The Politics of Transindividuality re-examines social relations and subjectivity through the concept of transindividuality. Transindividuality is understood as the mutual constitution of individuality and collectivity, and as such it intersects with politics and economics, philosophical speculation and political practice. While the term transindividuality is drawn from the work of Gilbert Simondon, this book views it broadly, examining such canonical figures as Spinoza, Hegel, and Marx, as well as contemporary debates involving Etienne Balibar, Bernard Stiegler, and Paolo Virno. Through these intersecting aspects and interpretations of transindividuality the book proposes to examine anew the intersection of politics and economics through their mutual constitution of affects, imagination, and subjectivity.

This volume takes as its starting point the question of whether there is a pluriversal generation, a younger group of scholars who do not necessarily collaborate or know each other, but who are currently forming a radical structure that is viral in thought production and reflective on the current global recalibration of social relations, brought about by the necropolitical and necrocapitalist governmentality emerging worldwide. The 23 articles assembled in this volume transcend geographical boundaries, conceive of the world as a single entity, and develop strategies for radical change. They are presented in five subchapters with two lines of demarcation, one for entry, invention, and potentiality, and the other for a grim threshold.

What is the process by which literature might provide us with access to knowledge, and what sort of knowledge might this be? The question is not simply whether literature thinks, but whether literature thinks theoretically—whether it has a capacity, without the external aid of analytical methods that have determined Western philosophy and science since the Enlightenment, to theorize the conditions of the world from which it emerges and to which it addresses itself. Suspicion about literature's access to knowledge is ancient, at least as old as Plato's notorious expulsion of the poets from the city in the Republic. With full awareness of this classical background and in dialogue with a broad range of twentieth-century thinkers, Gourgouris examines a range of literary texts, from Sophocles' Antigone to Don DeLillo's The Names, as he traces out his argument that literature possesses an intrinsic theoretical capacity to make sense of the nonpropositional.

Mainstream human rights discourse speaks of such evils as the Holocaust, slavery, or apartheid in ways that put them solidly in the past. Its elaborate techniques of "transitional" justice encourage future generations to move forward, but the false assumption of closure enables those who are guilty to elude responsibility. This approach to history, common to late-twentieth-century humanitarianism, doesn't presuppose that evil ends only when justice begins. Rather, it assumes that a time before justice is the moment to put evil in the past. Merging examples from literature and history, Robert Meister confronts the problem of closure and the resolution of historical injustice. He boldly challenges the empty moral logic of "never again" or the theoretical reduction of evil to a cycle of violence and counterviolence that is broken once evil is remembered for what it was. Meister calls out such methods for their deferral of justice and susceptibility to exploitation. Specifically, he spells out the moral logic "never again" in relation to Auschwitz and its evolution into a twenty-first-century doctrine of the Responsibility to Protect.

Thinking Radical Democracy is an introduction to nine key political thinkers who contributed to the emergence of radical democratic thought in post-war French political theory: Hannah Arendt, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Pierre Clastres, Claude Lefort, Cornelius Castoriadis, Guy Debord, Jacques Rancière, Étienne Balibar, and Miguel Abensour. The essays in this collection connect these writers through their shared contribution to the idea that division and difference in politics can be perceived as productive, creative, and fundamentally democratic. The questions they raise regarding equality and emancipation in a democratic society will be of interest to those studying social and political thought or democratic activist movements like the Occupy movements and Idle No More.

A colourful map of the current conflict between pessimism and optimism in Western politics and theory, Hope attempts to reveal both the deep history and contemporary necessity of political hopefulness. Starting in the 17th century with Spinoza, Wortham tells the story of the various fallacies and insights of pessimism and optimism through the 18th century with the help of Kant and Voltaire through to the famously nihilistic writings of Nietzsche and the 20th century works of thinkers such as Benjamin, Arendt, Kristeva and Fanon (to name but a few). He explores the contemporary significance of ideas such as affirmation, sovereignty, violence, therapy, existentialism and, of course, the oft maligned notion of 'hopefulness' to create a politics of optimism which avoids the pitfalls of uncritical acceptance of the status quo or the newest political idea. Short chapters written in an engaging narrative manner enable the reader to follow the story of political optimism over the last 4 centuries inspiring a new way of thinking about the transformative uses of hopefulness.

Significantly advancing our notion of what constitutes a network, Philip Armstrong proposes a rethinking of political public space that specifically separates networks from the current popular discussion of globalization and information technology.

Understood historically, culturally, politically, geographically, or philosophically, the idea of Europe and notion of European identity conjure up as much controversy as consensus. The mapping of the relation between ideas of Europe and their philosophical articulation and contestation has never benefitted from clear boundaries, and if it is to retain its relevance to the challenges now facing the world, it must become an evolving conceptual landscape of critical reflection. The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy and Europe provides an outstanding reference work for the exploration of Europe in its manifold conceptions, narratives, institutions, and values. Comprising twenty-seven chapters by a group of international contributors, the Handbook is divided into three parts: Europe of the philosophers Concepts and controversies Debates and horizons. Essential reading for students and researchers in philosophy, politics, and European studies, the Handbook will also be of interest to those in related disciplines such as sociology, religion, and European history and history of ideas.

This book takes a new look at the 'spatial turn' in French cultural and critical theory since 1968. It examines how key thinkers (inc. Henri Lefebvre, Michel de Certeau, Jean Baudrillard, Marc Augé, Paul Virilio, Bruno Latour and Etienne Balibar) reconsider the experience of space in the midst of considerable political and economic turmoil.