Aseel Najib is a doctoral candidate at Columbia University's Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies Department. She works at the intersection of Islamic law and political theory and is writing her dissertation on land, law, and politics in the Abbasid Empire. She is interested in theories of empire and capitalism, postcolonial thought, critical theory, and political theology.
It is as productive to think with as it is to think against Claude Lefort, a revolutionary-turned-philosopher who analyzed power and the political regimes to which it gives rise.