As many of the respondents of critical dialogues have done, I would also like to begin by thanking Ayten Gündoğdu for her constructive and thoughtful review of my book. However, unlike many of the other texts, my acknowledgment is not just a formal expression of thanks that conceals total disagreement with her comments. While I cannot amend the current book to take her ideas into account, I appreciate her comments, which will be very valuable for my future projects.

In a series of court cases, the U.S. Supreme Court established that the loss of citizenship should be based on an individual’s voluntary renunciation. Gündoğdu correctly maintained that the “agenda of rights” promoted by the Warren Court cannot be isolated from the broader political and social context. As her book demonstrates, both normatively and institutionally, the rise of human rights is a new form of politics that places normative restraints on sovereign power and gives voice to victims of oppression. It is important to highlight that in Revoking Citizenship, I show that while the legal system had adopted human rights norms in accordance with the changes in the international community, it took the political system in the United States much longer to accomplish a similar stance, and it is still not clear that there is a consensus that repudiates forced revocation or favors dual nationality in society at large. As Gündoğdu suggests in her comment, it is not certain that the rise of human rights has led to a radical reconfiguration, if not the decline, of citizenship. Even if there are significant changes, those are neither uniform nor linear.

It is also true that in the book I invoke some theorists who sit somewhat uneasily with each other or with my historical account, especially if their positions are read comprehensively as coherent texts. Taken as a whole, Carl Schmitt’s position is indeed challenged by the legal constraints placed on expatriation policy since the 1950s. In the same manner, Louis Althusser’s structuralist view cannot account for the variations across states. However, I do believe that adopting parts of their theories and analyses is productive. While in the past, sociologists and other scholars tried to compose grand theories whose aim was to provide a comprehensive explanation of all social phenomena, today it is widely accepted that it can be effective to make use of fragmented scholarship. Accordingly, it is my contention that we should also adopt the criticisms and insights arising from certain theories, even if we do not accept them as a whole.

Gündoğdu’s comments reinforce my determination to look at the revocation of citizenship. The contribution of this inquiry is not limited to the analysis of American political culture, but it shines a light on the changing relations between the individual and the state in the global world.