This book presents a theoretical framework to study dissident ethnic movements? imagination of world politics, with a special focus on the PKK as a case study. Dissident ethnic movements are not only a challenge to the existing hegemonic power, but they also produce an alternative closed society based on different ethnic imagination. Instead of taking the armed PKK movement as a pure resistant, this book approaches contemporary Kurdish nationalism led by the PKK as a counter-hegemonic with a narrative that entails the emergence of a new kind of identity and sense of belonging, through which the PKK has been able to exercise its power. This book is an attempt to go beyond resistance-oriented approach, unveiling the two faces of the PKK?s representation of world politics: its transformative effect on the Kurds, and its exclusionary function towards traditional and alternative Kurdish subjects/institutions.

Introduction:Beyond Repression and Resistance; Reading the PKK Through Texts; The Organizaion of the Book; Notes--Identity, Hegemony, and Imagining World Politics: Meaning, Identity, and Subject; Writing the World into Exclusion; Writing the World into Resistance; Notes--Imagining the Kurdish Nation: The Play of Difference; Writing the Kurdish Self; Writing Threats and Others; Notes--Writing the USA as Imperial Power: The Rise of "Kurdistan as Colony" Discourse; Turkey as Subservient of US Imperialism; Responsibility in Resistance Against Imperialism; Notes--Writing the Soviet Union as Comrade: THe Kurds Embrace Socialism as Resistance; THe PKK's Imagination of the Soviet Socialism; A Friend on the Wrong Track; Notes--The Collapse of the Soviet Union as Dislocation: The Soviet Union Redifined; Marxist-Leninist Ideology Redifined; Understanding the Transformation of the PKK; Notes--Re-writing the USA After the Cold War: The Prophecy Comes True: The Gulf War; The Rise of "Human Rights" Discourse; US Imperialism Revisited; Notes--Conclusion--Bibliography--Index