Social and political philosophy Books

Book SynopsisExamines opinion as a foundational concept of modernity. This book focuses on interpretive shifts begun in the Enlightenment and cemented by the French Revolution to restore the concept of "opinion" to a central role in our understanding of the political public sphere.Trade ReviewThe best book on the public sphere after Habermas' classical study from 1962. Wetters' historical trajectory establishes a thorough theoretical frame for the contextual practice of an advanced critique of literature and the media after New Historicism.---—Anselm Haverkamp, New York University“Fills a gap in English-language scholarship on the history and theory of opinion.”---—Paul Fleming, New York UniversityExplores the intellectual history and philosophy of opinion as a central concept in modernity. * —The Chronicle of Higher Education *In theories of democracy public opionion uses to play a central role, whereas our own private opinions most of the time appear as a deficient mode of knowledge. In his highly nuanced and insightful study on both facets of opinion in writers and philosophers around 1800 Kirk Wetters demonstrates that the intricacies of both concepts depend on the extent to which we see them as connected or not connected. German observers of the French Revolution, from Wieland to Fichte, and Lichtenberg to Goethe, had a keen interest in and a subtle take on this point where private and public spheres, shades of knowing and political legitimacy meet and part from each other. Kirk Wetters proves a skilled and fine observer of these observers.---—Rudiger Campe, Yale UniversityOpinions – everybody has them, but nobody owns them. In his elegant and resourceful study of the 'opinion system', Wetters probes the historical underpinnings of one of the most fraught yet inescapable categories of political thought. His forays into this tradition yield unexepected insights into the current state and stakes of democracy. ---—Eva Geulen, University of BonnLearned, well-researched and broadly conceived.---—Andreas Gailus, University of Michigan

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Book SynopsisMaurice Blanchot is a towering yet enigmatic figure in twentieth-century French thought. Both his fiction and his criticism played a determining role in how postwar French philosophy was written, especially in its intense concern with the question of writing as such. This volume collects his political writings from 1953 to 1993.Trade Review"Maurice Blanchot's leftist political writings are a major testament to this writer's perspicacity, independence and honor. His writings from the 1968 revolution are among the most piercing political tracts ever written, and the entire collection is an invaluable document for anyone working in French literary and political history of the last century." -- -Kevin Hart The University of Virginia "This selection of essays provides rich insights into the ways one of France's leading writers interpreted and related to the political history of his country in the decades following the second World War." -- -Samuel Weber Northwestern University

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Book SynopsisThe author is one of the leading public intellectuals in today's Italy, both as an outstanding philosopher and political thinker and as now three times (and currently) the mayor of Venice. This title offers a collection of essays on political topics provides the best introduction in English to his thought to date.Trade Review"A fascinating glimpse into one of the most complex thinkers in Italy today." -- -Thomas Harrison University of California, Los Angeles "In a time like ours, when disaffection with politics is widespread among the younger generation, the idea of the 'unpolitical' pursued by Cacciari-as a way not to neglect the value of political discourse but to set and control its limits-may become an important tool to counteract the growing indifference to politics and detachment from the public sphere." -- -Massimo Lollini University of Oregon "With this publication of Massimo Cacciari's The Unpolitical: On the Radical Critique of Politcal Reason, the non-Italian speaking reader is introduced to an integral part of Massimo Cacciari's socio-political thought process and, especially, how it developed over the years. We see how Cacciari, in his readings and analysis of the various philosophers and political thinkers he tackles over the years, is able to anticipate to a certain degree the current state of political affairs in Italy and, perhaps, as well as elsewhere. Alessandro Carrera provides an exhaustively substantial introduction, and Massimo Verdicchio offers the English reader a lucid and smooth translation." -- -Anthony Julian Tamburri Queens College, CUNY "Massimo Cacciari offers a paradoxical new alternative to our view of governamentality: neither the classical politics of Grand Narratives, Great Reforms and Ultimate Utopias, nor the post-modern anti-politics of cynical self-interest and petty calculations, __The unpolitical__ is a critical look at the very limits of politics. The unpolitical is not, like the anti-political, opposed to politics: it re-thinks, in fact, its myths and utopias, but now from the perspective of daily praxis and techniques of governance. In this elegant and precise translation, supplemented by an original and informative introduction, Alessandro Carrera puts forward a coherent genealogy of the "unpolitical" in the writings of one of today's most important philosophers. This is a book to be treasured by all those who care about the future of politics." -- -Roberto M. Dainotto Duke University "An excellent English-language intoduction to Cacciari's thought." -- -Luca Somigli University of Toronto

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Book SynopsisOpening a methodological dialogue between Freud's work and Althusser's late understanding of aleatory materialism, the author shows how an ethic of terror, and in the political sphere a radically democratic republic, can be built on what he calls 'wild materialism'.Trade Review"Blends a discussion of terror with radical democracy in a way that is thoroughly original ... an important book on a large and crucial topic." -- -Marc Redfield Claremont Graduate University "Wild Materialism is a theoretical event. Not only is it one of the most brilliant, rigorous and transformative books since DeMan's Allegories of Reading or Jameson's Political Unconscious, in it we witness what Althusser would call 'an unexpected birth.' Like other wild children, when Lezra had to think the political-philosophic condition of present democracy, he had to work through and past the critical impasses of biopolitics, sovereignty, radical democratic theory, and post-politics, to inventively refigure an ethic of terror as fright. This fearless book not only revisits political theology's primal scenes, but through its unique standpoint of Spanish Republicanism it offers a haunting and haunted meta-reflection on exile and its experiences. Here at last is the affirmative secular response to the challenges of a post 9/11 present, where, as Lezra so effectively argues, only wounded sovereignty, weak concepts, unbounded events and defective social universals might save us." -- -Diane Rubenstein Cornell University "An urgently contemporary study of the relation between 'terror' as a state of expectancy in relation to an event to come, and 'terrorism' as the deadly deployment of force in situations of radical exploitation and oppression." -- -Julia Lupton University of California, Irvine "Lezra sketches a fascinating trip from the archaic scene of Oedipus, beyond the time of the founding of the individual and collective subject, to the events of September 11, at the threshold of our contingent future. Wild Materialism's path leads through the Paris of the 15th century, the Spanish empire, the war in Algeria, and on to the contemporary world, and delivers an analysis of the production of universals in and of political space, that prior instant from which dualisms and differences flow--inside/out, frien/enemy, private/public, terror/terrorism--divisions and reconstitutions of what is held in common. This is a work that refuses finally to dissolve politics into aesthetics, and seeks out an innovative, apt vocabulary for the tasks of ethics and politics, far from the fiction of sovereign, constituting power. Wild Materialism revises the sense of radical republicanism, basing itself in a fascinating interpretation of Levinas, Althusser and Freud, which forces us to rethink the classic arguments of the 20th century, from Arendt to Schmitt, from Koselleck to Habermas, Derrida to Negri." -- -Jose Luis Villacanas Universidad Complutense de Madrid

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Book SynopsisThe vociferous appetite of colonialism and its insatiable devouring of modern life has taken its toll on this world. This book shows that there has even been a colonization of critical theory, fitting it with prejudices that would limit knowledge to analytic reductions commensurate with Western metaphysics.Trade Review"An exciting and path-breaking work of philosophy ... the authors have not only broken new ground but have also opened up new discursive spaces into which many are likely to follow." -- -Paget Henry Brown University "This is one of the rarest books. It belongs to the new genre of radical philosophical archeology: it resurrects the work of Ernst Cassirer, one of the great German idealists, and puts it to the task of developing a contemporary critical theory which confronts imperialism and neo-colonialism. Against dominant banal historicism, complacent positivism and the humanist apologia of capitalism, 'Symbolic Forms for a New Humanity' constructs a new type of ethical humanism: revived German idealism, black existentialism and radical constitutionalism come together to show how the symbolic and mythic foundations of reality open the possibility of the impossible. Dignity and equality are both impossible and barred in neo-liberal capitalism, yet they create the conditions of all possibility. As Cornell and Panfilio compellingly argue, the impossible has already started happening in the South African struggles against racialised capitalism, in the transformative constitution of the rainbow nation and in the most ancient and contemporary principles of uBuntu. At this point of retreat of the left, Cornell and Panfilio open new directions for critical thinking and offer a call to radical action." -- -Costas Douzinas Birkbeck, University of London

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Book SynopsisTerms of Politics: Community, Immunity, Biopolitics presents a decade of Esposito’s thought on the origins and possibilities of political theory.Trade Review"Against philosophies of history and for history as thought-this is the break from which Esposito's work wagers an enterprise of deconstruction (of all conceptions of the political up to now) in the name of a new understanding of freedom: between community and immunity, beyond liberalism, beyond the rational animal. He calls it an affirmation of biopolitics, affirmative biopolitics-not for a new inception of the social, but for a redistribution of the energy of thought at the service of another practice of life." -- -Alberto Moreias Texas A&M University

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Book SynopsisAdvancing the Enlightenment draws upon John Rawls, Gilles Deleuze, and Tariq Ramadan to present a vision for progressive politics. Rather than defend Kant’s ideas, heirs of the Enlightenment should create concepts such as overlapping consensus, rhizome, and space of testimony to facilitate alliances across religious and philosophical differences.Trade Review"Nicholas Tampio's Kantian Courage is a stellar example of what is best in the field of contemporary political theory. In this effort to balance the new against the old, Tampio's work displays an exemplary degree of openmindedness, intellectual honesty, scholarly care, and attentiveness to the complex difficulties that we as political thinkers of the twenty-first century find ourselves in." -The Review of Politics "Nicholas Tampio's Kantian Courage is a breath of fresh air in a field too often marked by pious exegeses of the canonical Enlightenment thinkers or bitter rejections of our Enlightenment heritage. One of the great virtues of Tampio's book is its ambitious attempt to make the Enlightenment relevant for modern times, to have it speak to contemporary crises and policy dilemmas." -Perspectives on Politics "A bold and exciting book, born out of the conviction that we need a new Enlightenment for the twenty-first century." -- -Paul Patton University of New South Wales "A wonderfully clear, appropriately comprehensive, and original work of scholarship. Kantian Courage labors to discover in Kant's thought intellectual resources for reconstituting an Enlightenment ethos in contemporary political theory and, presumably, in the late modern cultural landscape to the extent that political theory today could exercise such an influence." -- -Morton Schoolman University of Albany, SUNY

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Book SynopsisThe Tears of Sovereignty is a comparative study of the representation of the concept of sovereignty in paradigmatic plays of early modern English and Spanish drama. It argues that baroque drama produces the critical terms through which contemporary philosophical criticism continues to think through the problems of sovereignty today.Trade ReviewLorenz masterfully interweaves philosophical, political, sociological, and historical perspectives into his readings of these diverse plays . . .Recommended * —Choice Magazine *“. . . a highly theorized account of a set of mesmerizing problem plays from Spanish and English theater,which generate a range of insightful new accounts of the operation of the tropes of metaphor, analogy, and allegory in relation to the theatrical image, the Eucharist, and the insignia of power.”---—Julia Reinhard Lupton, author of Thinking with Shakespeare: Essays on Politics and LifeIn his first book, 'Tears of Sovereignty: Perspectives of Power in Renaissance Drama, Philip Lorenz addresses Spain through inventive political-theological readings of the Jesuit theologian Francisco Suarez and Lope de Vega's 'Life Is a Dream'. The emphasis on Suarez is fresh and urgent, inviting us to think the Catholic question in a counter-reformation and Baroque rather than medieval/archaic frame, and to do so through a substantial, fascination, and under-examined body of texts. * —Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 *“Tears of Sovereignty is a smart, philosophically textured analysis of sovereignty on the seventeenth-century stage.”---—Graham Hammill, University at Buffalo, SUNY

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Book SynopsisA collection of essays devoted to the concept of hospitality from different disciplinary perspectives such as philosophy, politics, anthropology, aesthetics, ethics, and translation studies.Trade Review"The book proves to be valuable to researchers, students and teachers in the field of Hospitality Studies and is a substantial contribution to our understanding of the extent to which 'conditions' of hospitality emerged as a new academic field in the twenty-first century." -- -Arleen Ionescu Word and Text "A timely constellation of trenchant statements on one of the most ancient and most sacred human conventions. In an increasingly inhospitable world, this is an opportune and eloquent volume on hospitality as institution, as political act, and as ethical practice. An invaluable touchstone for interdisciplinary study of the subject." -- -Djelal Kadir Pennsylvania State University "This volume does something new with hospitality, reanimating and redeploying it in ethical, political, and aesthetic directions. Its effect is prismatic: It brings together and then reflects, refracts, and redistributes hospitality across the intellectual spectrum of philosophy, political theory, and cultural studies." -- -William Robert Syracuse University "Globalization has brought us instant forms of communication and diverse networks of connectivity. But has it made us better neighbours to each other? Have we evolved new ethical and political forms of hospitality to accompany the crossing of borders, the subduing of national and regional sovereignties, as we take our first, faltering steps towards an international civil society? These essays raise questions fundamental to our political condition. But they do more than that. They make a compelling case for an aesthetic and ethical enhancement of our sense of political rights and responsibilities." -- -Homi K. Bhabha Anne F. Rothenberg Professor of the Humanities, Harvard University

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Book SynopsisA collection of essays devoted to the concept of hospitality from different disciplinary perspectives such as philosophy, politics, anthropology, aesthetics, ethics, and translation studies.Trade Review"The book proves to be valuable to researchers, students and teachers in the field of Hospitality Studies and is a substantial contribution to our understanding of the extent to which 'conditions' of hospitality emerged as a new academic field in the twenty-first century." -- -Arleen Ionescu Word and Text "A timely constellation of trenchant statements on one of the most ancient and most sacred human conventions. In an increasingly inhospitable world, this is an opportune and eloquent volume on hospitality as institution, as political act, and as ethical practice. An invaluable touchstone for interdisciplinary study of the subject." -- -Djelal Kadir Pennsylvania State University "This volume does something new with hospitality, reanimating and redeploying it in ethical, political, and aesthetic directions. Its effect is prismatic: It brings together and then reflects, refracts, and redistributes hospitality across the intellectual spectrum of philosophy, political theory, and cultural studies." -- -William Robert Syracuse University "Globalization has brought us instant forms of communication and diverse networks of connectivity. But has it made us better neighbours to each other? Have we evolved new ethical and political forms of hospitality to accompany the crossing of borders, the subduing of national and regional sovereignties, as we take our first, faltering steps towards an international civil society? These essays raise questions fundamental to our political condition. But they do more than that. They make a compelling case for an aesthetic and ethical enhancement of our sense of political rights and responsibilities." -- -Homi K. Bhabha Anne F. Rothenberg Professor of the Humanities, Harvard University

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Book SynopsisDisrupting recent fashionable debates on secularism, this book raises the stakes on how we understand the space of the secular, independent of its battle with the religious, as a space of radical democratic politics that refuse to be theologized.Trade Review"Lessons in Secular Criticism is a timely and polemical manifestation of parrhesia. It offers compelling evidence that 'post-secularism' comes neither 'after' the secular nor does it understand the 'secular'. Moving effortlessly between literary theory, philosophy, and politics, Gourgouris offers a profoundly democratic defense of criticism without transcendent principles and a critical defense of democracy without neoliberal capitalism. Lessons in Secular Criticism brilliantly diagnoses the key antagonism of our times as that between various heteronomies (theology, capital, transcendence) and autonomy, the power (kratos) of the demos to become otherwise. Read it." -- -Costas Douzinas Birkbeck College, University of London "This book defines the secular: 'to encounter one's life as a worldly affair and responsibility that rests on no foundation.' This definition drives Gourgouris' intervention in the critical debate around secularism and his reading of global popular revolts as lived forms of secular criticism. Erudite, thrilling, and provocative, this is, simply, urgent reading." -- -Martin Harries University of California, Irvine "Gourgouris presents an incredibly intelligent means by which the secular can address [the challenge to the secular] without ultimately disturbing its own enabling habits." -Daniel Colucciello Barber, Los Angeles Review of Books "What is secular criticism? The expression's coinage is attributed to Edward Said, and as Stathis Gourgouris demonstrates, it is a key politico-aesthetic concept that resists definition. Identifiable neither with the remainders of political theology in democracy nor with an immanent, non-transcendental metaphysics, (though combining elements of both), secular criticism is cast as something on the order of a teaching; an initiation into worldly praxis. In the contemporary moment - rife with crude generalizations about cultures of belief and sacral icons - Lessons in Secular Criticism enlists philosophy to rethink basic assumptions underwriting the politics of religion and culture. We discover here new forms of secularism as "heteronymy:" modes of self-alteration, self-enactment, conviction, tragic life and poietic existence. This book is a model of criticism in action offering creative engagements with the work of Edward Said, Talal Asad, Judith Butler, Cornelius Castoriadis, Charles Taylor and Claude Lefort among others." -- -Emily Apter New York University "...Gourgouris not only challenges the metaphysical commitments he sees in traditional formations of secularism and religion, but he also significantly expands the potential meaning of the term 'secular criticism' ..." -College Literature, Vol. 41.3 "Written in a free and combative and given both to close readings of texts and to gazing off into the broad horizon, these essays cover a range of issues historical and philosophical, archaic and contemporary, literary and political..." -Theological Book Review "Gourgouris's book is an astonishing achievement: it does not simply set the debate about secularism on an entirely new basis, in addition it sets the basis of a theory of radical democracy in modernity and does so by applying the theory to a variety of historical events from the past few years." -- -Dimitris Vardoulakis University of Western SydneyTable of ContentsPreface xi Acknowledgments 1. The Poiein of Secular Criticism 2. Detranscendentalizing the Secular 3. Why I Am Not a Post- secularist 4. Confronting Heteronomy 5. The Void Occupied Unconcealed 6. Responding to the Deregulation of the Political Index

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Book SynopsisAsks how history can be related to the future and to that end, it examines the issue of how determination works.Trade Review"This is a thoughtful and absorbing reflection on the subtle modalities of memory-cultural, psychological, political -in the modern period. At a time when we are all experiencing a surfeit of memory, Sarah Clift injects a new rigor and lucidity into the discussion." -- -Rebecca Comay University of Toronto "Through the originality of her questions, her deft combination of close reading and conceptual generalization, the patience and lucidity of her analyses, and the remarkable surefootedness of her argumentation, Sarah Clift has succeeded in reinvigorating the interpretation of important works by Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, John Locke, G. W. F. Hegel, and Maurice Blanchot. Her book will be of vital interest to political theorists, philosophers, literary critics, and intellectual historians, and may help to transform the discussion of fundamental issues they confront, most notably the relation between history and memory." -- -Thomas Trezise Princeton UniversityTable of ContentsIntroduction 1 Narrative life span, in the wake: Benjamin and Arendt 2 Memory in Theory: The Childhood Memories of John Locke (Persons, Parrots) 3 Mourning Memory: The "End" of Art or, Reading (in) the Spirit of Hegel 4 Speculating on the past, the impact of the present: Hegel and his time(s) 5 In Lieu of a Last Word: Maurice Blanchot and the Future of Memory (today) Endnotes Bibliography

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Book SynopsisThis collection of essays examines the various intersections between philosophical hermeneutics and environmental philosophy. Adopting a broad and inclusive understanding of our relation with the environment, it investigates a number of important topics for contemporary environmental thought, including the self, history, ethics, culture, and narrative.Trade Review"This is a superb book, written with clarity, precision, and deep feeling for a better understanding of differing approaches to interpreting the wider natural world." -- -Mark Wallace Swarthmore College "... Interpreting Nature is engaging throughout and contributes to an important growth in environmental philosophy." -Environmental Values "Interpreting Nature is an excellent collection of essays. This collection is a very welcome addition to the literature and helps to move forward philosophical reflection on the idea of 'nature' and charts new and important ways to think about the task of an environmental ethics." -- -Charles Brown Emporia State UniversityTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction: Environmental Hermeneutics David Utsler, Forrest Clingerman, Martin Drenthen, and Brian Treanor Part I: Interpretation and the Task of Thinking Environmentally 1. Hermeneutics Deep in the Woods John van Buren 2. Morrow's Ants: E. O. Wilson and Gadamer's Critique of (Natural) Historicism Mick Smith 3. Layering: Body, Building, Biography Robert Mugerauer 4. Might Nature Be Interpreted as a "Saturated Phenomenon"? Christina M. Gschwandtner 5. Must Environmental Philosophy Relinquish the Concept of Nature? A Hermeneutic Reply to Steven Vogel W. S. K. Cameron Part II: Situating the Self 6. Environmental Hermeneutics and Environmental/Eco-Psychology: Explorations in Environmental Identity David Utsler 7. Environmental Hermeneutics With and For Others: Ricoeur's Ethics and the Ecological Self Nathan Bell 8. Bodily Moods and Unhomely Environments: The Hermeneutics of Agoraphobia and the Spirit of Place Dylan Trigg Part III: Narrativity and Image 9. Narrative and Nature: Appreciating and Understanding the Nonhuman World Brian Treanor 10. The Question Concerning Nature Sean McGrath 11. New Nature Narratives: Landscape Hermeneutics and Environmental Ethics Martin Drenthen Part IV: Environments, Place, and the Experience of Time 12. Memory, Imagination, and the Hermeneutics of Place Forrest Clingerman 13. The Betweenness of Monuments Janet Donohoe 14. My Place in the Sun David Wood 15. How Hermeneutics Might Save the Life of (Environmental) Ethics Paul Van Tongeren and Paulien Snellen Notes A Bibliographic Overview of Research in Environmental Hermeneutics List of Contributors Index

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Book SynopsisAsking whether it is possible to develop an approach to studying political life that reflects its heterogeneity, Jane Anna Gordon offers the creolization of political theory as a response. Offering a critique of mere comparison, Gordon demonstrates the generative capacity of creolization through bringing together across time and place the ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Frantz Fanon.Trade ReviewThis book offers a fresh perspective on the concept of creolization and on salient debates in political theory concerning multiculturalism, comparative analysis, (trans)nationalism, and globalization, just to name a few; it therefore makes an important contribution to the field of political theory, as well as to many others." -- -Charles Walls Bard College or Independent Scholar "Creolizing Political Theory is a brilliant and innovative exercise in political theory. Through its creolized and highly nuanced reading of Rousseau - through Fanon - on the challenges confronting the practice of politics in the modern age, this work succeeds in taking both political theory and creole theory in new and enlightening directions. Further, it demonstrates ever so clearly the valuable contributions that Africana political theory can make to core concerns of Western political theory. A must read for scholars in the fields of political theory, Africana thought, and creole theory." -- -Paget Henry Brown University "Hello, Jean-Jacques! Hello, Frantz! An unexpected encounter between Rousseau, eighteen-century Swiss-born philosopher, and Fanon, twentieth-century psychiatrist and political visionary of Caribbean origin, is theory from the North meeting theory from the South. And thinking with creolization, a multifaceted notion with a history of crossing boundaries, opens new challenges for political studies as it does for other human sciences. Jane Anna Gordon is an incisive guide to its potential." -- -Ulf Hannerz Stockholm University, author of Transnational ConnectionsTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction 1. Delegitimating Decadent Discourses of Inquiry 2. Decolonizing Disciplinary Methods 3. Squaring the Circle: Rousseau's General Will 4. Creolizing the General Will: Fanonian National Consciousness 5. Thinking through Creolization Conclusion Notes References Index

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Book SynopsisA powerful essay on identity and its fate in our contemporary world. Against various attempts to cling to established identities, Nancy shows that an identity is always open: to alterity and its transformations. Ultimately, one does not have an identity but has to become what one is, without ever returning to a same but solely to difference and singularity.Table of Contents0. Fragments 1. Causes and Consequences 2. Gros Rouge 3. Identity is no Figure 4. Frankly 5. Absolute 6. Who? 7. Why Speak of Identity? 8. Peoples 9. Nations 10. Empires 11. Identities, Intimacies

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Book SynopsisFrom prehistoric stone tools to machines to computers, things have traveled a long road along with human beings. Changing with the times, places, and methods of production, coming from diverse histories, enveloped in multiple layers of meaning, things embody ideas, emotions, and symbols of which we are often unaware.Trade Review"Bodei's philosophical expertise is obvious, but he surpasses by far the level of most phenomenologies of "things" thanks to his refined sensibility with regard to the vital, ethical, economic, aesthetic, and religious aspects of various types of things." -- -Adriaan T. Peperzak Loyola University, Chicago "Simple things. Bare objects still new or already worn out. Objects unscathed or consumed and so slated for insignificance and destruction. But is this really the fate of things today or is there instead another way of looking at them, one able to salvage things somehow from such an anonymous and listless end? This is the piercing and original question that Remo Bodei poses in The Life of Things, The Love of Things." -- -Roberto Esposito La repubblicaTable of Contents1. Objects and Things 2. Opening Up to the World 3. Living Nature Notes Index

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Book SynopsisReading with John Clare argues that poetry and its repression lies at the heart of biopolitical thinking. By rereading the emergence of biopolitics and focusing on the exemplary case of John Clare, it renews our understanding of the relation between aesthetics and politics from romanticism to the present.Trade Review"Guyer's analysis of Clare is a stroke of genius. The study of Romanticism has long been undertaken without Clare. His life and poetry seemed suited to a marginal status. However, Guyer profoundly changes our understanding of Clare and changes how we approach the field of Romanticism itself. A powerful book." -- -Forest Pyle University of Oregon "Reading with John Clare is a gem of a book, both compact and evocative, brimming with generative implications not only for Clare scholarship but also for Romantic criticism as a whole. If there is a 'Clare' for the twenty-first century, it begins here." -- -David Clark McMaster University "Who is romantic? Is it the poet, John Clare and his attachment to people's life, or the philosopher, Agamben's characterization of such an attachment as a form of sovereignty? What is romanticism? The literary name to biopolitics, or the literary deconstruction of biopolitics itself? Bravely opening these immense and singular questions, Sara Guyer achieves what remained to be achieved since Foucault: the reevaluation of the part played by the biological within the symbolic. 'Biopoetics' is born." -- -Catherine Malabou author of The New WoundedTable of ContentsContents Acknowledgments Introduction: The Life of Reading 1. The Viability of Poetry 2. The Origins and Ends of Genius 3. Can the Poet Speak? 4. Inventions of Self Identity 5. The Poetics of Homelessness Coda: The Reading of Life Notes Index

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Book SynopsisReading with John Clare argues that poetry and its repression lies at the heart of biopolitical thinking. By rereading the emergence of biopolitics and focusing on the exemplary case of John Clare, it renews our understanding of the relation between aesthetics and politics from romanticism to the present.Trade Review"Guyer's analysis of Clare is a stroke of genius. The study of Romanticism has long been undertaken without Clare. His life and poetry seemed suited to a marginal status. However, Guyer profoundly changes our understanding of Clare and changes how we approach the field of Romanticism itself. A powerful book." -- -Forest Pyle University of Oregon "Reading with John Clare is a gem of a book, both compact and evocative, brimming with generative implications not only for Clare scholarship but also for Romantic criticism as a whole. If there is a 'Clare' for the twenty-first century, it begins here." -- -David Clark McMaster University "Who is romantic? Is it the poet, John Clare and his attachment to people's life, or the philosopher, Agamben's characterization of such an attachment as a form of sovereignty? What is romanticism? The literary name to biopolitics, or the literary deconstruction of biopolitics itself? Bravely opening these immense and singular questions, Sara Guyer achieves what remained to be achieved since Foucault: the reevaluation of the part played by the biological within the symbolic. 'Biopoetics' is born." -- -Catherine Malabou author of The New WoundedTable of ContentsContents Acknowledgments Introduction: The Life of Reading 1. The Viability of Poetry 2. The Origins and Ends of Genius 3. Can the Poet Speak? 4. Inventions of Self Identity 5. The Poetics of Homelessness Coda: The Reading of Life Notes Index

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Book SynopsisThis book describes the historical underpinnings of political theology that continue to exert their influence. The confluence of Roman and Christian notions on the person fuels an exclusionary mechanism that unites by dividing people. Restoring thought to an impersonal place of universal access can help to end this oppressive conceptual regime.Trade Review"Two is a tour-de-force by Roberto Esposito: an attempt to grasp the phenomenon of political theology, from its origins in Roman jurisprudence and Christian theology, all the way up to the twentieth-century debate on this theme." -- -Miguel Vatter University of New South Wales "With his usual genealogical acumen, in Two, Esposito makes a very significant contribution to the dismantling of what he identifies as the hierarchical dispositive of Western civilization as such: political theology. Philosophy can and must develop a new conceptual lexicon able to overcome the forgetting of the Two within the One. What is here ultimately at stake is an ambitious redefinition of thought as impersonally applicable to the human species, rather than to individuals. This book is indispensable reading for anybody interested in biopolitics and the future of critique at large." -- -Lorenzo Chiesa Director of the Genoa School of Humanities "This work, beautifully translated by Zakiya Hanafi, shows how professor Esposito's thought is developing from his groundbreaking earlier work on community and immunity. This book will be a welcome and important contribution to students of the history of biopolitics, continental philosophers, historians of ideas, and political theorists." -- -Jonathon Short York UniversityTable of ContentsIntroduction Passage: Gestell 1. Machination Passage: Katechon 2. The dispositif of the person Passage: Nexum (economic theology I) 3. The Place of Thought Passage: Sovereign debt (economic theology II) Index

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Book SynopsisIn The Techne of Giving, Timothy Campbell elaborates a notion of generosity as way of responding to contemporary biopower. Reading films from Visconti, Rossellini, and Antonioni, he both updates their political lexicon while adopting them as models able to push back against neoliberal forms of gift-giving.Trade Review"A very original, extremely well-researched piece of work that combines theoretical sophistication with depth of literary, cultural, and cinematic knowledge." -- -Rosi Braidotti Utrecht UniversityTable of Contents1. Forms of Life in a Milieu of Biopower 2. Freeing the Apparatus 3. "Dead Weight": Visconti and Forms of Life 4. Playful Falls in a Milieu of Contagion 5. The Tender Lives of Vitti/Vittoria Conclusion: Attention, Not Autopsy Acknowledgments Notes Index

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Book SynopsisThis book proposes the “formless” as a way of thinking through the impasses of contemporary politics. The writing of the formless, as it can be traced in the work of Lezama Lima and the Cuban Revolution, is the point of departure in thinking through the relationship between politics and time.Trade Review"Deep and dazzling. The Writing of the Formless dismantles or powerfully threatens the very basis of much of what today wants to present itself as 'properly leftist' thought but also the equally paralyzing liberal-democratic administration of things: both ideologies are anchored in disavowed understandings of temporality. This is a groundbreaking, extraordinary book that will mark a before and after in Latinamericanism." -- -Alberto Moreiras Texas A&M University

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Book SynopsisThis book proposes the formless as a way of thinking through the impasses of contemporary politics. The writing of the formless, as it can be traced in the work of Lezama Lima and the Cuban Revolution, is the point of departure in thinking through the relationship between politics and time.Trade Review"Deep and dazzling. The Writing of the Formless dismantles or powerfully threatens the very basis of much of what today wants to present itself as 'properly leftist' thought but also the equally paralyzing liberal-democratic administration of things: both ideologies are anchored in disavowed understandings of temporality. This is a groundbreaking, extraordinary book that will mark a before and after in Latinamericanism." -- -Alberto Moreiras Texas A&M University

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"For Esposito, thought does not just fight-it is the fight itself. Esposito moves on the basis of a fundamental ontology of war, which marks what a previous tradition would have called "the unity of being." The Origin of the Political elaborates implications of this, not only through its masterful conceptual analysis and through its insights into the two thinkers it studies and critiques, but also because, as it makes explicit the stakes of the impolitical approach, it also ruins so many of the foundations of modern political thought and prepares the way for its fundamental renewal." -- -Alberto Moreiras Texas A&M UniversityTable of ContentsPreface to the Second Edition (2014) 1. Partitions 2. Truth 3. Principium and Initium 4. Beginn, Anfang, Ursprung 5. Polemos-Polis 6. The Third Origin 7. Nothingness 8. Forces 9. In Common 10. Imperium 11. Topologies 12. In the Grip of Love 13. The Final Battle

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Book SynopsisDrawing together insights from black cultural studies and secularism studies, this book reinvigorates the field of black theology. It argues that black theology can best support the racial justice struggles of today by fully embracing both blackness (as opposed to multiculturalism) and theology (as opposed to religious diversity).Trade Review"Once again Vincent Lloyd has written an insightful, demanding, even daring book, and this time with an irritating title straight out of the 1960s. Lloyd throws down a stinging challenge to all those of us who cling to idolatries of race, class, and gender as well as to our privileges in the classroom, the boardroom, and the pulpit. We have betrayed black theology in our failure to uphold the wisdom of the marginalized, the cherished people of God." -- -M. Shawn Copeland Boston CollegeTable of ContentsIntroduction Cornerstones 1: Cone 2: Baldwin 3: Mbembe 4: Derrida, Agamben, Wynter Questions 5: What is Black Tradition? 6: What is Black Organizing? 7: For What Are Blacks to Hope? 8: For What Are Whites to Hope? Exempla 9: The Revelation of Race: On Steve Biko 10: The Racial Messiah: On Huey P. Newton 11: The Post-Racial Saint: On Barack Obama 12: The Race of the Soul: On Gillian Rose Afterword: The Birth of the Black Church Bibliography

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Book SynopsisDrawing together insights from black cultural studies and secularism studies, this book reinvigorates the field of black theology. It argues that black theology can best support the racial justice struggles of today by fully embracing both blackness (as opposed to multiculturalism) and theology (as opposed to religious diversity).Trade Review"Once again Vincent Lloyd has written an insightful, demanding, even daring book, and this time with an irritating title straight out of the 1960s. Lloyd throws down a stinging challenge to all those of us who cling to idolatries of race, class, and gender as well as to our privileges in the classroom, the boardroom, and the pulpit. We have betrayed black theology in our failure to uphold the wisdom of the marginalized, the cherished people of God." -- -M. Shawn Copeland Boston CollegeTable of ContentsIntroduction Cornerstones 1: Cone 2: Baldwin 3: Mbembe 4: Derrida, Agamben, Wynter Questions 5: What is Black Tradition? 6: What is Black Organizing? 7: For What Are Blacks to Hope? 8: For What Are Whites to Hope? Exempla 9: The Revelation of Race: On Steve Biko 10: The Racial Messiah: On Huey P. Newton 11: The Post-Racial Saint: On Barack Obama 12: The Race of the Soul: On Gillian Rose Afterword: The Birth of the Black Church Bibliography

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Book SynopsisOn the Nature of Marx’s Things traces to Marx’s earliest writings a Lucretian practice that Lezra calls necrophilological translation.Table of ContentsForeword: Encounter and Translation by Vittorio Morfino Introduction I. Necrophilologies 1. On the Nature of Marx’s Things 2. Capital, catastrophe: Marx’s “Dynamic objects” 3. Necrophilology II. Mediation 4. The Primal Scenes of Political Theology 5. Adorno and the Humanist Dialectic 6. Uncountable Matters Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisOn the Nature of Marx’s Things traces to Marx’s earliest writings a Lucretian practice that Lezra calls necrophilological translation.Table of ContentsForeword: Encounter and Translation by Vittorio Morfino Introduction I. Necrophilologies 1. On the Nature of Marx’s Things 2. Capital, catastrophe: Marx’s “Dynamic objects” 3. Necrophilology II. Mediation 4. The Primal Scenes of Political Theology 5. Adorno and the Humanist Dialectic 6. Uncountable Matters Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisThis volume, the first sustained critical work on the French political philosopher Étienne Balibar, collects essays by sixteen prominent philosophers, psychoanalysts, anthropologists, sociologists, and literary critics who each identify, define, and explore a central concept in Balibar’s thought.Table of ContentsPreface | vii Introduction: Balibar and the Philosophy of the Concept Warren Montag | 1 Anthropological Bruce Robbins | 15 Border-Concept (of the Political) Stathis Gourgouris | 28 Civil Religion: Secularism as Religion? Judith Butler | 45 Concept Étienne Balibar | 54 Contre- / Counter- Bernard E. Harcourt | 71 Conversion Monique David-Ménard | 85 Cosmopolitics Emily Apter | 94 Interior Frontiers Ann Laura Stoler | 117 Materialism Patrice Maniglier | 140 The Political Adi Ophir | 158 Punishment Didier Fassin | 183 Race Hanan Elsayed | 193 Relation Jacques Lezra | 211 Rights J. M. Bernstein | 230 Solidarity Gary Wilder | 253 Bibliography | 275 List of Contributors | 311 Index | 315

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Book SynopsisThis volume, the first sustained critical work on the French political philosopher Étienne Balibar, collects essays by sixteen prominent philosophers, psychoanalysts, anthropologists, sociologists, and literary critics who each identify, define, and explore a central concept in Balibar’s thought.Table of ContentsPreface | vii Introduction: Balibar and the Philosophy of the Concept Warren Montag | 1 Anthropological Bruce Robbins | 15 Border-Concept (of the Political) Stathis Gourgouris | 28 Civil Religion: Secularism as Religion? Judith Butler | 45 Concept Étienne Balibar | 54 Contre- / Counter- Bernard E. Harcourt | 71 Conversion Monique David-Ménard | 85 Cosmopolitics Emily Apter | 94 Interior Frontiers Ann Laura Stoler | 117 Materialism Patrice Maniglier | 140 The Political Adi Ophir | 158 Punishment Didier Fassin | 183 Race Hanan Elsayed | 193 Relation Jacques Lezra | 211 Rights J. M. Bernstein | 230 Solidarity Gary Wilder | 253 Bibliography | 275 List of Contributors | 311 Index | 315

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Book SynopsisMany on the Left have looked upon “universal” as a dirty word, one that signals liberalism’s failure to recognize the masculinist and Eurocentric assumptions from which it proceeds. Balibar builds on these critiques, yet works to rescue and reinvent what universal claims can offer for a revolutionary politics answerable to the common.Table of ContentsPreface: Equivocity of the Universal | vii 1 Racism, Sexism, Universalism: A Reply to Joan Scott and Judith Butler | 1 Racism and sexism: a single “community”? | 5 The institution and discriminatory function of the universal | 8 “Human essence,” “normality,” and “anthropological differences” | 14 2 Constructions and Deconstructions of the Universal | 19 First Lecture | 19 Second Lecture | 39 3 Sub Specie Universitatis: Speaking the Universal in Philosophy | 59 Strategies of disjunction | 65 Strategies of subsumption | 69 Strategies of translation | 75 4 On Universalism: In Dialogue with Alain Badiou | 84 5 A New Quarrel | 96 Anthropological differences and “human” subjectivity | 97 The desire to know | 103 Three aporias of universality | 105 “Les langues se parlent” | 115 Notes | 121

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Book SynopsisTable of ContentsExordium: Extinction and Everyday Infrapolitics | 1 Introduction | 9 Passage I. Contemporary Turmoil: Posthegemonic Epochality, or Why Bother with the Infrapolitical? | 33 Prometheus Kicks the Bucket, 35 • Katechon, Post-katechon, Decontainment, 54 • From Hegemony to Posthegemony, 74 • Why Bother with the Infrapolitical?, 97 Passage II. Narco- Accumulation: Of Contemporary Force and Facticity | 107 Toward Narco- Accumulation, 109 • Toward Facticity, 117 • Facticity, or the Question of the Right Name for War, 129 • Decontainment and Stasis, 135 • Theater of Conflict I: “Here There Is No Choosing,” 144 • Theater of Conflict II: 2666, or the Novel of Force, 148 • Toward the Void, 162 • The Migrant’s Hand, or the Infrapolitical Turn to Existence, 167 Notes | 191 Works Cited | 231 Index | 243

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Book SynopsisTable of ContentsExordium: Extinction and Everyday Infrapolitics | 1 Introduction | 9 Passage I. Contemporary Turmoil: Posthegemonic Epochality, or Why Bother with the Infrapolitical? | 33 Prometheus Kicks the Bucket, 35 • Katechon, Post-katechon, Decontainment, 54 • From Hegemony to Posthegemony, 74 • Why Bother with the Infrapolitical?, 97 Passage II. Narco- Accumulation: Of Contemporary Force and Facticity | 107 Toward Narco- Accumulation, 109 • Toward Facticity, 117 • Facticity, or the Question of the Right Name for War, 129 • Decontainment and Stasis, 135 • Theater of Conflict I: “Here There Is No Choosing,” 144 • Theater of Conflict II: 2666, or the Novel of Force, 148 • Toward the Void, 162 • The Migrant’s Hand, or the Infrapolitical Turn to Existence, 167 Notes | 191 Works Cited | 231 Index | 243

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Book SynopsisTable of ContentsIntroduction: Political Theology on Edge Catherine Keller and Clayton Crockett | 1 PART I : POLITICAL THEOLOGY AND THE ANTHROPOCENE 1. The Anthropocene as Planetary Machine William E. Connolly | 19 2. Anthropocenic Journeys Michael Northcott | 35 3. Resisting Geopower: Political Theologies of the Anthropocene Austin Roberts | 57 PART II : DESTRUCTION AND SUICIDE 4. The Tradition of Destruction (Kaf ka’s Law) Gil Anidjar | 79 5. Suicide Notes (In Remembrance of David Buckel) Winfield Goodwin | 91 6. Catachresis in the Margins: Notes on Theologico-Political Method Lawrence E. Hillis | 109 PART III : AFFECTIVE AND AXIOMATIC INTERVENTIONS 7. Doing Theology When Whiteness Stands Its Ground Kelly Brown Douglas | 139 8. Paul between Protagoras and Rancière: “On the basis of equality, . . . that there may be equality” Larry L. Welborn | 149 9. Listening for the Power of the People: A Political Theology of Affect Lisa Gasson-Gardner | 165 PART IV : GLOBAL POLITICAL THEOLOGIES 10. Undressing Political Theology for an Animal-Saint Redress Balbinder Singh Bhogal | 183 11. What Is Political about Political Islam? Mehmet Karabela | 214 PART V : FROM GENOCIDE TOWARD A SACRED POLITICS 12. #BlackLivesMatter and Sacred Politics Seth Gaiters | 237 13. Genocide and the Sin of Identity Noëlle Vahanian | 254 14. Mystic S/Zong! J. Kameron Carter | 272 Acknowledgments | 313 List of Contributors | 315

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Book SynopsisTable of ContentsIntroduction: Political Theology on Edge Catherine Keller and Clayton Crockett | 1 PART I : POLITICAL THEOLOGY AND THE ANTHROPOCENE 1. The Anthropocene as Planetary Machine William E. Connolly | 19 2. Anthropocenic Journeys Michael Northcott | 35 3. Resisting Geopower: Political Theologies of the Anthropocene Austin Roberts | 57 PART II : DESTRUCTION AND SUICIDE 4. The Tradition of Destruction (Kaf ka’s Law) Gil Anidjar | 79 5. Suicide Notes (In Remembrance of David Buckel) Winfield Goodwin | 91 6. Catachresis in the Margins: Notes on Theologico-Political Method Lawrence E. Hillis | 109 PART III : AFFECTIVE AND AXIOMATIC INTERVENTIONS 7. Doing Theology When Whiteness Stands Its Ground Kelly Brown Douglas | 139 8. Paul between Protagoras and Rancière: “On the basis of equality, . . . that there may be equality” Larry L. Welborn | 149 9. Listening for the Power of the People: A Political Theology of Affect Lisa Gasson-Gardner | 165 PART IV : GLOBAL POLITICAL THEOLOGIES 10. Undressing Political Theology for an Animal-Saint Redress Balbinder Singh Bhogal | 183 11. What Is Political about Political Islam? Mehmet Karabela | 214 PART V : FROM GENOCIDE TOWARD A SACRED POLITICS 12. #BlackLivesMatter and Sacred Politics Seth Gaiters | 237 13. Genocide and the Sin of Identity Noëlle Vahanian | 254 14. Mystic S/Zong! J. Kameron Carter | 272 Acknowledgments | 313 List of Contributors | 315

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Book SynopsisThis text presents a major analysis of the foundation of Eric Voegelin's political science. The writings of Voegelin undertook in the 1940s provide the groundwork for this book.

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Book SynopsisThis volume confronts the disintegration of traditional sources of meaning and the correlative attempts to generate new sources from within the self. Voegelin allows the reader to contemplate the crisis in its starkest terms - as the apocalypse of man that seeks to replace the apocalypse of God.

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Book SynopsisAlthough his contributions to philosophy are revered and his writings have been collected, Eric Voegelin's persona can fade with the memories of those who knew him. This book preserves the human element of Voegelin by capturing those personal recollections. Through these recollections, it provides an understanding of the man himself.

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Book SynopsisMany studies have considered the Bible’s relationship to politics, but almost all have ignored the heart of its narrative and theology: the covenant. In this book, Glenn Moots explores the political meaning of covenants past and present by focusing on the theory and application of covenantal politics from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries.

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Book SynopsisThis edition of Plato’s Symposium provides a new and accurate translation, with a substantial commentary taking into account readers with no or little Greek. It treats the text as a work of serious philosophy, offering a fresh reading of a central and influential Platonic text. Greek text with facing translation, introduction and commentary.Table of ContentsPreface Introduction Symposium - Text and Translation Commentary Select Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisA classic Marxist study of jurisprudence theory from Marxist heavyweight.Trade Review'If any one book is going to accelerate the development of a Marxist criminology, then this is it' -- New Society

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Book SynopsisStates that Biblical apocalypse has nothing to do with a wrathful or vengeful God punishing his unworthy children, and everything to do with a foretelling of what future humans are making for themselves, with all the global self-destruction. This work also scrutinizes some of the major thinkers about the interpenetration of politics and religion.

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