This volume offers novel and provocative insights into vulnerability and exclusion, two concepts crucial for the understanding of contemporary political agency. In twelve critical essays, the contributors explore the dense theoretical content, complex histories and conceptual intersection of vulnerability and exclusion. A rich array of topics are covered as the volume searches for the ways that vulnerable and excluded groups relate to each other, where the boundary between the excluded and the included arises, and what the stakes of 'invulnerability' might be. Drawing on the works of Hegel (via Judith Butler), Helmuth Plessner and Hannah Arendt to situate the project in a solid historical context, the volume likewise tackles pressing and contemporary issues such as the state of human capital under neoliberalism, the flawed nature of democracy itself, and the vulnerability inherent in extreme precarity, extreme violence, and interdependence. The contributions come from philosophers with a range of backgrounds in social philosophy and critical social sciences, who use related conceptual tools to tackle the political challenges of the 21st century. Together, they present a ground-breaking overview of the main challenges which social exclusion presents to contemporary global societies.

This volume offers novel and provocative insights into vulnerability and exclusion, two concepts crucial for the understanding of contemporary political agency. In twelve critical essays, the contributors explore the dense theoretical content, complex histories and conceptual intersection of vulnerability and exclusion. A rich array of topics are covered as the volume searches for the ways that vulnerable and excluded groups relate to each other, where the boundary between the excluded and the included arises, and what the stakes of 'invulnerability' might be. Drawing on the works of Hegel (via Judith Butler), Helmuth Plessner and Hannah Arendt to situate the project in a solid historical context, the volume likewise tackles pressing and contemporary issues such as the state of human capital under neoliberalism, the flawed nature of democracy itself, and the vulnerability inherent in extreme precarity, extreme violence, and interdependence. The contributions come from philosophers with a range of backgrounds in social philosophy and critical social sciences, who use related conceptual tools to tackle the political challenges of the 21st century. Together, they present a ground-breaking overview of the main challenges which social exclusion presents to contemporary global societies.

Presents Judith Butler's interest in plurality of bodily lives and her search for a social transformation conducive to a more livable world Offers a novel understanding of Butler' work as a call for an insurrection at the level of the real Provides a framework based on an intersection of four main pillar-concepts, performativity, agency, livable life and non-violence Reads Butler's philosophy as centred on bodies Reads Butler's work as a convincing counter-argument against liberal versions of ontology This book is the only monograph-length study of the work of Judith Butler to focus on the entire scope of her work, including the last decade of her writing. In light of these texts, it presents a fresh interpretation of Butler's political thought, oriented by the idea of an insurrection at the level of the real. Chapters on ontology, performativity, agency and precariousness, a liveable life and non-violence explain how Butler's thought has always been focused on embodied performances. Instead of seeing Butler as simply a thinker of the subversive performance of cultural scripts, the book frames her work for the twenty-first century as an ambitious and coherent egalitarian alternative to liberal political philosophy. Each chapter introduces a Butlerian concept, clarifying this in the context of critical debates, while explaining its contribution to a new social ontology whose key normative principle is a liveable life. The book explores the potential of this conceptual framework not just in relation to the politics of gender, but also to questions of social inequality, structural violence and the experience of precarity. Designed for both researchers and students, it provides a comprehensive way of accessing what is radically original about this crucial political theorist.

Addressing the relationship among social critique, violence, and domination, Violence and Reflexivity: The Place of Critique in the Reality of Domination examines a critique of violent and unjust social arrangements that transcends the Enlightenment/postmodern opposition. This critique surpasses the "reflexive violence" of classical enlightenment universalism without committing the "violence of reflexivity" by negating any possibility of collective radical social engagement. The unifying thread of the collection, edited by Marjan Ivkovic, Adriana Zaharijevic, and Gazela Pudar-Drasko, is a sensitivity to the field of tension created by these extremes, especially for the issue of how to articulate a non-violent critique that is nevertheless "militant," in the sense that it creates a rupture in an institutionalized order of violence. In Part One, the contributors examine the theoretical resources that help us move beyond the reflexive violence of the classical Enlightenment social critique in our quest for justice and non-domination. Part Two brings together nuanced attempts to reconsider the dominant modern understandings of violence, subjectivity, and society without succumbing to the violence of reflexivity that characterizes radically anti-Enlightenment standpoints.