Plastic Sovereignties

Plastic Sovereignties

Author: Arne De Boever

Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

Published: 2017-04-19

Total Pages: 416

ISBN-13: 0748684999

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Does sovereignty have a future in the 21st century?Through a sustained engagement with the work of the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben, and against the background of contemporary political phenomena, Arne De Boever explores what positive political possibilities the notion of sovereignty might still hold. Using the philosophy of Catherine Malabou, he argues that these possibilities reside in an aesthetic reconceptualisation of sovereignty as a plastic power that is able to give, receive and explode the forms of our political future.


Book Synopsis Plastic Sovereignties by : Arne De Boever

Download or read book Plastic Sovereignties written by Arne De Boever and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2017-04-19 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Does sovereignty have a future in the 21st century?Through a sustained engagement with the work of the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben, and against the background of contemporary political phenomena, Arne De Boever explores what positive political possibilities the notion of sovereignty might still hold. Using the philosophy of Catherine Malabou, he argues that these possibilities reside in an aesthetic reconceptualisation of sovereignty as a plastic power that is able to give, receive and explode the forms of our political future.

Viral Critique

Viral Critique

Author: Hannah Richter

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-09-25

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 1000964868

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This book brings together papers that employ postfoundational theory to critically investigate the social, political, economic and ecological dynamics and power structures that shaped Western democracies, non-Western societies and international politics during the COVID-19 pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted not only social relations and personal lives across the globe, but also the landscape of postfoundational theory. Giorgio Agamben, one of its most prominent figures, attracted harsh criticism for his suggestion that the pandemic was nothing but an invented tool of state power. In the face of a collectively experienced emergency, it seemed tempting to forgo critical questioning in favour of taking action on a manifestly real, viral threat. Resisting this temptation, this volume makes the case that COVID-19 has rendered postfoundational critique urgently necessary. The chapters collected here use postfoundational theory to unpack the pandemic’s global social event beyond dominant narratives of unprecedentedness, exception and necessity. The authors explore where the pandemic has actually altered political, social and economic dynamics. But they also highlight where divisions, inequalities and expropriation continued unchanged, or even reinforced, throughout and after the COVID-19 event. The chapters apply, scrutinise and re-work the writings of postfoundational thinkers from Jacques Derrida, Roberto Esposito and Gilles Deleuze to Jasbir Puar to both offer a better understanding of the pandemic’s social reality and to draw from it visions for a different post-pandemic future. Viral Critique will be a key resource for academics, researchers, and advanced students of Philosophy, Political Science, Sociology, Economics and Cultural Studies. The chapters included in this book were originally published as a special issue of Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory.


Book Synopsis Viral Critique by : Hannah Richter

Download or read book Viral Critique written by Hannah Richter and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-09-25 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book brings together papers that employ postfoundational theory to critically investigate the social, political, economic and ecological dynamics and power structures that shaped Western democracies, non-Western societies and international politics during the COVID-19 pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted not only social relations and personal lives across the globe, but also the landscape of postfoundational theory. Giorgio Agamben, one of its most prominent figures, attracted harsh criticism for his suggestion that the pandemic was nothing but an invented tool of state power. In the face of a collectively experienced emergency, it seemed tempting to forgo critical questioning in favour of taking action on a manifestly real, viral threat. Resisting this temptation, this volume makes the case that COVID-19 has rendered postfoundational critique urgently necessary. The chapters collected here use postfoundational theory to unpack the pandemic’s global social event beyond dominant narratives of unprecedentedness, exception and necessity. The authors explore where the pandemic has actually altered political, social and economic dynamics. But they also highlight where divisions, inequalities and expropriation continued unchanged, or even reinforced, throughout and after the COVID-19 event. The chapters apply, scrutinise and re-work the writings of postfoundational thinkers from Jacques Derrida, Roberto Esposito and Gilles Deleuze to Jasbir Puar to both offer a better understanding of the pandemic’s social reality and to draw from it visions for a different post-pandemic future. Viral Critique will be a key resource for academics, researchers, and advanced students of Philosophy, Political Science, Sociology, Economics and Cultural Studies. The chapters included in this book were originally published as a special issue of Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory.

Being Vulnerable

Being Vulnerable

Author: Arne De Boever

Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP

Published: 2023-02-15

Total Pages: 217

ISBN-13: 0228016304

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We are living in a time of acute vulnerability. From climate change to drone warfare, terrorist attacks to mass shootings, safe spaces to trigger warnings, not to mention the COVID-19 pandemic, homo vulnerabilis is once again coming to terms with the fact that it can be wounded, or even killed. Against such finitude, sovereignty is now reasserting itself as a political power that might save us from our ontological state. The irony is, of course, that such sovereignty – for example through camps, walls, police violence, or drones – is also the underlying, historical cause of many of our most intense contemporary experiences of vulnerabilization. Interrupting the dialectic by which sovereignty manages to be both the cause of our vulnerabilization and the phantasmatic tool of its prevention, in Being Vulnerable Arne De Boever explores how today’s experiences of vulnerabilization can be translated into a collective human power that dismantles the form of sovereignty that is producing this state of affairs. Focused on theories, paradigms, and alternative formations of sovereignty, Being Vulnerable reconsiders the tradition of thinking through a political concept in order to approach it anew.


Book Synopsis Being Vulnerable by : Arne De Boever

Download or read book Being Vulnerable written by Arne De Boever and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2023-02-15 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We are living in a time of acute vulnerability. From climate change to drone warfare, terrorist attacks to mass shootings, safe spaces to trigger warnings, not to mention the COVID-19 pandemic, homo vulnerabilis is once again coming to terms with the fact that it can be wounded, or even killed. Against such finitude, sovereignty is now reasserting itself as a political power that might save us from our ontological state. The irony is, of course, that such sovereignty – for example through camps, walls, police violence, or drones – is also the underlying, historical cause of many of our most intense contemporary experiences of vulnerabilization. Interrupting the dialectic by which sovereignty manages to be both the cause of our vulnerabilization and the phantasmatic tool of its prevention, in Being Vulnerable Arne De Boever explores how today’s experiences of vulnerabilization can be translated into a collective human power that dismantles the form of sovereignty that is producing this state of affairs. Focused on theories, paradigms, and alternative formations of sovereignty, Being Vulnerable reconsiders the tradition of thinking through a political concept in order to approach it anew.

Plastic Materialities

Plastic Materialities

Author: Brenna Bhandar

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2015-04-25

Total Pages: 334

ISBN-13: 0822375737

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Catherine Malabou's concept of plasticity has influenced and inspired scholars from across disciplines. The contributors to Plastic Materialities—whose fields include political philosophy, critical legal studies, social theory, literature, and philosophy—use Malabou's innovative combination of post-structuralism and neuroscience to evaluate the political implications of her work. They address, among other things, subjectivity, science, war, the malleability of sexuality, neoliberalism and economic theory, indigenous and racial politics, and the relationship between the human and non-human. Plastic Materialities also includes three essays by Malabou and an interview with her, all of which bring her work into conversation with issues of sovereignty, justice, and social order for the first time. Contributors. Brenna Bhandar, Silvana Carotenuto, Jonathan Goldberg-Hiller, Jairus Victor Grove, Catherine Kellogg, Catherine Malabou, Renisa Mawani, Fred Moten, Alain Pottage, Michael J. Shapiro, Alberto Toscano


Book Synopsis Plastic Materialities by : Brenna Bhandar

Download or read book Plastic Materialities written by Brenna Bhandar and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2015-04-25 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Catherine Malabou's concept of plasticity has influenced and inspired scholars from across disciplines. The contributors to Plastic Materialities—whose fields include political philosophy, critical legal studies, social theory, literature, and philosophy—use Malabou's innovative combination of post-structuralism and neuroscience to evaluate the political implications of her work. They address, among other things, subjectivity, science, war, the malleability of sexuality, neoliberalism and economic theory, indigenous and racial politics, and the relationship between the human and non-human. Plastic Materialities also includes three essays by Malabou and an interview with her, all of which bring her work into conversation with issues of sovereignty, justice, and social order for the first time. Contributors. Brenna Bhandar, Silvana Carotenuto, Jonathan Goldberg-Hiller, Jairus Victor Grove, Catherine Kellogg, Catherine Malabou, Renisa Mawani, Fred Moten, Alain Pottage, Michael J. Shapiro, Alberto Toscano

Unexceptional Politics

Unexceptional Politics

Author: Emily Apter

Publisher: Verso Books

Published: 2018-02-06

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 1784780855

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A new vision of politics “below the radar” One way to grasp the nature of politics is to understand the key terms in which it is discussed. Unexceptional Politics develops a political vocabulary drawn from a wide range of media (political fiction, art, film, and TV), highlighting the scams, imbroglios, information trafficking, brinkmanship, and parliamentary procedures that obstruct and block progressive politics. The book reviews and renews modes of thinking about micropolitics that counter notions of the “state of exception” embedded in theories of the “political” from Thomas Hobbes to Carl Schmitt. Emily Apter develops a critical model of politics behind the scenes, a politics that operates outside the norms of classical political theory. She focuses on micropolitics, defined as small events, happening in series, that often pass unnoticed yet disturb and interfere with the institutional structures of capitalist parliamentary systems, even as they secure their reproduction and longevity. Apter’s experimental glossary is arranged under headings that look at the apparently incidental, immaterial, and increasingly virtual practices of politicking: “obstruction,” “obstinacy,” “psychopolitics,” “managed life,” “serial politics.” Such terms frame an argument for taking stock of the realization that we really do not know what politics is, where it begins and ends, or how its micro-events should be described.


Book Synopsis Unexceptional Politics by : Emily Apter

Download or read book Unexceptional Politics written by Emily Apter and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2018-02-06 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new vision of politics “below the radar” One way to grasp the nature of politics is to understand the key terms in which it is discussed. Unexceptional Politics develops a political vocabulary drawn from a wide range of media (political fiction, art, film, and TV), highlighting the scams, imbroglios, information trafficking, brinkmanship, and parliamentary procedures that obstruct and block progressive politics. The book reviews and renews modes of thinking about micropolitics that counter notions of the “state of exception” embedded in theories of the “political” from Thomas Hobbes to Carl Schmitt. Emily Apter develops a critical model of politics behind the scenes, a politics that operates outside the norms of classical political theory. She focuses on micropolitics, defined as small events, happening in series, that often pass unnoticed yet disturb and interfere with the institutional structures of capitalist parliamentary systems, even as they secure their reproduction and longevity. Apter’s experimental glossary is arranged under headings that look at the apparently incidental, immaterial, and increasingly virtual practices of politicking: “obstruction,” “obstinacy,” “psychopolitics,” “managed life,” “serial politics.” Such terms frame an argument for taking stock of the realization that we really do not know what politics is, where it begins and ends, or how its micro-events should be described.

Being at Large

Being at Large

Author: Santiago Zabala

Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP

Published: 2020-04-16

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 0228003253

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Politicians and philosophers presenting themselves as the ultimate bearers of truth and reality have created unprecedented technological, cultural, and political framings. This new order conspires to undermine the interpretive practices of open-ended critique, normalizing a sense of threat to preserve control. The greatest emergency has become the absence of emergencies. Tracing an intellectual alliance between academics such as Jordan Peterson and Christina Hoff Sommers and right-wing populist politicians such as Donald Trump and Marine Le Pen, this book denounces framings that make a claim to objectivity. With the help of contemporary thinkers including Bruno Latour, Judith Butler, and Giorgio Agamben, as well as discussion of the Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Christopher Wylie and the emergency of biodiversity loss due to climate change, Santiago Zabala illustrates that the twenty-first-century question is not whether we can be free, but how to be at large - unconstrained by the new realist order. Being at Large demonstrates the anarchic power of hermeneutics, calling for interpretive disruptions of the authoritarian narrative as a way of reclaiming freedom in the age of alternative facts.


Book Synopsis Being at Large by : Santiago Zabala

Download or read book Being at Large written by Santiago Zabala and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2020-04-16 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Politicians and philosophers presenting themselves as the ultimate bearers of truth and reality have created unprecedented technological, cultural, and political framings. This new order conspires to undermine the interpretive practices of open-ended critique, normalizing a sense of threat to preserve control. The greatest emergency has become the absence of emergencies. Tracing an intellectual alliance between academics such as Jordan Peterson and Christina Hoff Sommers and right-wing populist politicians such as Donald Trump and Marine Le Pen, this book denounces framings that make a claim to objectivity. With the help of contemporary thinkers including Bruno Latour, Judith Butler, and Giorgio Agamben, as well as discussion of the Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Christopher Wylie and the emergency of biodiversity loss due to climate change, Santiago Zabala illustrates that the twenty-first-century question is not whether we can be free, but how to be at large - unconstrained by the new realist order. Being at Large demonstrates the anarchic power of hermeneutics, calling for interpretive disruptions of the authoritarian narrative as a way of reclaiming freedom in the age of alternative facts.

Against Aesthetic Exceptionalism

Against Aesthetic Exceptionalism

Author: Arne De Boever

Publisher: U of Minnesota Press

Published: 2019-06-11

Total Pages: 133

ISBN-13: 1452962200

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Reconsiders exceptionalism between aesthetics and politics Here, Arne De Boever proposes the notion of aesthetic exceptionalism to describe the widespread belief that art and artists are exceptional. Against Aesthetic Exceptionalism challenges that belief by focusing on the sovereign artist as genius, as well as the original artwork as the foundation of the art market. Engaging with sculpture, conceptual artwork, and painting by emerging and established artists, De Boever proposes a worldly, democratic notion of unexceptional art as an antidote to the problems of aesthetic exceptionalism. Forerunners: Ideas First Short books of thought-in-process scholarship, where intense analysis, questioning, and speculation take the lead


Book Synopsis Against Aesthetic Exceptionalism by : Arne De Boever

Download or read book Against Aesthetic Exceptionalism written by Arne De Boever and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2019-06-11 with total page 133 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reconsiders exceptionalism between aesthetics and politics Here, Arne De Boever proposes the notion of aesthetic exceptionalism to describe the widespread belief that art and artists are exceptional. Against Aesthetic Exceptionalism challenges that belief by focusing on the sovereign artist as genius, as well as the original artwork as the foundation of the art market. Engaging with sculpture, conceptual artwork, and painting by emerging and established artists, De Boever proposes a worldly, democratic notion of unexceptional art as an antidote to the problems of aesthetic exceptionalism. Forerunners: Ideas First Short books of thought-in-process scholarship, where intense analysis, questioning, and speculation take the lead

Imagined Sovereignties

Imagined Sovereignties

Author: Kevin Olson

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2016-04-15

Total Pages: 231

ISBN-13: 1107113237

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Imagined Sovereignties provokes new ways of imagining popular politics by critically examining the idea of 'the power of the people'.


Book Synopsis Imagined Sovereignties by : Kevin Olson

Download or read book Imagined Sovereignties written by Kevin Olson and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-04-15 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Imagined Sovereignties provokes new ways of imagining popular politics by critically examining the idea of 'the power of the people'.

The Sovereignty Game

The Sovereignty Game

Author: Will Hickey

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2020-02-12

Total Pages: 180

ISBN-13: 9811518882

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This book explores the change and continuity in the idea of the nation state. Since the Westphalian treaties and the political thought of Thomas Hobbes, the nation state has been the denominator of all geopolitics. In an era of populism, economic globalization, digitalization, and the Chinese party-state, scholars of sovereignty have been struggling to understand whether the nation-state remains relevant as a necessary heuristic. This book will be of interest to scholars, policymakers, investors, and citizens navigating a fast-changing world.


Book Synopsis The Sovereignty Game by : Will Hickey

Download or read book The Sovereignty Game written by Will Hickey and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-02-12 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the change and continuity in the idea of the nation state. Since the Westphalian treaties and the political thought of Thomas Hobbes, the nation state has been the denominator of all geopolitics. In an era of populism, economic globalization, digitalization, and the Chinese party-state, scholars of sovereignty have been struggling to understand whether the nation-state remains relevant as a necessary heuristic. This book will be of interest to scholars, policymakers, investors, and citizens navigating a fast-changing world.

The Plastic Turn

The Plastic Turn

Author: Ranjan Ghosh

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2022-11-15

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 1501766287

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The Plastic Turn offers a novel way of looking at plastic as the defining material of our age and at the plasticity of plastic as an innovative means of understanding the arts and literature. Ranjan Ghosh terms this approach the material-aesthetic and, through this concept, traces the emergence and development of plastic polymers along the same historical trajectory as literary modernism. Plastic's growth as a product in the culture industry, its formation through multiple application and chemical syntheses, and its circulation via oceanic movements, Ghosh argues, correspond with, and offers novel insights into, developments in modernist literature and critical theory. Through innovative readings of canonical modernist texts, analyses of art works, and accounts of plastic's devastating environmental impact, The Plastic Turn proposes plastic's unique properties and destructive ubiquity as a "theory machine" to explain literature and life in the Anthropocene. Introducing several new concepts (like plastic literature, plastic literary, etc.) into critical-humanist discourse, Ghosh enmeshes literature and theory, materiality and philosophy, history and ecology, to explore why plastic as a substance and as an idea intrigues, disturbs, and haunts us.


Book Synopsis The Plastic Turn by : Ranjan Ghosh

Download or read book The Plastic Turn written by Ranjan Ghosh and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2022-11-15 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Plastic Turn offers a novel way of looking at plastic as the defining material of our age and at the plasticity of plastic as an innovative means of understanding the arts and literature. Ranjan Ghosh terms this approach the material-aesthetic and, through this concept, traces the emergence and development of plastic polymers along the same historical trajectory as literary modernism. Plastic's growth as a product in the culture industry, its formation through multiple application and chemical syntheses, and its circulation via oceanic movements, Ghosh argues, correspond with, and offers novel insights into, developments in modernist literature and critical theory. Through innovative readings of canonical modernist texts, analyses of art works, and accounts of plastic's devastating environmental impact, The Plastic Turn proposes plastic's unique properties and destructive ubiquity as a "theory machine" to explain literature and life in the Anthropocene. Introducing several new concepts (like plastic literature, plastic literary, etc.) into critical-humanist discourse, Ghosh enmeshes literature and theory, materiality and philosophy, history and ecology, to explore why plastic as a substance and as an idea intrigues, disturbs, and haunts us.