Terms of the political : community, immunity, biopolitics / Roberto Esposito ; translated by Rhiannon Noel Welch.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Esposito, Roberto, 1950-

Contributor:

Welch, Rhiannon Noel.

Series:

Commonalities

Language:

English

Italian

Subjects (All):

Political science--Philosophy.

Political science.

Biopolitics.

Physical Description:

152 pages ; 24 cm.

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Fordham University Press, 2013.

Summary:

Terms of the Political presents a decade of thought about the origins and possibilities of political theory from one of contemporary Italy's most prolific and engaging political theorists. Roberto Esposito has coined a number of critical concepts in current debates about the past, present, and future of biopolitics-from his work on the implications of the etymological and philosophical kinship of community (communitas) and immunity (immunitas) to his theorizations of the impolitical and the impersonal.

Taking on interlocutors from throughout the Western philosophical tradition, from Aristotle and Augustine to Weil, Arendt, Nancy, Foucault, and Agamben, Esposito announces the eclipse of a modern political lexicon-"freedom," "democracy," "sovereignty," and "law"-that, in its attempt to protect human life, has so often produced the opposite (violence, melancholy, and death).

An invaluable introduction to the breadth and rigor of Esposito's thought, the book will also be welcomed by readers already familiar with Esposito's characteristic skill in overturning and breaking open the language of politics. Book jacket.

Contents:

The Law of Community 14

Melancholy and Community 27

Immunitary Democracy 37

Freedom and Immunity 47

Immunization and Violence 57

Biopolitics and Philosophy 67

Nazism and Us 79

Politics and Human Nature 88

Totalitarianism or Biopolitics: Toward a Philosophical Interpretation of the Twentieth Century 100

Toward a Philosophy of the Impersonal 112

Community and Violence 123.

Notes:

Originally published as Roberto Esposito, Termini della politica: Comunità, immunità, biopolitica by Mimesis, c2008.

Translated from Italian.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN:

9780823242641

0823242641

9780823242658

082324265X

OCLC:

760975619