Movements like the Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street, and the Tea Party embody some of our deepest intuitions about popular politics and 'the power of the people'. They also expose tensions and shortcomings in our understanding of these ideals. We typically see 'the people' as having a special, sovereign power. Despite the centrality of this idea in our thinking, we have little understanding of why it has such importance. Imagined Sovereignties probes the considerable force that 'the people' exercises on our thought and practice. Like the imagined communities described by Benedict Anderson, popular politics is formed around shared, imaginary constructs rooted in our collective imagination. This book investigates these 'imagined sovereignties' in a genealogy traversing the French Enlightenment, the Haitian Revolution, and nineteenth-century Haitian constitutionalism. It problematizes taken-for-granted ideas about popular politics and provokes new ways of imagining the power of the people.

Movements like the Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street, and the Tea Party embody some of our deepest intuitions about popular politics and 'the power of the people'. They also expose tensions and shortcomings in our understanding of these ideals. We typically see 'the people' as having a special, sovereign power. Despite the centrality of this idea in our thinking, we have little understanding of why it has such importance. Imagined Sovereignties probes the considerable force that 'the people' exercises on our thought and practice. Like the imagined communities described by Benedict Anderson, popular politics is formed around shared, imaginary constructs rooted in our collective imagination. This book investigates these 'imagined sovereignties' in a genealogy traversing the French Enlightenment, the Haitian Revolution, and nineteenth-century Haitian constitutionalism. It problematizes taken-for-granted ideas about popular politics and provokes new ways of imagining the power of the people.

What Is a People? seeks to reclaim "people" as an effective political concept by revisiting its uses and abuses over time. Alain Badiou surveys the idea of a people as a productive force of solidarity and emancipation and as a negative tool of categorization and suppression. Pierre Bourdieu follows with a sociolinguistic analysis of "popular" and its transformation of democracy, beliefs, songs, and even soups into phenomena with outsized importance. Judith Butler calls out those who use freedom of assembly to create an exclusionary "we," while Georges Didi-Huberman addresses the problem of summing up a people with totalizing narratives. Sadri Khiari applies an activist's perspective to the racial hierarchies inherent in ethnic and national categories, and Jacques Ranciere comments on the futility of isolating theories of populism when, as these thinkers have shown, the idea of a "people" is too diffuse to support them. By engaging this topic linguistically, ethnically, culturally, and ontologically, the voices in this volume help separate "people" from its fraught associations to pursue more vital formulations. Together with Democracy in What State?, in which Giorgio Agamben, Alain Badiou, Daniel Bensaid, Wendy Brown, Jean-Luc Nancy, Jacques Ranciere, Kristin Ross, and Slavoj Zizek discuss the nature and purpose of democracy today, What Is a People? expands an essential exploration of political action and being in our time.

From where I sit today I am forced to look at life from a place I never expected or wanted to be; totally paralyzed from the shoulders down, sitting in a chair that I drive by blowing and sucking in a straw, typing this book one letter at a time with a mouth stick. I never wanted to be here. I never wanted to be in a wheelchair and I never wanted to be a writer. Nevertheless, here I sit typing, because of one seemingly small decision to dive off a boat dock on July 15, 1991, at the age of 19. Shortly after my accident, I would have to make another choice that also altered the course of my life. Do I accept my unwanted circumstances? Acceptance was not a quick, easy process. God used many truths, people and experiences to teach me some big life lessons. The way He used little people was nothing short of miraculous. From a 5th grader named Miranda I learned to look beyond my limitations for things I could do instead of focusing on all the things I could not do. Through a 2nd grader named Alicia I saw that giving what I have to give is more important than what I have to give. Sierra s out of control ride on my wheelchair ended up being the incident God used to teach me the key to trusting Him. While my 3 year old brother s response to a bird pooping on my shoulder, challenged me to not only accept my paralysis, but really learn to live with it. Kevin Olson was born on August 28, 1971. He was raised on a farm just Southwest of Chanute, KS. He was an All-State basketball player who graduated from Chanute High School in the top 10% of his class in 1989. On July 15, 1991, he became paralyzed from the shoulders down as a result of a diving accident. Since 1993 he has devoted his life to kids by tutoring at elementary schools, teaching at the Cherry Street Youth Center in Chanute, traveling around speaking at schools and churches, and serving as a Youth Minister for two churches in Fredonia, KS. After his accident Kevin also obtained his Associates degree and a computer programming certification. Currently he works from home creating websites and is busy promoting his first book, an autobiography titled Learning to Live With It. His life motto is: Do what you can, with what you have, where you are, and don t worry about the rest. ----------------- Kevin is available for speaking engagements, book signings, interviews, and etc. Kevin Olson 620-431-0458 www.kevinolson.net

The collapse of communism, the rise of identity politics, and struggles over global governance have combined to create new challenges for the Left: How to do justice to legitimate claims for multiculturalism and democratization without abandoning the Left's historic-and still indispensable-commitment to economic equality? How to broaden the understanding of injustice by adding cultural and political insult to economic injury? Adding Insult to Injury tracks the debate sparked by Nancy Fraser's controversial effort to combine redistribution, recognition, and representation in a new understanding of social justice. The volume showcases Fraser's critical exchanges with leading thinkers, including Judith Butler, Richard Rorty, Iris Marion Young, Anne Phillips, and Rainer Frost. The result is a wide-ranging and at times contentious exploration of varied approaches to rebuilding the Left.