The Subject of Politics

David Roberts writes in his introduction

The question common to the papers in the present issue is that of the subject of politics, more exactly, the revolutionary subject, the counter-revolutionary subject, and the political subject as such. The theorists are European and the focus, with the exception of one paper on the contemporary French philosopher Ranciėre, is the European political crisis from the early twentieth century through to the interwar years.

What constitutes the modern political subject, and how can this postulated individual participate in, be determined by, and rebel against, political regimes? This collection of essays approaches these questions from different perspectives and locales. They engage with the traditions of emancipatory politics and critical theory as well as contemporary theoretical forms of understanding. David Roberts’ lucid introduction is highly recommended for the browsing reader.

Table of Contents

Introduction
David Roberts

Reading Polish peripheral Marxism politically
Wiktor Marzec

Hegemony, passive revolution and the modern Prince
Peter Thomas

Adorno and Horkheimer’s Collective Psychology: on psychoanalytic explanations
Benjamin Lamb-Books

Pervaded by a chill: the dialectic of coldness in Adorno’s social theory
Simon Mussell

The Hitler Swarm
Dirk Baecker

Politics as Interruption: Rancière’s Community of Equals and Governmentality
Brian T. Connor and Gianpaolo Baiocchi

Bourdieu’s Sociology: A Post-Positivist Science
Sheena Jain

Placing Robert Hughes
Peter Beilharz

Review Essays

‘Slave to the Rhythm’ or love, sex and the dialectic of freedom
John Rundell

Bourdieu’s Legacy
Mathieu Hikaru Desan

Book Reviews

Politics, Social Theory, Utopia and the World System: Arguments in Political Sociology
Chamsy El-Ojeili, Reviewed by Andrew Gilbert

Modernity: Understanding the Present
Peter Wagner, Reviewed by Jordan McKenzie

All at Sage