Description
Book SynopsisPolitics of Withdrawal considers the significance of practices and theories of withdrawal for radical thinking today. With contributions of major theorists in the fields of contemporary political philosophy, cultural studies and media studies, the chapters investigate the multiple contexts, possibilities and impasses of political withdrawal – from the radical to the seemingly mundane – and reflect a range of case studies varying from the political thinking of Debord, the Invisible Committee, Moten and Harney, feminist notions of ‘strike’ and ‘exit’, and indigenous forms of sabotage, to the individual retreat as means of reconfiguring political subjectivity. It looks at technological failure as disconnection from surveillance, and from alternative financial futures to contemporary ‘pharmako-politics.’
The volume provides a vital grip on a key notion in contemporary radical politics, in all its complexity, contradictions and tribulations.
Table of ContentsIntroduction: Towards a Politics of Withdrawal?
Pepita Hesselberth and Joost de Bloois
Chapter 1
Can the Internet be turned off? Infrastructures of Dis-Disconnectivity
Florian Sprenger
Chapter 2
Assemblages of Withdrawal
Clare Birchall
Chapter 3
“You Saw the Cactus Bloom”: On the Impossibility of Withdrawal from You
Mél Hogan
Chapter 4
Proof-of-Withdrawal: Finance in the Undercommons
Erik Bordeleau
Chapter 5
Melancholic Retreat: Narratives of Withdrawal in Contemporary Political Theory
Joost de Bloois
Chapter 6
W for Withdrawal: Or, Politics without Personhood
Yasco Horsman
Chapter 7
A Parallel Art of Living
Elena Loizidou
Chapter 8
Withdrawal Symptoms: Refusal, Sabotage, Suspension
Darin Barney
Chapter 9
Withdrawal as Exodus and Strike. Political Strategies for a Presentist Democracy
Isabell Lorey
Chapter 10
On Leaving Academia and the Need to Take Refuge
Pepita Hesselberth
Chapter 11
Detox Politics: Thinking-Healing the Retreat of the Public
Bernard Stiegler and Gerald Moore
Coda: Staying Power
Sarah Sharma
Contributors
Index
