Not by Leviathan alone

Through an amazing mix of theoretical conversations and speculative fiction, this profoundly thought-provoking book diagnoses the nation-state’s massive failures and inability to address the converging crises that make life on Earth precarious, and generate mass abandonment of people and depleted lands. With inspiration from decolonial, anarchist, Indigenous and feminist thought, Madina Tlostanova invites us to rethink current predicaments and reimagine conditions for survival through caring, communal worlding.

Nina Lykke

Emerita-Professor, Gender Studies

Linköping University, Sweden

In her most personal and genre-blending monograph to date, Madina Tlostanova’s "Not by Leviathan Alone" invites readers into a rich bricolage of essays, speculative fiction, interviews, dialogues, and provocative illustrations. Readers are disabused of any lingering attachment to the nation-state as either redeemable or adequate for the futures in the making and not yet imagined. Moving between scholarly analysis and speculative experimentation, Tlostanova expands our capacity to think otherwise: beyond borders, beyond Leviathan, and toward new modes of relational, post nation state world making.

Dr. Jennifer Suchland,

Slavic and East European Languages & Cultures and Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies

The Ohio State University

Unusual and creative, this book offers us a complex tapestry outlining decolonial critiques of the nation state by weaving together academic essays, dialogues and speculative fiction. Using this "chimeric approach," a powerful argument is developed in conversation with a rich field of feminist scholarship and activism, inviting us to imagine entirely new futures of community and connection.

Nivedita Menon

Feminist scholar, formerly Professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi