On 15 May 2014 Andro Kitus will defence his doctoral thesis "A Post-Structuralist "Concept" of Legitimacy" in the Council of the Faculty of the Social Sciences and Education.
Supervisors:
Prof. Vello Pettai, Institute of Government and Politics, University of Tartu
Dr. Lasse Thomassen, Senior Lecturer, School of Politics and International Relations, University of London, Queen Mary
Opponent:
Dr. Andrew Schaap, Senior Lecturer, Department of Politics, University of Exeter
Summary:
This thesis is an investigation into the concept of legitimacy. It aims at formulating a post-structuralist concept of legitimacy by following a deconstructive analysis of two accounts of the "vicious circle" of the republican founding act of a state. These accounts belong to Jacques Derrida and Hannah Arendt. Addressing themes like the republican founding act, the performative-constative distinction, violence, ethics of deconstruction and analysing relevant texts of authors like Hannah Arendt, John Austin, Jacques Derrida, Bonnie Honig, Walter Benjamin, Ernesto Laclau, and others the thesis arrives at a "concept" of legitimacy that functions as a Derridean infrastructure - resigning.