An Archaeology of the Political : Regimes of Power from the Seventeenth Century to the Present / Elías Palti.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Palti, Elías, author.

Series:

Columbia studies in political thought/political history.

Columbia Studies in Political Thought / Political History

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Power (Social sciences)--Philosophy--History.

Power (Social sciences).

Political science--Philosophy--History.

Political science.

Sovereignty.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (258 pages).

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Columbia University Press, [2017]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

In the past few decades, much political-philosophical reflection has been dedicated to the realm of "the political." Many of the key figures in contemporary political theory-Jacques Rancière, Alain Badiou, Reinhart Koselleck, Giorgio Agamben, Ernesto Laclau, and Slavoj Žižek, among others-have dedicated themselves to explaining power relations, but in many cases they take the concept of the political for granted, as if it were a given, an eternal essence.In An Archaeology of the Political, Elías José Palti argues that the dimension of reality known as the political is not a natural, transhistorical entity. Instead, he claims that the horizon of the political arose in the context of a series of changes that affirmed the power of absolute monarchies in seventeenth-century Europe and was successively reconfigured from this period up to the present. Palti traces this series of redefinitions accompanying alterations in regimes of power, thus describing a genealogy of the concept of the political. Perhaps most important, An Archaeology of the Political brings to theoretical discussions a sound historical perspective, illuminating the complex influences of both theology and secularization on our understanding of the political in the contemporary world.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Series Editor's Foreword

Acknowledgments

Introduction: A Conceptual History of the Political- The Archaeological Project

1. The Theological Genesis of the Political

2. The Tragic Scene

3. The Discourse of Emancipation and the Emergence of Democracy as a Problem

4. The Rebirth of the Tragic Scene and the Emergence of the Political as a Conceptual Problem

Conclusion: The End of a Long Cycle- The Second Disenchantment of the World

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 12. Jul 2017)

OCLC:

984683211