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"Timely and well conceived.""--Ernesto Laclau, University of Essex" At the cutting edge of political theory, this first volume in the "Taking on the Political Series" reflects the conceptual foundations of the series, opening up space to the political by engaging in and redefining polemics. In recognition of the collapse of the traditional belief in strong foundations for the political domain and the ungrounding of politics generally, the authors introduce and map the concept of afoundationalism while tackling such themes as social structure, ethical argumentation and political organization. Provocative and engaging, this book will change ways of thinking about and approaching political theory both in teaching and research.

Numbers and politics are inter-related at almost every level - be it the abstract geometry of understandings of territory, the explosion of population statistics and measures of economic standards, the popularity of Utilitarianism, Rawlsian notions of justice, the notion of value, or simply the very idea of political science. Time and space are reduced to co-ordinates, illustrating a very real take on the political: a way of measuring and controlling it.This book engages with the relation between politics and number through a reading, exegesis and critique of the work of Martin Heidegger. The importance of mathematics and the role played by the understandings of calculation is a recurrent concern in his writing and is regularly contrasted with understandings of speech and language. This book provides the most detailed analysis of the relation between language, politics and mathematics in Heidegger's work. It insists that questions of language and calculation in Heidegger are inherently political, and that a far broader range of his work is concerned with politics than is usually admitted.Key Features:*A unique introduction to the political dimension of Heidegger's work, opening it up to a wider audience*Offers an original exploration of the relationship between language, mathematics and politics in Heidegger's thinking*Shows how questions of politics and calculation are inter-related in modern conceptions of the politicalBooks in the series are...Valentine and Arditi Polemicization Shapiro Cinematic Political ThoughtChambers Untimely PoliticsElden Speaking Against NumberBowman Post-Marxism Versus Cultural StudiesMarchart Post-Foundational Political ThoughtLittle Democratic Piety

Through proving its philosophical context, lineage and political import, Christian Gilliam shows that immanence is necessary understanding politics and resistance.

This book presents an innovative analysis of the nature of democratic theory, focusing on the prevalence of pious discourses of democracy in contemporary politics. Democracy is now promoted in religious terms to such an extent that it has become sacrosanct in Western political theory. This book argues that such piety relies on unsophisticated political analysis paying scant attention to the complex conditions of contemporary politics. The contention is that it is more useful to think of democracy in terms of the centrality of political disagreement and its propensity to generate political violence. This argument is exemplified by the ways in which democracy and violence have been conceptualised in the war on terrorism.

Post-Marxism versus Cultural Studies is an innovative exploration of the ethical and political significance of Cultural Studies and Post-Marxist discourse theory. It argues that although Cultural Studies and post-Marxism tend to present themselves as distinct entities, they actually share a project - that of taking on the political. Post-Marxism presents itself as having a developed theory of political strategy, while Cultural Studies has claimed to be both practical and political. Bowman examines these intertwined, overlapping, controversial and contested claims and orientations by way of a deconstructive reading that is led by the question of intervention: what is the intervention of post-Marxism, of Cultural Studies, of each into the other, and into other institutional and political contexts and scenes?Through considerations of key aspects of Cultural Studies and cultural theory, Post-Marxism versus Cultural Studies argues that the very thing that is fundamental to both of these 'politicised' app

In Cinematic Political Thought, Michael J. Shapiro investigates aspects of contemporary politics and articulates a critical philosophical perspective with politically disposed treatments of contemporary cinema. Reading such films as "Hoop Dreams, Lone Star, Father of the Bride II "and "To Live and Die in LA "through the lens of Deleuze, Derrida, Foucault and Lyotard, Shapiro demonstrates what it can mean to think the political both in terms of cinema studies and in wider aesthetic and social contexts.Cinematic Political Thought is a polemical work, aimed at encouraging critical, ethical and political thinking. Its breadth of theoretical scope and empirical reference, and the innovative style of presentation will make it vital reading for anyone with an interest in the conjunction of culture and politics.

Shame proposes a new form of political action that shows how 19th century activists denaturalise conventional beliefs about sexuality and gender, and challenge strong asymmetries of power.

This book examines the historical emergence of the council system in Russia and Germany by the end of the First World War, reconstructing the intellectual history of the council democracy in 20th century political theory.

Nathan Coombs demonstrates that the Marxist science of history has been reimagined by a strand of contemporary French theory after Louis Althusser. Taking a comparative approach, he explores the technical details of both traditions' historical sciences. He argues that their articulations of history and event affect how we approach political transformation and view the role of theoreticians in political practice. Coombs establishes the continuities and discontinuities between classical Marxism and Althusserian theory, bringing you new readings of Hegel, Marx, Lenin, Althusser, Badiou, Meillassoux and complexity theory.

Challenging the linear view of history which confines or predetermines the outcome of politics, this book argues for an 'untimely' politics, rendering the past problematic and the future unpredictable.

The distinctive feature of this book is its ingenious argumentative strategy: it takes on the political by developing a practice and a thought the authors call 'polemicization'.

Makes the case for the rediscovery of British philosopher Gillian Rose's unique but neglected voiceKate Schick explains the core themes of Gillian Rose's work. She engages with the work of Benjamin, Honig, Zizek and Butlerand locates Rose's ideas within central debates in contemporary social theory: trauma and memory, exclusion and difference, tragedy and messianic utopia. She shows how Rose's speculative perspective brings a different gaze to bear on debates, avoiding well-worn liberal, critical theoretic and post-structural positions.Gillian Rose draws on idiosyncratic readings of thinkers such as Hegel, Adorno and Kierkegaard to underpin her philosophy, refusing to privilege the particular over the universal. While of the left, she is sharply critical of much left-wing thought, insisting that it shirks the work of coming to know and taking political risk in the hope that we might find a 'good enough justice'.

What would political thought look like without the foundation of ethics? Drawing on the work of Emmanuel Levinas, Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Nancy, Madeleine Fagan puts forward a radical and far-reaching refusal of foundational ethics. Instead, she proposes an account of the inseparability of ethics and politics.

This is a wide-ranging overview of the emergence of post-foundationalism and a survey of the work of its key contemporary exponents.

This book has two aims: to offer a series of investigations into aspects of contemporary politics such as race, nation and gender; and to articulate a critical philosophical perspective with politically disposed treatments of contemporary cinema.

Mustafa Dikec reveals the aesthetic premises that underlie Hannah Arendt, Jean-Luc Nancy and Jacques Ranciere's political thinking, and demonstrates how their politics depend on the construction and apprehension of worlds through spatial forms and distributions. Exploring these dimensions of the political, he argues that politics is about how perceive and relate to the world. Space is a form of appearance and a mode of actuality, and the disruption of such forms and modes is the sublime element in politics.