Drawing on detailed archival research on the parallel histories of human rights and neoliberalism, Jessica Whyte uncovers the place of human rights in neoliberal attempts to develop a moral framework for a market society. In the wake of the Second World War, neoliberals saw demands for new rights to social welfare and self-determination as threats to "civilisation". Yet, rather than rejecting rights, they developed a distinctive account of human rights as tools to depoliticise civil society, protect private investments and shape liberal subjects.

Challenging the prevalent account of Agamben as a pessimistic thinker, "Catastrophe and Redemption" proposes a reading of his political thought in which the redemptive element of his work is not a curious aside but instead is fundamental to his project. Jessica Whyte considers his critical account of contemporary politics his argument that Western politics has been biopolitics since its inception, his critique of human rights, his argument that the state of exception is now the norm, and the paradigmatic significance he attributes to the concentration camp and shows that it is in the midst of these catastrophes of the present that Agamben sees the possibility of a form of profane redemption. Whyte outlines the importance of potentiality in his attempt to formulate a new politics, examines his relation to Jewish and Christian strands of messianism, and interrogates the new forms of praxis that he situates within contemporary commodity culture, taking Agamben s thought as a call for the creation of new political forms."

Agamben's vocabulary is both expansive and idiosyncratic, with words such as 'infancy', 'gesture' and 'profanation' given specific and complex meanings that can bewilder the new reader. Bringing together leading scholars in the field, including Steven DeCaroli (Goucher College, Baltimore), Justin Clemens (University of Melbourne), Claire Colebrook (Penn State) and Steven DeCaroli (Goucher College, Baltimore) the 150 entries explain the key concepts in Agamben's work and his relationship with other thinkers, from Aristotle to Aby Warburg.