Rowman & Littlefield Publishers / Rowman & Littlefield International
Pages: 208
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Trim: 6 x 9
978-1-78348-100-2 • Hardback • November 2014 • $160.00 • (£123.00)
978-1-78348-101-9 • Paperback • October 2014 • $54.00 • (£42.00)
978-1-78348-102-6 • eBook • October 2014 • $48.50 • (£37.00)
Leonie Ansems de Vries is lecturer in politics at Queen Mary University of London. She has written journal articles for Theoria, Global Society and Cultural Politics.
Prologue / Acknowledgements / Introduction: Politics of Life / 1. Sovereignty, War, Nature / 2. Mechanics, Movement, Organization / 3. Biology, Security, Life / 4. Circulation, Naturalization, (De)politicization / 5. Complexity, Relationality, Involution / 6. Politics, Life, Movement / Bibliography / Index
Entering “in the middle” of critical thinking about the politics of life as it has been articulated in the history of European political philosophy, Leonie Ansems De Vries brings the politics-life problematic up-to-date with attention to both contemporary political issues and the current critical philosophical work within which “life” is on the agenda. The book is timely, nuanced and politically acute. It deserves the attention of scholars and students of political theory everywhere.
— Michael J. Shapiro, University of Hawai'i, Manoa
This book is a fascinating exploration of what it means to understand politics as ‘being in the middle’. Ansems De Vries takes us through various understandings of ‘milieu’ by contrasting liberal conceptions with Deleuze’s and introducing various lines of thought on ‘the milieu’ upon which Deleuze drew, ranging from Darwin over complex systems to Bergson. This work is particularly powerful in introducing conceptions of multiplicity and movement that go beyond a progression of one point to the next, from one order to the other, and from an inside to an outside and back. It is an important work for everyone who is interested in developing ways of analysing the fracturing, multiplicity and immanent openness of the worlds we experience without falling back on modern political ontologies.
— Jef Huysmans, Professor of International Politics, Queen Mary, University of London
Re-Imagining a Politics of Life is an invitation to think and challenge the modes in which governance has been reasoned as practices of ordering. It is an urgent reminder that political life is nothing more than a problematic practice of vital demarcation that can always be thought differently. Through a double-move encompassing the denaturalisation of political thought and the re-imagination of the liberal image, Ansems de Vries takes the thinking of politics-life a step further and presents it as movement with connectivities, circulations and complexities. Inspired by the thought of Deleuze and Guatari as well as Foucault, the book engages the political through ‘its middle’ by focusing on the relationality it effects instead of on traditional questions of origins and destinations. Highly recommended for students and scholars of political theory.
— Luis Lobo-Guerrero, Professor of History and Theory of International Relations, University of Groningen