This collection of essays by established scholars explores the juncture of action and appearance in the political thought of Hannah Arendt. "Action and Appearance" is a collection of essays that look into the crucial and complex link between action and appearance in Hannah Arendt's political thought. Contributed by respected scholars, the essays articulate around the following themes: the emergence of political action when questioning the nature of law, subjectivity and individuality; the relationship between ethics and politics; the nexus of (co-)appearance, thinking and truth; and, Arendt's writing as action and appearance. For Arendt, action is a worldly, public phenomenon that requires the presence of others to have any effect. Therefore, to act is more than to decide as it is also to appear. Much has been said about Arendt's theory of action, but little attention has been paid to her approach to appearance as is done in this volume. "Action and Appearance" explores both Arendt's familiar texts and previously unpublished or recently rediscovered texts to challenge the established readings of her work. Adding to established debates, it will be a unique resource to anyone interested in Hannah Arendt, political thought, political theory, and political philosophy.

Non-cognitive expressions of the life of the subject – feeling, motion, tactility, instinct, automatism, and sentience – have transformed how scholars understand subjectivity, agency and identity. This collection investigates the critical purchase of the idiom of affect in this ‘post-humanist’ thinking of the subject. It also explores political and ethical questions raised by the deployment of affect as a theoretical and artistic category. Together the contributors to this collection map the theoretically heterogeneous field of post-humanist scholarship on affect, making inspiring, and at times surprising, connections between Spinoza’s and Tomkins’s theories of affect, the concept of affect and psychoanalysis, and affect and animal studies in art and literature. As a result, the concepts, vocabulary, compatibility, and attribution of affect are challenged and extended. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Angelaki.

Non-cognitive expressions of the life of the subject - feeling, motion, tactility, instinct, automatism, and sentience - have transformed how scholars understand subjectivity, agency and identity. This collection investigates the critical purchase of the idiom of affect in this 'post-humanist' thinking of the subject. It also explores political and ethical questions raised by the deployment of affect as a theoretical and artistic category. Together the contributors to this collection map the theoretically heterogeneous field of post-humanist scholarship on affect, making inspiring, and at times surprising, connections between Spinoza's and Tomkins's theories of affect, the concept of affect and psychoanalysis, and affect and animal studies in art and literature. As a result, the concepts, vocabulary, compatibility, and attribution of affect are challenged and extended. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Angelaki.

This book analyzes different figurations of childhood in contemporary culture and politics with a particular focus on interdisciplinary methodologies of critical childhood studies. It argues that while the figure of the child has been traditionally located at the peripheries of academic disciplines, perhaps most notably in history, sociology and literature, the proposed critical discussions of the ideological, symbolic and affective roles that children play in contemporary societies suggest that they are often the locus of larger societal crises, collective psychic tensions, and unspoken prohibitions and taboos. As such, this book brings into focus the prejudices against childhood embedded in our standard approaches to organizing knowledge, and asks: is there a natural disciplinary home for the study of childhood? Or is this field fundamentally interdisciplinary, peripheral or problematic to notions of disciplinary identity? In this respect, does childhood force innovation in thinking about disciplinarity? For instance, how does the analysis of childhood affect how we think about methodology? What role do understandings of childhood play in delimiting how we conceive of our society, our future, and ourselves? How does thinking about childhood affect how we think about culture, history, and politics? This book brings together researchers working broadly in critical child studies, but from various disciplines in the humanities and social sciences (including philosophy, literary studies, sociology, cultural studies and history), in order to stage a conversation between these diverse perspectives on the disciplinary or (interdisciplinary) character of 'the child' as an object of research. Such conversation builds on the assumption that childhood, far from being marginal, is a topic that is hidden in plain sight. That is to say, while the child is always a presence in culture, history, literature and philosophy-and is often even a highly charged figure within those fields-its operation and effects are rarely theoretically scrutinized, but rather are more likely drawn upon, surreptitiously, for another purpose.

On Jean Amery provides a comprehensive discussion of one of the most challenging and complex post-Holocaust thinkers, Jean Amery (1912-1978), a Jewish-Austrian-Belgian essayist, journalist and literary author. In the English-speaking world Amery is known for his poignant publication, At the Mind's Limits, a narrative of exile, dispossession, torture, and Auschwitz. In recent years, there has been a renewed interest in Amery's writings on victimization and resentment, partly attributable to a modern fascination with tolerance, historical injustice, and reconciliatory ambitions. Many aspects of Amery's writing have remained largely unexplored outside the realm of European scholarship, and his legacy in English-language scholarship limited to discussions of victimization and memory. This volume offers the first English language collection of academic essays on the post-Holocaust thought of Jean Amery. Comprehensive in scope and multi-disciplinary in orientation, contributors explore central aspects of Amery's philosophical and ethical position, including dignity, responsibility, resentment, and forgiveness. What emerges from the pages of this book is an image of Amery as a difficult and perplexing-yet exceptionally engaging-thinker, whose writings address some of the central paradoxes of survivorship and witnessing. The intellectual and ethical questions of Amery's philosophies are equally pertinent today as they were half-century ago: How one can reconcile with the irreconcilable? How can one account for the unaccountable? And, how can one live after catastrophe?

Since the end of the Cold War the global arena has become a place for dynamic change, in particular for federal political units. The focus on defunct federalisms draws attention not only to the difference between state-making and nation building, it also points to the fact that state-making does not necessarily lead to the creation of a national identity. This comparative volume looks at the track record of several defunct federalisms to identify options that have been overlooked and decisions that precipitated the collapse. Bringing together insights from the study of state failure and federal collapse, it examines the ways in which parallel assessment is crucial for suggesting the complex structures of identity accommodation in federal entities. The volume is ideal for advanced undergraduates and graduate students as well as university lecturers and researchers working on the issues related to contemporary federalism, history of federal units and the questions of national identity.

Contemporary Perspectives on Vladimir Jankélévitch: On What Cannot Be Touched performs a cross-disciplinary theoretical analysis of the philosophy of Vladimir Jankélévitch. An international group of contributors, including both established and emerging scholars, engage with his writings from diverse disciplinary angles and consider his importance for contemporary political and cultural contexts. Edited by Marguerite La Caze and Magdalena Zolkos, the collection provides a holistic and multi-perspectival approach to Jankélévitch’s writings, one that illuminates nuanced and complex connections across the five sub-fields of philosophy to which Jankélévitch contributed: moral philosophy, virtue theory, metaphysics, philosophy of music, and philosophy of religion. The book addresses different aspects of and problems in Jankélévitch’s philosophy, with all chapters unified by a preoccupation with the motif of intangibility—that which cannot be touched.

This is an examination of the difficult interplay between the collective pursuit of justice and reconciliation on one hand and the individual subjective experience of trauma on the other, proposing that it be thought as a potentially productive tension. To do so, Zolkos looks at how texts from Jean Amry and Imre Kertsz speak to the question of the politics of the past and, ultimately, to the post-foundational notions of community and justice. The text works with issues of reconciliation at a theoretical level that bring together insights from political theory, trauma studies, holocaust studies, history and literary theory. The book has the greatest relevance for the critical reconciliation theory, as well as for those working on the concept of community within the continental tradition.

The Didi-Huberman Dictionary is a specialised introduction to the thought of contemporary French philosopher Georges Didi-Huberman, best known for his path-breaking philosophy of image and his impact on the fields of art historiography, aesthetic philosophy and cultural theory of psychoanalysis.With 85 entries written by 30 leading international scholars, the dictionary is a useful tool for students coming to Didi-Huberman's work for the first time. It identifies and explains his key figures, inspirations and philosophical metaphors, as well as introducing Didi-Huberman's polemics with other contemporary philosophers, including Aby Warburg, Sigmund Freud and Walter Benjamin. Entries on concepts and motifs from Didi-Huberman's major texts that are not, as of yet, translated into English - Ce que nous voyons, ce qui nous regarde (1992), and Ninfa moderna (2002) - are also included.

This book analyzes different figurations of childhood in contemporary culture and politics with a particular focus on interdisciplinary methodologies of critical childhood studies. It argues that while the figure of the child has been traditionally located at the peripheries of academic disciplines, perhaps most notably in history, sociology and literature, the proposed critical discussions of the ideological, symbolic and affective roles that children play in contemporary societies suggest that they are often the locus of larger societal crises, collective psychic tensions, and unspoken prohibitions and taboos. As such, this book brings into focus the prejudices against childhood embedded in our standard approaches to organizing knowledge, and asks: is there a natural disciplinary home for the study of childhood? Or is this field fundamentally interdisciplinary, peripheral or problematic to notions of disciplinary identity? In this respect, does childhood force innovation in thinking about disciplinarity? For instance, how does the analysis of childhood affect how we think about methodology? What role do understandings of childhood play in delimiting how we conceive of our society, our future, and ourselves? How does thinking about childhood affect how we think about culture, history, and politics? This book brings together researchers working broadly in critical child studies, but from various disciplines in the humanities and social sciences (including philosophy, literary studies, sociology, cultural studies and history), in order to stage a conversation between these diverse perspectives on the disciplinary or (interdisciplinary) character of 'the child' as an object of research. Such conversation builds on the assumption that childhood, far from being marginal, is a topic that is hidden in plain sight. That is to say, while the child is always a presence in culture, history, literature and philosophy-and is often even a highly charged figure within those fields-its operation and effects are rarely theoretically scrutinized, but rather are more likely drawn upon, surreptitiously, for another purpose.

Analyses the social imaginary of undoing, repair and return underpinning the international norm of restitution-making Approaches restitution not just as a legal norm of property return, but as a social imaginary and a cultural-psychoanalytic 'scene' of undoing, repair and return Brings together philosophic-political, socio-legal and cultural-psychoanalytic approaches to the study of restitution Outlines a heterogeneous and multifaceted idea of restitution emergent in modernity, and looks at the peripheries of the modern restitutive tradition in the search for alternatives and counter-traditions This book takes a unique approach grounded in political and cultural discourse to develop a political theory of restitution. Challenging assumptions about restitution in the Western legal and political tradition, where it has become nearly synonymous with reacquisition and where legal studies focus on material objects and claims to their ownership, Zolkos argues that the development of restitutive norms has been auxiliary to the emergence of modern state sovereignty, and excavates the restitutive tradition's mythical-religious substrate. Bringing together texts from within and outwith the Western canon of political theory and philosophy, including the writings of Grotius, Durkheim, Freud, and Klein, as well as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the book undertakes a dual task: reading literary texts as a political theorising of restitution, and reading political or sociological texts as literary narratives with distinctive 'restitutive tropes' of repair, undoing and return.

Analyses the social imaginary of undoing, repair and return underpinning the international norm of restitution-making Approaches restitution not just as a legal norm of property return, but as a social imaginary and a cultural-psychoanalytic 'scene' of undoing, repair and return Brings together philosophic-political, socio-legal and cultural-psychoanalytic approaches to the study of restitution Outlines a heterogeneous and multifaceted idea of restitution emergent in modernity, and looks at the peripheries of the modern restitutive tradition in the search for alternatives and counter-traditions This book takes a unique approach grounded in political and cultural discourse to develop a political theory of restitution. Challenging assumptions about restitution in the Western legal and political tradition, where it has become nearly synonymous with reacquisition and where legal studies focus on material objects and claims to their ownership, Zolkos argues that the development of restitutive norms has been auxiliary to the emergence of modern state sovereignty, and excavates the restitutive tradition's mythical-religious substrate. Bringing together texts from within and outwith the Western canon of political theory and philosophy, including the writings of Grotius, Durkheim, Freud, and Klein, as well as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the book undertakes a dual task: reading literary texts as a political theorising of restitution, and reading political or sociological texts as literary narratives with distinctive 'restitutive tropes' of repair, undoing and return.

This is an examination of the difficult interplay between the collective pursuit of justice and reconciliation on one hand and the individual subjective experience of trauma on the other, proposing that it be thought as a potentially productive tension. To do so, Zolkos looks at how texts from Jean Amry and Imre Kertsz speak to the question of the politics of the past and, ultimately, to the post-foundational notions of community and justice. The text works with issues of reconciliation at a theoretical level that bring together insights from political theory, trauma studies, holocaust studies, history and literary theory. The book has the greatest relevance for the critical reconciliation theory, as well as for those working on the concept of community within the continental tradition.

State, Security, and Subject Formation addresses the question of how to secure the conditions for a civil and peaceful life together. It brings together leading scholars to examine democracy from two approaches: peaceful coexistence and the secular state as public authority and the necessity of division between communities of faith that allows for a state that defends the values of the community. This book aims to understand the rationality that informs both approaches, interpreting the subjectivities within each. To do so, the interdisciplinary, scholarly essays examine 17th century political thought and how it is caught up in debate about the relationship between faith and the state at a time when religious wars are endemic and profoundly destructive. They also provide an in-depth discussion of contemporary 21st and 20th century approaches to the question of security and the issue of subjective capacity for peaceful co-existence. Civil Order and Politics is the outcome of an intensive cross-disciplinary cooperation and, as such, not only demonstrates the richness of relevant themes and issues, but also brings to the fore challenges and problems associated with civil practice and theorizing of politics. Through its thematic juxtaposition of state, security, and subjectivity within the framework of civil order and politics, the book fills a gap in the contemporary political literature that will be of interest to anyone studying and researching these issues.