Description
Book SynopsisMichael J. Shapiro formulates a new politics of aesthetics by analyzing the experience of the sublime as rendered by a number of artistic and cultural texts that deal with race, terrorism, nuclear proliferation, and industrialism, showing how the sublime's disruptive effects provides the opportunity for a new oppositional politics.
Trade Review"The book is lean and not overly theoretically dense. It will appeal to the critically inclined for its original appropriation of Kant and intelligent commentary on temporality and politics . . . What is most striking and enduring about the work is that Shapiro seems to have offered the first figuration of a novel way to theorize individual and collective trauma as political without relying on a primary psychoanalytic dimension or its correlate literatures." -- Mat Keel * AAG Review of Books *
"After reading Michael J. Shapiro’s book, I was hardpressed to imagine a more timely work in political theory. . . . The
Political Sublime is not only timely but also the equal of the best examples of recent scholarship in the growing field of politics and aesthetics." -- Morton Schoolman * Perspectives on Politics *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix
Introduction. The Insistence of the Sublime1
1. When the Earth Moves: Toward a Political Sublime 13
2. The Racial Sublime 41
3. The Nuclear Sublime 68
4. The Industrial Sublime 101
5. The 9/11 Terror Sublime 133
Afterword. It's All About Duration 169
Notes 173
Bibliography 193
Index 209
