Unexceptional Politics: On Obstruction, Impasse, and the Impolitic
- ISBN-10
- 1784780871
- ISBN-13
- 9781784780876
- Category
- Literary Criticism
- Pages
- 288
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2018-01-01
- Publisher
- Verso Books
- Author
- Emily Apter
Description
A new vision of politics “below the radar” One way to grasp the nature of politics is to understand the key terms in which it is discussed. Unexceptional Politics develops a political vocabulary drawn from a wide range of media (political fiction, art, film, and TV), highlighting the scams, imbroglios, information trafficking, brinkmanship, and parliamentary procedures that obstruct and block progressive politics. The book reviews and renews modes of thinking about micropolitics that counter notions of the “state of exception” embedded in theories of the “political” from Thomas Hobbes to Carl Schmitt. Emily Apter develops a critical model of politics behind the scenes, a politics that operates outside the norms of classical political theory. She focuses on micropolitics, defined as small events, happening in series, that often pass unnoticed yet disturb and interfere with the institutional structures of capitalist parliamentary systems, even as they secure their reproduction and longevity. Apter’s experimental glossary is arranged under headings that look at the apparently incidental, immaterial, and increasingly virtual practices of politicking: “obstruction,” “obstinacy,” “psychopolitics,” “managed life,” “serial politics.” Such terms frame an argument for taking stock of the realization that we really do not know what politics is, where it begins and ends, or how its micro-events should be described.
Get the book
Other editions
-
- 2018-02-06
- 288 pages
- Paperback
- Verso Books
Similar books
-
Exceptional America: What Divides Americans from the World and from Each Other
By Mugambi JouetIn this provocative book, Mugambi Jouet describes why Americans are far more divided than other Westerners over basic issues, including wealth inequality, health care, climate change, evolution, gender roles, abortion, gay rights, sex, gun ...
-
American Exceptionalism in the Age of Obama
By Stephen BrooksIs the United States exceptional in its values and institutions, as well as in the role that it is destined to play in world affairs? In this book, Stephen Brooks argues that American exceptionalism has been and continues to be real.
-
Unexceptional: America's Empire in the Persian Gulf, 1941-2007
By Marc J. O'ReillyUnexceptional examines U.S. policy vis-à-vis the Persian Gulf since the Second World War.
-
Futilitarianism: Neoliberalism and the Production of Uselessness
By Neil Vallelly... Unexceptional Politics . She observes that the contemporary “ political environment ... is severely pockmarked by obstructionism , obstinacy , the marketing of ... exceptional what I call the politics of futility The Politics of Futility 129.
-
American Literature as World Literature
By Jeffrey R. Di LeoUnexceptional politics, posed against the “state of exception” foundationally inscribed in “the Political” (from Thomas Hobbes to Carl Schmitt and Hans Kelsen, from Hannah Arendt to Jacques Derrida and Giorgio Agamben), ...
-
Politics and ‘Politiques' in Sixteenth-Century France: A Conceptual History
By Emma Claussen... Monsters and Their Meanings in Early Modern Culture; Jonathan Patterson, Representing Avarice in Late Renaissance France (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015); Ita Mac Carthy, The Grace of the Italian Renaissance (Princeton, ...
-
Fixing American Politics: Solutions for the Media Age
By Roderick P. HartFixing American Politics poses all the best questions ... and offers some concrete answers as well. This book is perfect for students, citizens, the media, and anyone concerned with contemporary challenges to civic life and discourse today.
-
Against Aesthetic Exceptionalism
By Arne De BoeverAgainst Aesthetic Exceptionalism challenges that belief by focusing on the sovereign artist as genius, as well as the original artwork as the foundation of the art market.
-
American Politics in the Early Republic: The New Nation in Crisis
By James Roger SharpHenretta , James A. “ Families and Farms : Mentalite in Pre - Industrial America ” William and Mary Quarterly 35 ( Jan. 1978 ) : 3-32 . Hoadley , John F. Origins of American Political Parties , 1789-1803 ( Lexington , Ky . , 1986 ) .
-
Being Vulnerable: Contemporary Political Thought
By Arne De Boever... Against Aesthetic Exceptionalism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2019), which included the beginnings ... Exceptionalism: A Critique,” Rev. of Santiago Zabala, Why Only Art Can Save Us: Aesthetics and the Absence of ...