Benjamin Noys
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748638635
- eISBN:
- 9780748671915
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748638635.003.0005
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Political Philosophy
Antonio Negri has presented one of the most convincing articulations of affirmation as necessary to the constitution of a radical communist politics. In this chapter his work on political ontology ...
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Antonio Negri has presented one of the most convincing articulations of affirmation as necessary to the constitution of a radical communist politics. In this chapter his work on political ontology and his vitalist politics of the powers of ‘Life’ as excess is critiqued through attention to the traces of the negative that remain. Focusing particularly on Negri’s work on art an engagement with the necessity of negation to the process of creation and production can be recovered from his work. Also, this chapter sharpens the critique of Negri’s recourse to an affirmative concept of the ‘multitude’ as political agent. While claiming a radical political agenda Negri’s theorisation remains problematically dependent on the capitalist categories – creation, production, the immeasurable – it aims to exceed.Less
Antonio Negri has presented one of the most convincing articulations of affirmation as necessary to the constitution of a radical communist politics. In this chapter his work on political ontology and his vitalist politics of the powers of ‘Life’ as excess is critiqued through attention to the traces of the negative that remain. Focusing particularly on Negri’s work on art an engagement with the necessity of negation to the process of creation and production can be recovered from his work. Also, this chapter sharpens the critique of Negri’s recourse to an affirmative concept of the ‘multitude’ as political agent. While claiming a radical political agenda Negri’s theorisation remains problematically dependent on the capitalist categories – creation, production, the immeasurable – it aims to exceed.
Patrick R. Mullen
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199746699
- eISBN:
- 9780199950270
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199746699.003.0000
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
The introduction elaborates the key concepts of the book: homosexuality, value, and labor. It contextualizes the importance of these concepts for modern Irish history and culture. Furthermore, it ...
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The introduction elaborates the key concepts of the book: homosexuality, value, and labor. It contextualizes the importance of these concepts for modern Irish history and culture. Furthermore, it argues that the study brings together currently alienated critical discussions that both trace themselves to Foucault’s History of Sexuality: queer theory that has developed from Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s reading of Foucault and studies of empire engaged with the work of Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt. The chapter makes connections among queer theory, Irish studies, modernist studies, and theories of empire.Less
The introduction elaborates the key concepts of the book: homosexuality, value, and labor. It contextualizes the importance of these concepts for modern Irish history and culture. Furthermore, it argues that the study brings together currently alienated critical discussions that both trace themselves to Foucault’s History of Sexuality: queer theory that has developed from Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s reading of Foucault and studies of empire engaged with the work of Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt. The chapter makes connections among queer theory, Irish studies, modernist studies, and theories of empire.
Patrick R. Mullen
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199746699
- eISBN:
- 9780199950270
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199746699.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
The chapter shows how Oscar Wilde sets in motion the discourses of sexuality, debates about aesthetic and economic value, and theorization of history that the study engages. In particular it reads ...
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The chapter shows how Oscar Wilde sets in motion the discourses of sexuality, debates about aesthetic and economic value, and theorization of history that the study engages. In particular it reads “The Portrait of Mr. W. H.” and “The Soul of Man under Socialism” in conjunction with Karl Marx’s theory of value and Antonio Negri’s work on affective labor. The chapter argues that Wilde allows us to think about the political and social dimensions of aesthetic value in ways that prefigure Negri’s work on the contemporary production of affective value. The reading of Wilde and Negri is a prime example of the study’s original coordination of Irish and modernist studies, queer theory, and post-Marxist theories of value and the aesthetic.Less
The chapter shows how Oscar Wilde sets in motion the discourses of sexuality, debates about aesthetic and economic value, and theorization of history that the study engages. In particular it reads “The Portrait of Mr. W. H.” and “The Soul of Man under Socialism” in conjunction with Karl Marx’s theory of value and Antonio Negri’s work on affective labor. The chapter argues that Wilde allows us to think about the political and social dimensions of aesthetic value in ways that prefigure Negri’s work on the contemporary production of affective value. The reading of Wilde and Negri is a prime example of the study’s original coordination of Irish and modernist studies, queer theory, and post-Marxist theories of value and the aesthetic.
Julian Reid
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719074059
- eISBN:
- 9781781701676
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719074059.003.0006
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory
This chapter pursues the problem of what life is and what life may become outside of its capture within the forms of logistical order promoted in the name of a War on Terror, through recourse to the ...
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This chapter pursues the problem of what life is and what life may become outside of its capture within the forms of logistical order promoted in the name of a War on Terror, through recourse to the work of two of the most currently influential of all Foucauldian thinkers, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. What defines the work of Hardt and Negri, and certainly what has helped make their work so popular in recent years, is their attempt to reconstitute the historical tradition of refusal of and resistance to the logistical ordering of liberal societies. The chapter is organized as follows. One section provides an account of the development of the theory of the war of the multitude as it occurs in Negri's political thought. The text then examines how this contributes to the more recent account of Hardt and Negri's conceptualisation of the ‘two wars of liberal modernity’ through which, as they argue, the antagonistic relationship between the multitude and liberal regimes has developed. The final section addresses the problem of how this antagonism has been complicated by the emergence of Terror as a resistance to liberal regimes, and the question of whether Hardt and Negri are able to usefully distinguish their account of the contemporary character of the war of the multitude from it.Less
This chapter pursues the problem of what life is and what life may become outside of its capture within the forms of logistical order promoted in the name of a War on Terror, through recourse to the work of two of the most currently influential of all Foucauldian thinkers, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. What defines the work of Hardt and Negri, and certainly what has helped make their work so popular in recent years, is their attempt to reconstitute the historical tradition of refusal of and resistance to the logistical ordering of liberal societies. The chapter is organized as follows. One section provides an account of the development of the theory of the war of the multitude as it occurs in Negri's political thought. The text then examines how this contributes to the more recent account of Hardt and Negri's conceptualisation of the ‘two wars of liberal modernity’ through which, as they argue, the antagonistic relationship between the multitude and liberal regimes has developed. The final section addresses the problem of how this antagonism has been complicated by the emergence of Terror as a resistance to liberal regimes, and the question of whether Hardt and Negri are able to usefully distinguish their account of the contemporary character of the war of the multitude from it.
Ingrid Diran
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474423632
- eISBN:
- 9781474438520
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474423632.003.0029
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Political Philosophy
Agamben describes his posture as a reader as one of seeking a text’s Entwicklungsfähigkeit, or capacity for elaboration.1 In examining Agamben’s practices of reading, we can attend to the opposite ...
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Agamben describes his posture as a reader as one of seeking a text’s Entwicklungsfähigkeit, or capacity for elaboration.1 In examining Agamben’s practices of reading, we can attend to the opposite phenomenon: the counter-elaboration that a text, in having being read by the philosopher, performs upon Agamben’s own thought. This reciprocal elaboration might constitute a paradigm for Agamben’s use of reading, according to his own idiosyncratic definition of use as an event in the middle voice, in which (according to a definition of Benveniste) the subject ‘effects an action only in affecting itself (il effectue en s’affectant)’ (UB 28). With this definition in mind, we could say that Agamben effects a text (he writes) only to the extent that he is also affected by another text (he reads). This is why Agamben’s position as a reader proves particularly important to any assessment of his work, quite aside from the problem of influence or intellectual genealogy. For this same reason, however, assessing Agamben’s relation to Antonio Negri – a figure with whom, by most measures, he is at odds – poses an unexpected challenge: how can Agamben’s thought be a use of Negri? Answering this question means not only assessing the critical distance between the two thinkers, but also taking this distance as a measure, in the Spinozan sense, of mutual affection.Less
Agamben describes his posture as a reader as one of seeking a text’s Entwicklungsfähigkeit, or capacity for elaboration.1 In examining Agamben’s practices of reading, we can attend to the opposite phenomenon: the counter-elaboration that a text, in having being read by the philosopher, performs upon Agamben’s own thought. This reciprocal elaboration might constitute a paradigm for Agamben’s use of reading, according to his own idiosyncratic definition of use as an event in the middle voice, in which (according to a definition of Benveniste) the subject ‘effects an action only in affecting itself (il effectue en s’affectant)’ (UB 28). With this definition in mind, we could say that Agamben effects a text (he writes) only to the extent that he is also affected by another text (he reads). This is why Agamben’s position as a reader proves particularly important to any assessment of his work, quite aside from the problem of influence or intellectual genealogy. For this same reason, however, assessing Agamben’s relation to Antonio Negri – a figure with whom, by most measures, he is at odds – poses an unexpected challenge: how can Agamben’s thought be a use of Negri? Answering this question means not only assessing the critical distance between the two thinkers, but also taking this distance as a measure, in the Spinozan sense, of mutual affection.
Jon Beasley-Murray
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816647149
- eISBN:
- 9781452945941
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816647149.003.0006
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Latin American Studies
This concluding chapter examines the concept of multitude within the context of posthegemony by focusing on Peronism in Argentina, Sendero Luminoso in Peru, national liberation struggles in Central ...
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This concluding chapter examines the concept of multitude within the context of posthegemony by focusing on Peronism in Argentina, Sendero Luminoso in Peru, national liberation struggles in Central America, and new social movements in Chile. Drawing on Antonio Negri’s notion of multitude, it considers the physiognomy of the Latin American multitude and how a theory of posthegemony reframes analysis of the region. It also discusses the relationship of constituent to constituted power, and therefore the double inscription of power in posthegemony, as well as the points at which that constitution starts to dissolve. It suggests that multitude goes against the dominant tradition of modern political philosophy that, according to Negri, is represented by Thomas Hobbes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Finally, the chapter looks at Negri’s “theory of the political composition of subjectivity” based on Benedict de Spinoza’s “constitutive ontology”.Less
This concluding chapter examines the concept of multitude within the context of posthegemony by focusing on Peronism in Argentina, Sendero Luminoso in Peru, national liberation struggles in Central America, and new social movements in Chile. Drawing on Antonio Negri’s notion of multitude, it considers the physiognomy of the Latin American multitude and how a theory of posthegemony reframes analysis of the region. It also discusses the relationship of constituent to constituted power, and therefore the double inscription of power in posthegemony, as well as the points at which that constitution starts to dissolve. It suggests that multitude goes against the dominant tradition of modern political philosophy that, according to Negri, is represented by Thomas Hobbes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Finally, the chapter looks at Negri’s “theory of the political composition of subjectivity” based on Benedict de Spinoza’s “constitutive ontology”.
Nicholas Thoburn
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748623419
- eISBN:
- 9780748652389
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748623419.003.0002
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
This chapter offers a complementary analysis that seeks to identify the limits of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's Gilles Deleuze-inspired political theses. It criticises Hardt and Negri's concept ...
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This chapter offers a complementary analysis that seeks to identify the limits of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's Gilles Deleuze-inspired political theses. It criticises Hardt and Negri's concept of the multitude and introduces the problem of political composition in the context of communist politics, addressing the minor politics operating through the vacuoles of non-communication. The chapter investigates how politics can be rescued from the musty corners of self-referentiality and begins to engage the social once more.Less
This chapter offers a complementary analysis that seeks to identify the limits of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's Gilles Deleuze-inspired political theses. It criticises Hardt and Negri's concept of the multitude and introduces the problem of political composition in the context of communist politics, addressing the minor politics operating through the vacuoles of non-communication. The chapter investigates how politics can be rescued from the musty corners of self-referentiality and begins to engage the social once more.
Jana Evans Braziel
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781496812742
- eISBN:
- 9781496812780
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496812742.003.0003
- Subject:
- Sociology, Culture
This chapter addresses the question of modernity in Haiti—first as political project and then as artistic production—by examining the quintessential theorists of a seemingly belated modernity in this ...
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This chapter addresses the question of modernity in Haiti—first as political project and then as artistic production—by examining the quintessential theorists of a seemingly belated modernity in this presumably postmodernist moment: Jürgen Habermas, Arjun Appadurai, and Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. It studies the Habermasian and Appaduraian parameters of modernity—as an “unfinished project” and as postcolonial globalization, respectively—before considering Hardt and Negri's important delineations of altermodernity as a model for thinking about Haitian and Port-au-Princian politics. The Habermasian position on reason, rationality, truth, and values is that these categories remain the guiding principles of modernity, but they must be rethought and reconceptualized anew through an altered understanding of subjects and subjectivity. Meanwhile, Appadurai states that “modernity belongs to that small family of theories that both declares and desires universal applicability for itself,” which “aspired to create persons who would, after the fact, have wished to have become modern.”Less
This chapter addresses the question of modernity in Haiti—first as political project and then as artistic production—by examining the quintessential theorists of a seemingly belated modernity in this presumably postmodernist moment: Jürgen Habermas, Arjun Appadurai, and Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. It studies the Habermasian and Appaduraian parameters of modernity—as an “unfinished project” and as postcolonial globalization, respectively—before considering Hardt and Negri's important delineations of altermodernity as a model for thinking about Haitian and Port-au-Princian politics. The Habermasian position on reason, rationality, truth, and values is that these categories remain the guiding principles of modernity, but they must be rethought and reconceptualized anew through an altered understanding of subjects and subjectivity. Meanwhile, Appadurai states that “modernity belongs to that small family of theories that both declares and desires universal applicability for itself,” which “aspired to create persons who would, after the fact, have wished to have become modern.”
Antonio Negri
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231146821
- eISBN:
- 9780231519427
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231146821.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Political Philosophy
This book is both a systematic inquiry into the development of Vladimir Lenin’s thought and an encapsulation of a critical shift in theoretical trajectory of its author, Antonio Negri. It is the last ...
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This book is both a systematic inquiry into the development of Vladimir Lenin’s thought and an encapsulation of a critical shift in theoretical trajectory of its author, Antonio Negri. It is the last of Negri’s major political works to be translated into English. It explains that Lenin is the only prominent politician of the modern era to seriously question the “withering away” and “extinction” of the state, and that, like Karl Marx, he recognized the link between capitalism and modern sovereignty and the need to destroy capitalism and reconfigure the state. The book refrains from portraying Lenin as a ferocious dictator enforcing the proletariat’s reappropriation of wealth, nor does it depict him as a mere military tool of a vanguard opposed to the Ancien Régime. Instead, the book champions Leninism’s ability to adapt to different working-class configurations in Russia, China, Latin America and elsewhere. It argues that Lenin developed a new political figuration in and beyond modernity and an effective organization capable of absorbing different historical conditions. The book ultimately urges readers to recognize both the universal application of Leninism today and its potential to institutionally—not anarchically—dismantle centralized power.Less
This book is both a systematic inquiry into the development of Vladimir Lenin’s thought and an encapsulation of a critical shift in theoretical trajectory of its author, Antonio Negri. It is the last of Negri’s major political works to be translated into English. It explains that Lenin is the only prominent politician of the modern era to seriously question the “withering away” and “extinction” of the state, and that, like Karl Marx, he recognized the link between capitalism and modern sovereignty and the need to destroy capitalism and reconfigure the state. The book refrains from portraying Lenin as a ferocious dictator enforcing the proletariat’s reappropriation of wealth, nor does it depict him as a mere military tool of a vanguard opposed to the Ancien Régime. Instead, the book champions Leninism’s ability to adapt to different working-class configurations in Russia, China, Latin America and elsewhere. It argues that Lenin developed a new political figuration in and beyond modernity and an effective organization capable of absorbing different historical conditions. The book ultimately urges readers to recognize both the universal application of Leninism today and its potential to institutionally—not anarchically—dismantle centralized power.
Joel Nickels
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816676088
- eISBN:
- 9781452947716
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816676088.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This book challenges the conventional image of modernism as a socially phobic formation, arguing that modernism’s abstractions and difficulties are ways of imagining unrealized powers of collective ...
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This book challenges the conventional image of modernism as a socially phobic formation, arguing that modernism’s abstractions and difficulties are ways of imagining unrealized powers of collective self-organization. Establishing a conceptual continuum between modernism and contemporary theorists such as Paulo Virno, Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri, and Alain Badiou, this book rediscovers modernism’s attempts to document the creative potenza of the multitude. By examining scenes of collective life in works by William Carlos Williams, Wyndham Lewis, Laura Riding, and Wallace Stevens, this book resurrects modernism’s obsession with constituent power: the raw, indeterminate capacity for reciprocal counsel that continually constitutes and reconstitutes established political regimes. In doing so, it reminds us that our own attempts to imagine leaderless networks of collective initiative are not so much breaks with modernist forms of knowledge as restagings of some of modernism’s most radical moments of political speculation.Less
This book challenges the conventional image of modernism as a socially phobic formation, arguing that modernism’s abstractions and difficulties are ways of imagining unrealized powers of collective self-organization. Establishing a conceptual continuum between modernism and contemporary theorists such as Paulo Virno, Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri, and Alain Badiou, this book rediscovers modernism’s attempts to document the creative potenza of the multitude. By examining scenes of collective life in works by William Carlos Williams, Wyndham Lewis, Laura Riding, and Wallace Stevens, this book resurrects modernism’s obsession with constituent power: the raw, indeterminate capacity for reciprocal counsel that continually constitutes and reconstitutes established political regimes. In doing so, it reminds us that our own attempts to imagine leaderless networks of collective initiative are not so much breaks with modernist forms of knowledge as restagings of some of modernism’s most radical moments of political speculation.
Adrian Little and Moya Lloyd
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748633999
- eISBN:
- 9780748652723
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748633999.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, Democratization
This book addresses the idea of radical democracy and, in particular, its poststructuralist articulation. It analyses the approach to radical democracy taken by a number of contemporary theorists and ...
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This book addresses the idea of radical democracy and, in particular, its poststructuralist articulation. It analyses the approach to radical democracy taken by a number of contemporary theorists and political commentators, including Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Judith Butler, William Connolly, Jacques Ranciére, Claude Lefort, Sheldon Wolin, Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri and Giorgio Agamben. By examining critically the accounts of democracy advanced by these theorists, the book explores how a more radically conceived theory of democracy might be extended in a more egalitarian and inclusive direction. It draws on the insights of radical democratic theory to explore a range of concrete political cases (e.g. the struggles of indigenous people, same-sex marriage, societies emerging from prolonged social and political strife, and the role of social movements in opposing processes of globalistion) in order to illustrate its practical nature.Less
This book addresses the idea of radical democracy and, in particular, its poststructuralist articulation. It analyses the approach to radical democracy taken by a number of contemporary theorists and political commentators, including Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Judith Butler, William Connolly, Jacques Ranciére, Claude Lefort, Sheldon Wolin, Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri and Giorgio Agamben. By examining critically the accounts of democracy advanced by these theorists, the book explores how a more radically conceived theory of democracy might be extended in a more egalitarian and inclusive direction. It draws on the insights of radical democratic theory to explore a range of concrete political cases (e.g. the struggles of indigenous people, same-sex marriage, societies emerging from prolonged social and political strife, and the role of social movements in opposing processes of globalistion) in order to illustrate its practical nature.
Christopher Breu
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816688913
- eISBN:
- 9781452949178
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816688913.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This book engages with recent theories of materiality and biopolitics to provide a radical reinterpretation of experimental fiction in the second half of the twentieth century. In contrast to ...
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This book engages with recent theories of materiality and biopolitics to provide a radical reinterpretation of experimental fiction in the second half of the twentieth century. In contrast to readings that emphasize the metafictional qualities of these works, this book examines this literature’s focus on the material conditions of everyday life, from the body to built environments, and from ecosystems to economic production. The book rethinks contemporary understandings of biopolitics, affirming the importance of forms of materiality that refuse full socialization and resist symbolic manipulation. The text considers a range of novels that reflect questions of materiality in a biopolitical era, including William S. Burroughs’s Naked Lunch, Thomas Pynchon’s V., J. G. Ballard’s Crash, Dodie Bellamy’s The Letters of Mina Harker, and Leslie Marmon Silko’s Almanac of the Dead. Drawing from accounts of the emergence of immaterial production and biopolitics by Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben, Roberto Esposito, and Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, this book reveals the confrontational dimensions of materiality itself in a world devoted to the idea of its easy malleability and transcendence.Less
This book engages with recent theories of materiality and biopolitics to provide a radical reinterpretation of experimental fiction in the second half of the twentieth century. In contrast to readings that emphasize the metafictional qualities of these works, this book examines this literature’s focus on the material conditions of everyday life, from the body to built environments, and from ecosystems to economic production. The book rethinks contemporary understandings of biopolitics, affirming the importance of forms of materiality that refuse full socialization and resist symbolic manipulation. The text considers a range of novels that reflect questions of materiality in a biopolitical era, including William S. Burroughs’s Naked Lunch, Thomas Pynchon’s V., J. G. Ballard’s Crash, Dodie Bellamy’s The Letters of Mina Harker, and Leslie Marmon Silko’s Almanac of the Dead. Drawing from accounts of the emergence of immaterial production and biopolitics by Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben, Roberto Esposito, and Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, this book reveals the confrontational dimensions of materiality itself in a world devoted to the idea of its easy malleability and transcendence.
Dimitris Vardoulakis
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780823277391
- eISBN:
- 9780823280636
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823277391.003.0002
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory
This thesis shows that the dialectic of constituent and constituted power only ever leads to forms of sovereignty. Every negation of constituted power only ever leads to the re-emergence of ...
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This thesis shows that the dialectic of constituent and constituted power only ever leads to forms of sovereignty. Every negation of constituted power only ever leads to the re-emergence of sovereignty—or, what I call “the ruse of sovereignty.” Instead, it is more constructive to note the contrast between democracy and sovereignty implicit in a particular understanding of constituent power.Less
This thesis shows that the dialectic of constituent and constituted power only ever leads to forms of sovereignty. Every negation of constituted power only ever leads to the re-emergence of sovereignty—or, what I call “the ruse of sovereignty.” Instead, it is more constructive to note the contrast between democracy and sovereignty implicit in a particular understanding of constituent power.
William McCuaig
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231160469
- eISBN:
- 9780231500661
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231160469.003.0009
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Political Philosophy
This introductory chapter begins by discussing an interpretation of Baruch Spinoza in the book, The Savage Anomaly. According to that book, it is Spinoza who understood the energy that constructs ...
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This introductory chapter begins by discussing an interpretation of Baruch Spinoza in the book, The Savage Anomaly. According to that book, it is Spinoza who understood the energy that constructs modal singularities in absolute being; and who perceived the ontological unfolding of life forms and institutions. The reason for The Savage Anomaly's ability to impose a new perspective on the interpretation of Spinoza is that it was part of a wider process of renewal of the traditions of thought about transformation. It was included in the epistémè of innovation and revolution from 1968 that rebuilt the foundations of the science of mind. The chapter explains how Spinoza challenges all the paradigms of modern thought—he presents an alternative to the modern, not out of the potency of the individual, but out of the potency of the common and of love.Less
This introductory chapter begins by discussing an interpretation of Baruch Spinoza in the book, The Savage Anomaly. According to that book, it is Spinoza who understood the energy that constructs modal singularities in absolute being; and who perceived the ontological unfolding of life forms and institutions. The reason for The Savage Anomaly's ability to impose a new perspective on the interpretation of Spinoza is that it was part of a wider process of renewal of the traditions of thought about transformation. It was included in the epistémè of innovation and revolution from 1968 that rebuilt the foundations of the science of mind. The chapter explains how Spinoza challenges all the paradigms of modern thought—he presents an alternative to the modern, not out of the potency of the individual, but out of the potency of the common and of love.
Gianni Vattimo and Santiago Zabala
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231158039
- eISBN:
- 9780231528078
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231158039.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Political Philosophy
Having lost much of its political clout and theoretical power, communism no longer represents an appealing alternative to capitalism. In its original Marxist formulation, communism promised an ideal ...
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Having lost much of its political clout and theoretical power, communism no longer represents an appealing alternative to capitalism. In its original Marxist formulation, communism promised an ideal of development, but only through a logic of war, and while a number of reformist governments still promote this ideology, their legitimacy has steadily declined since the fall of the Berlin wall. Separating communism from its metaphysical foundations, which include an abiding faith in the immutable laws of history and an almost holy conception of the proletariat, this text recasts Marx's theories at a time when capitalism's metaphysical moorings—in technology, empire, and industrialization—are buckling. While Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri call for a return of the revolutionary left, this text expresses a fear that this would lead only to more violence and failed political policy. Instead, it adopts an antifoundationalist stance drawn from the hermeneutic thought of Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida, and Richard Rorty. Hermeneutic communism leaves aside the ideal of development and the general call for revolution; it relies on interpretation rather than truth and proves more flexible in different contexts. Hermeneutic communism motivates a resistance to capitalism's inequalities yet intervenes against violence.Less
Having lost much of its political clout and theoretical power, communism no longer represents an appealing alternative to capitalism. In its original Marxist formulation, communism promised an ideal of development, but only through a logic of war, and while a number of reformist governments still promote this ideology, their legitimacy has steadily declined since the fall of the Berlin wall. Separating communism from its metaphysical foundations, which include an abiding faith in the immutable laws of history and an almost holy conception of the proletariat, this text recasts Marx's theories at a time when capitalism's metaphysical moorings—in technology, empire, and industrialization—are buckling. While Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri call for a return of the revolutionary left, this text expresses a fear that this would lead only to more violence and failed political policy. Instead, it adopts an antifoundationalist stance drawn from the hermeneutic thought of Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida, and Richard Rorty. Hermeneutic communism leaves aside the ideal of development and the general call for revolution; it relies on interpretation rather than truth and proves more flexible in different contexts. Hermeneutic communism motivates a resistance to capitalism's inequalities yet intervenes against violence.
John T. Hamilton
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780226572826
- eISBN:
- 9780226572963
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226572963.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
The conjunction of Christ’s fleshly presence and its capacity to refer beyond itself corresponds very closely to the doubled aspect of poetic utterance, which generally maintains some tension between ...
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The conjunction of Christ’s fleshly presence and its capacity to refer beyond itself corresponds very closely to the doubled aspect of poetic utterance, which generally maintains some tension between language’s designative function and all the material and formal features that disrupt designation. The chapters below aim to think through, but also to think with, the profundity of these fleshly disruptions or intrusions. By attending to a highly selective— and in no way comprehensive— number of interventions from the fifteenth century to the present day, the readings offered here attempt to outline divergent approaches to the word- as- flesh, approaches that interrogate the tendency to overlook linguistic difference. Philologies of the flesh stall the reduction of verbal expression to semantic or designative functions alone, and thus refuse to rest content with instrumentalizing discourse. The noun logos is derived from the verb legein, which in the Homeric epics means to gather, to enumerate, to select, and consequently, in Attic Greek, to speak . The verb’s root is related to the Latin legere, which also primarily denotes to gather, to collect, and thus, to read out a select passage or simply to read , as in the modern Romance verbs for reading.Less
The conjunction of Christ’s fleshly presence and its capacity to refer beyond itself corresponds very closely to the doubled aspect of poetic utterance, which generally maintains some tension between language’s designative function and all the material and formal features that disrupt designation. The chapters below aim to think through, but also to think with, the profundity of these fleshly disruptions or intrusions. By attending to a highly selective— and in no way comprehensive— number of interventions from the fifteenth century to the present day, the readings offered here attempt to outline divergent approaches to the word- as- flesh, approaches that interrogate the tendency to overlook linguistic difference. Philologies of the flesh stall the reduction of verbal expression to semantic or designative functions alone, and thus refuse to rest content with instrumentalizing discourse. The noun logos is derived from the verb legein, which in the Homeric epics means to gather, to enumerate, to select, and consequently, in Attic Greek, to speak . The verb’s root is related to the Latin legere, which also primarily denotes to gather, to collect, and thus, to read out a select passage or simply to read , as in the modern Romance verbs for reading.
Nimer Sultany
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780198768890
- eISBN:
- 9780191822162
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198768890.003.0011
- Subject:
- Law, Constitutional and Administrative Law
This chapter argues that scholarly debates about constituent power presuppose a distinction between constituent power and constitutional form that is neither theoretically compelling nor practically ...
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This chapter argues that scholarly debates about constituent power presuppose a distinction between constituent power and constitutional form that is neither theoretically compelling nor practically illuminating. In contrast to constitutionalists, it argues that constituent power is inexhaustible, the revolution not being reducible to an event and thus constitution-making fails to terminate constituent power. In contrast to populists, it argues that constituent power does not operate in a constitutional vacuum because the judiciary imposes constitutional continuity through unwritten constitutional principles. The judiciary also polices will formation during revolutionary upheaval, as reflected in Egyptian and Tunisian judicial rulings and legal debates relating to the formation and functioning of constituent assemblies. Finally, the overlap between constitutive and legislative functions in the practice of constituent assemblies, and the deflation of the constituent power’s political agency are inconsistent with theories that present constituent power as an unbounded political agency that establishes a new political order.Less
This chapter argues that scholarly debates about constituent power presuppose a distinction between constituent power and constitutional form that is neither theoretically compelling nor practically illuminating. In contrast to constitutionalists, it argues that constituent power is inexhaustible, the revolution not being reducible to an event and thus constitution-making fails to terminate constituent power. In contrast to populists, it argues that constituent power does not operate in a constitutional vacuum because the judiciary imposes constitutional continuity through unwritten constitutional principles. The judiciary also polices will formation during revolutionary upheaval, as reflected in Egyptian and Tunisian judicial rulings and legal debates relating to the formation and functioning of constituent assemblies. Finally, the overlap between constitutive and legislative functions in the practice of constituent assemblies, and the deflation of the constituent power’s political agency are inconsistent with theories that present constituent power as an unbounded political agency that establishes a new political order.
Kamran Rastegar
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- April 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780199390168
- eISBN:
- 9780199390199
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199390168.003.0009
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
This chapter raises questions concerning the changing nature of memory contests in postcinematic visual cultures in the Middle East. How will cultural memory be affected by the emergence of a form of ...
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This chapter raises questions concerning the changing nature of memory contests in postcinematic visual cultures in the Middle East. How will cultural memory be affected by the emergence of a form of social subjectivity that may be termed “the multitude,” which coincides with the diversification of visual media away from cinematic techniques to other forms, such as cellphone videos. In particular, this conclusion identifies practices emerging in the aftermath of revolutionary social movements in the region (such as the Arab spring or the Iranian Green Movement), as well as other “multitudinous” shifts that reposition the role of cinema in setting limits and boundaries for cultural memory, and invites us to view ourselves as entering a new period of what has been called “postcinematic” memory.Less
This chapter raises questions concerning the changing nature of memory contests in postcinematic visual cultures in the Middle East. How will cultural memory be affected by the emergence of a form of social subjectivity that may be termed “the multitude,” which coincides with the diversification of visual media away from cinematic techniques to other forms, such as cellphone videos. In particular, this conclusion identifies practices emerging in the aftermath of revolutionary social movements in the region (such as the Arab spring or the Iranian Green Movement), as well as other “multitudinous” shifts that reposition the role of cinema in setting limits and boundaries for cultural memory, and invites us to view ourselves as entering a new period of what has been called “postcinematic” memory.
Pierre Macherey
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816677405
- eISBN:
- 9781452947570
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816677405.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Political Philosophy
This book presents an English-language translation of the modern classic Hegel ou Spinoza. Published in French in 1979, it has been widely influential, particularly in the work of the philosophers ...
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This book presents an English-language translation of the modern classic Hegel ou Spinoza. Published in French in 1979, it has been widely influential, particularly in the work of the philosophers Alain Badiou, Antonio Negri, and Gilles Deleuze. This book is a surgically precise interrogation of the points of misreading of Spinoza by Hegel. As is explained in this version, the necessity of Hegel’s misreading in the kernel of thought that is “indigestible” for Hegel, which makes the Spinozist system move in a way that Hegel cannot grasp. In doing so, this volume exposes the limited and situated truth of Hegel’s perspective-which reveals more about Hegel himself than about his object of analysis. Against Hegel’s characterization of Spinoza’s work as immobile, the book offers an alternative that upsets the accepted historical progression of philosophical knowledge. It finds in Spinoza an immanent philosophy that is not subordinated to the guarantee of an a priori truth.Less
This book presents an English-language translation of the modern classic Hegel ou Spinoza. Published in French in 1979, it has been widely influential, particularly in the work of the philosophers Alain Badiou, Antonio Negri, and Gilles Deleuze. This book is a surgically precise interrogation of the points of misreading of Spinoza by Hegel. As is explained in this version, the necessity of Hegel’s misreading in the kernel of thought that is “indigestible” for Hegel, which makes the Spinozist system move in a way that Hegel cannot grasp. In doing so, this volume exposes the limited and situated truth of Hegel’s perspective-which reveals more about Hegel himself than about his object of analysis. Against Hegel’s characterization of Spinoza’s work as immobile, the book offers an alternative that upsets the accepted historical progression of philosophical knowledge. It finds in Spinoza an immanent philosophy that is not subordinated to the guarantee of an a priori truth.
