’ friendship and experience of war trauma matches the three geopolitical points of the triangle of Cold War politics – the West, the communist bloc, the non-aligned nations – as well as mimicking forms of international diplomacy, two conflicting parties, and a third-party mediator.