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Through the re-interpretation of influential thinkers such as Arendt, Weil, Beauvoir and Habermas, Mary G. Dietz weds the concerns of demcratic thought with that of feminist political theory, demonstrating how important feminist theory has become to democratic thinking more generally. Bringing together fifteen years of commentary on critical debates, Turning Operations begins with problems central to feminism and ends with a series of reflections on the ""the politics of politics, "" inviting the reader to think more expansively about the expressly public nature of political life

I begin with an observation of Hannah Arendt's about metaphor that bears significantly, I think, upon Redhead's endeavor to come to terms with her in chapter 3, "Hannah Arendt on Reasoning without Banisters." "The metaphor," writes Arendt, "bridging the abyss between inward and invisible mental activities and the world of appearances, was certainly the greatest gift language could bestow on thinking and hence on philosophy, but the metaphor itself is poetic rather than philosophic in origin."

Aristotle lived during a period of unprecedented imperial expansionism initiated by the kings of Macedon, but most contemporary political theorists confine his political theorizing to the classical Greek city-state. For many, Aristotle's thought exhibits a parochial Hellenocentric "binary logic" that privileges Greeks over non-Greeks and betrays a xenophobic suspicion of aliens and foreigners. In response to these standard "polis-centric" views, I conjure a different perceptual field—"between polis and empire"—within which to interpret Aristotle'sPolitics. Both theorist and text appear deeply attentive to making present immediate things "coming to be and passing away" in the Hellenic world. Moreover, "between polis and empire," we can see thePoliticsactually disturbing various hegemonic Greek binary oppositions (Greek/barbarian; citizen/alien; center/periphery), not reinforcing them. Understanding thePoliticswithin the context of the transience of the polis invites a new way of reading Aristotle while at the same time providing new possibilities for theorizing problems of postnational citizenship, transnational politics, and empire.