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Politics of Withdrawal

Media, Arts, Theory

Edited by Pepita Hesselberth and Joost de Bloois

Politics of Withdrawal considers the significance of practices and theories of withdrawal for radical thinking today. With contributions of major theorists in the fields of contemporary political philosophy, cultural studies and media studies, the chapters investigate the multiple contexts, possibilities and impasses of political withdrawal – from the radical to the seemingly mundane – and reflect a range of case studies varying from the political thinking of Debord, the Invisible Committee, Moten and Harney, feminist notions of ‘strike’ and ‘exit’, and indigenous forms of sabotage, to the individual retreat as means of reconfiguring political subjectivity. It looks at technological failure as disconnection from surveillance, and from alternative financial futures to contemporary ‘pharmako-politics.’

The volume provides a vital grip on a key notion in contemporary radical politics, in all its complexity, contradictions and tribulations.

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers / Rowman & Littlefield International

Pages: 212 • Trim: 6⅜ x 9½

978-1-78661-633-3 • Hardback • December 2020 • $158.00 • (£123.00)

978-1-78661-634-0 • eBook • December 2020 • $43.99 • (£35.00)

Subjects: Social Science / Human Geography, Political Science / Political Ideologies / Radicalism, Social Science / Cultural Geography

Politics of Withdrawal

Media, Arts, Theory

Hardback

eBook

Summary

Politics of Withdrawal considers the significance of practices and theories of withdrawal for radical thinking today. With contributions of major theorists in the fields of contemporary political philosophy, cultural studies and media studies, the chapters investigate the multiple contexts, possibilities and impasses of political withdrawal – from the radical to the seemingly mundane – and reflect a range of case studies varying from the political thinking of Debord, the Invisible Committee, Moten and Harney, feminist notions of ‘strike’ and ‘exit’, and indigenous forms of sabotage, to the individual retreat as means of reconfiguring political subjectivity. It looks at technological failure as disconnection from surveillance, and from alternative financial futures to contemporary ‘pharmako-politics.’

The volume provides a vital grip on a key notion in contemporary radical politics, in all its complexity, contradictions and tribulations.

Details

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers / Rowman & Littlefield International

Pages: 212 • Trim: 6⅜ x 9½

978-1-78661-633-3 • Hardback • December 2020 • $158.00 • (£123.00)

978-1-78661-634-0 • eBook • December 2020 • $43.99 • (£35.00)

Subjects: Social Science / Human Geography, Political Science / Political Ideologies / Radicalism, Social Science / Cultural Geography

Author

Pepita Hesselberth is a DFF Laureate and assistant professor of film and digital culture at Leiden University, The Netherlands.

Joost de Bloois is assistant professor of literary and cultural analysis at the University of Amsterdam, and a researcher at the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis.

Table of Contents

Introduction:Towards a Politics of Withdrawal?

Pepita Hesselberth and Joost de Bloois

Chapter 1

Can the Internet be turned off? Infrastructures of Dis-Disconnectivity

Florian Sprenger

Chapter 2

Assemblages of Withdrawal

Clare Birchall

Chapter 3

“You Saw the Cactus Bloom”: On the Impossibility of Withdrawal from You

Mél Hogan

Chapter 4

Proof-of-Withdrawal: Finance in the Undercommons

Erik Bordeleau

Chapter 5

Melancholic Retreat: Narratives of Withdrawal in Contemporary Political Theory

Joost de Bloois

Chapter 6

W for Withdrawal: Or, Politics without Personhood

Yasco Horsman

Chapter 7

A Parallel Art of Living

Elena Loizidou

Chapter 8

Withdrawal Symptoms: Refusal, Sabotage, Suspension

Darin Barney

Chapter 9

Withdrawal as Exodus and Strike. Political Strategies for a Presentist Democracy

Isabell Lorey

Chapter 10

On Leaving Academia and the Need to Take Refuge

Pepita Hesselberth

Chapter 11

Detox Politics: Thinking-Healing the Retreat of the Public

Bernard Stiegler and Gerald Moore

Coda: Staying Power

Sarah Sharma

Contributors

Index

Politics of Withdrawal

Media, Arts, Theory

Edited by Pepita Hesselberth and Joost de Bloois

Politics of Withdrawal

Media, Arts, Theory

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