Suchergebnisse

"God is dead, but his presence lives on in politics. In this intellectual tour-de-force, Saul Newman shows how political theology arose alongside secularism, and relates to the problem of legitimising power and authority in modernity. This book will be a crucial text for students, scholars and readers interested political theology"--

What shape can radical politics take today in a time abandoned by the great revolutionary projects of the past? In light of recent uprisings around the world against the neoliberal capitalist order, Saul Newman argues that anarchism - or as he calls it postanarchism - forms our contemporary political horizon.In this book, Newman develops an original political theory of postanarchism; a form of anti-authoritarian politics which starts, rather than finishes, with anarchy. He does this by asking four central questions: who are we as subjects; how do we resist; what is our relationship to violence; and, why do we obey? By drawing on a range of heterodox thinkers including La Boetie, Sorel, Benjamin, Stirner and Foucault, the author not only investigates the current conditions for radical political thought and action, but proposes a new form of politics based on what he calls ontological anarchy and the desire for autonomous life. Rather than seeking revolutionary emancipation or political hegemony, we should affirm instead the non-existence of power and the ever-present possibilities of freedom.As the tectonic plates of our time are shifting, revealing the nihilism and emptiness of our political and economic order, postanarchism?s disdain for power in all its forms offers us genuine emancipatory potential. Saul Newman is a Professor of Political Theory at Goldsmiths, University of London

This title seeks to renew anarchist thought through the concept of postanarchism. It uses a theoretical approach drawing upon classical anarchist theory, poststructuralism, post-Marxism critical theory and psychoanalysis to allow for a new engagement with contemporary debates about the future directions of radical politics

What is the relevance of anarchist thought for politics and political theory today? While many have dismissed anarchism in the past, Saul Newman contends that anarchism's heretical critique of authority, and its insistence on full equality and liberty, places it at the forefront of the radical political imagination today. With the unprecedented expansion of state power in the name of security, the current 'crisis of capitalism' and the terminal decline of Marxist and social democratic projects, it is time to reconsider anarchism as a form of politics. This book seeks to renew anarchist thought through the concept of postanarchism.

Introduction -- Politics of the ego: Stirner's critique of liberalism -- Ressentiment and radical politics -- New reflections on the theory of power: a Lacanian perspective -- Spectres of Stirner: a contemporary critique of ideology -- Derrida's deconstruction of authority -- On the politics of violence: terror, sovereignty and law -- Spectres of the uncanny: the return of the repressed in politics -- Towards a poststructuralist politics of universality -- Conclusion.

This book explores the impact of poststructuralism on contemporary political theory by focussing on a number of problems and issues central to politics today.

Political theology is a broad and diverse series of investigations into the structural relationship between theology and politics – particularly the way that theological categories come to underpin modern political concepts, practices and institutions, such as sovereignty, the nation state and democracy. In this chapter I suggest that political theology is fundamentally concerned with the problem of legitimacy and that it refers to the absent place of the sacred in modern secular societies. As a mode of enquiry, it provides us with an alternative framework in which to understand modes of political experience that cannot be adequately grasped by conventional political theory. The chapter explores the origins of the concept, then turns to Carl Schmitt's influential interpretation of political theology as a secular translation of theological concepts into modern ideas of the sovereign state. It is argued that Schmitt's political theology is a justification for an authoritarian notion of sovereignty defined through the unilateral state of exception. The chapter then turns to alternative post-Schmittian approaches, including more radical interpretations of political or public theology that can inform social and racial justice struggles and climate action. Recent interventions in eco-political theology and economic theology are also considered.

Recent debates in liberal political theory have sought to come to terms with the post-secular condition, characterised by deep religious pluralism, the resurgence of right-wing populism, as well as new social movements for economic, ecological and racial justice. These forces represent competing claims on the public space and create challenges for the liberal model of state neutrality. To better grasp this problem, I argue for a more comprehensive engagement between liberalism and political theology, by which I understand a mode of theorising that reveals the theological basis of modern secular political concepts. In considering two contrasting approaches to political or public theology – Carl Schmitt's and Jürgen Moltmann's – I argue that liberal political theory can and should open itself to a diversity of social movements and ecological struggles that pluralise the political space in ways that unsettle the boundary between the secular and religious.

The 16th-century French humanist writer Etienne de La Boétie has not often been considered in literature on republican political thought, despite his famous essay, Discours de la Servitude Volontaire, displaying a number of clear republican tropes and themes, being largely concerned with the problem of arbitrary power embodied in the figure of the tyrant. Yet, I argue that the real significance of La Boétie's text is in his radical concept of voluntary servitude and the way it adds a new dimension to the neo-republican theory of liberty as non-domination. The problem of self-domination or wilful obedience to authority is a form of ideological domination that Pettit's understanding of arbitrary power relationships between agents does not adequately account for. Furthermore, La Boétie shows that freedom is an ontological condition and is realised not – or not entirely – through the rule of law as the guarantee against arbitrariness, as neo-republicans advocate, but rather through acts of self-emancipation and civil disobedience. Here I understand La Boétie's thinking in terms of a certain anarcho-republicanism in which the promotion of freedom depends not so much on institutions, as Pettit suggests, but rather on autonomous relations of friendship, love and solidarity between individuals.

Entiendo la posverdad como un nuevo paradigma en política, uno que va más allá de la mera mentira política y señala el declive de la autoridad simbólica de la verdad misma. En la medida en que, como afirmó Arendt, la política depende de un reconocimiento compartido de ciertas verdades fácticas, la posverdad representa una crisis de la vida política. La condición de la posverdad es una condición pospolítica. Para comprender esto a fondo, necesitamos comprender la relación paradójica entre verdad y política, afrontando una problemática que se remonta a los orígenes de las demos en la antigua Grecia: el conflicto original entre la verdad singular del filósofo y los asuntos e intereses de la polis. Aquí me basaré en dos enfoques diferentes para este problema: la discusión de Hannah Arendt sobre la relación conflictiva, pero inextricable, entre la estabilidad de la verdad y la contingencia y pluralidad de la vida política; y la exploración de Michel Foucault de la parrësia o 'discurso franco', una forma de decir la verdad que, aunque a menudo está en conflicto con la polis, también es necesaria para cualquier noción de conducta ética en la vida política. Ambos enfoques sugieren que la política tiene alguna relación esencial con la verdad, incluso si la verdad a menudo se encuentra impotente frente a la mera opinión. Sin embargo, aunque haya algunas dudas sobre la eficacia actual de afirmar los hechos contra las mentiras o 'decir la verdad ante el poder', sostengo que hay algo valioso en la idea de Foucault de decir la verdad como una forma de subjetivación ética (y también política). ; I understand post-truth as a new paradigm in politics - one that goes beyond mere political lying and spin and points to the decline of the symbolic authority of truth itself. In so far as, as Arendt claimed, politics depends on a shared acknowledgement of certain factual truths, post-truth thus represents a crisis of political life. The post-truth condition is a post-political condition. To grasp this thoroughly, we need to understand the paradoxical relationship between truth and politics, locating a problematic that goes back to the very origins of the demos in ancient Greece: the original conflict between the singular truth of the philosopher and the affairs and concerns of the polis. Here I will draw on two different approaches to this problem: Hannah Arendt's discussion of the conflicting, and yet inextricable, relationship between the stability of truth and the contingency and plurality of political life; and Michel Foucault's exploration of parrësia or 'frank speech' – a form of truth-speaking which, while often in conflict with the polis, is also necessary for any notion of ethical conduct in political life. Both approaches suggest that politics bears some essential relation to truth, even if truth often finds itself impotent in the face of mere opinion. Yet, while there is some question about the efficacy today of asserting facts against lies or 'speaking truth to power', I argue that there is something valuable in Foucault's idea of truth speaking as a form of ethical (and also political) subjectivation.