Denounces contemporary politics through an engagement with political theory, the arts and what it is to live well
Laurent Dubreuil provocatively proposes an extremist rethinking of the limits of politics – toward a break from politics, the political and policies. Rather than yet another re-articulation, he calls for a refusal of politics, suggesting a form of apolitics that would make our lives more liveable.
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The first chapter situates the refusal of politics in relation to different contemporary theoretical attempts to renew politics, and makes the case for a greater rupture. The second moment takes up what is liveable in life by way of apolitical experience, in contrast to appropriations of the collective, including a discussion of the arts. Finally, Dubreuil draws up an incomplete inventory of means: forms of existence – often frail and fleeting – that make an exit toward atopia.
Key Features
Opens a dialogue at the crossroads of French leftism (from the Situationists to Jacques Rancière), Italian contemporary philosophy (from operaismo to authors such as Agamben or Esposito) and English-speaking academic activism (with figures such as Herbert Marcuse, Judith Butler and Slavoj Žižek)
Includes a section on the connection between literature, the arts and the political, as perceived in Surrealism, Situationism and Adorno and Marcuse
Explores how extremist practices may encounter the very limits of politics
Gives a performative account of what apolitical experiences and instants could mean
Laurent Dubreuil’s book is situated in an extreme polarity to other contemporary reflections on politics. Refusing every figure of the political, Dubreuil radically moves beyond all of the perspectives in the field today. Certainly his idea of absolute apoliticity remains highly problematic in a world lacking politics, such as our own. But this is precisely what makes his book of extreme interest.
Laurent Dubreuil is Professor of Comparative Literature, Romance Studies and Cognitive Science at Cornell University. He is the author of six books of philosophy and literary theory, including The Intellective Space (2015) and Empire of Language (2013). Since 2011, he has served as the Editor of diacritics.
Cory Browning is Assistant Professor of French at the University of Oregon. He completed his PhD at Cornell University under the direction of Laurent Dubreuil. He has translated articles by Etienne Balibar and Claire Fontaine for diacritics and two chapters in the forthcoming, Oxford Handbook of the History of Terrorism.
