"The book is lean and not overly theoretically dense. It will appeal to the critically inclined for its original appropriation of Kant and intelligent commentary on temporality and politics . . . What is most striking and enduring about the work is that Shapiro seems to have offered the first figuration of a novel way to theorize individual and collective trauma as political without relying on a primary psychoanalytic dimension or its correlate literatures."

- Mat Keel, AAG Review of Books

"After reading Michael J. Shapiro’s book, I was hardpressed to imagine a more timely work in political theory. . . . The Political Sublime is not only timely but also the equal of the best examples of recent scholarship in the growing field of politics and aesthetics."

- Morton Schoolman, Perspectives on Politics

In The Political Sublime Michael J. Shapiro formulates an original politics of aesthetics through an analysis of the experience of the sublime. Turning away from Kant's analysis of the sublime experience as a validation of the existence of a universal common sense, Shapiro draws on Deleuze, Lyotard, and Rancière to show how incomprehensible events and dilemmas provide openings for new political formations. He approaches the sublime through a range of artistic and cultural texts that address social crises and natural disasters, from the writing of James Baldwin and Ta-Nehisi Coates to the films of Ingmar Bergman and Spike Lee; these works suggest ways to channel the disruptive effects of the sublime into resistance to authority and innovative political initiative. Whether stemming from the threat of nuclear annihilation or the aftermath of an earthquake, the violence of racism and terrorism or the devastation of industrialism, sublime experience, Shapiro contends, allows for a rethinking of events in ways that reveal, redistribute, and create conditions of possibility for alternative communities of sense.
Les mer
Michael J. Shapiro formulates a new politics of aesthetics by analyzing the experience of the sublime as rendered by a number of artistic and cultural texts that deal with race, terrorism, nuclear proliferation, and industrialism, showing how the sublime's disruptive effects provides the opportunity for a new oppositional politics.
Les mer
Acknowledgments  ix Introduction. The Insistence of the Sublime1 1. When the Earth Moves: Toward a Political Sublime  13 2. The Racial Sublime  41 3. The Nuclear Sublime  68 4. The Industrial Sublime  101 5. The 9/11 Terror Sublime  133 Afterword. It's All About Duration  169 Notes  173 Bibliography  193 Index  209
Les mer
“With a capacious and generative writing style carried out through his usual exciting mode of political theorizing, Michael J. Shapiro takes up a challenging and daring position: the physical actuality—or, the thingness—of the sublime. This articulation of the fact of the political sublime is a notable achievement which makes for an impressive book.”
Les mer

Produktdetaljer

ISBN
9780822370529
Publisert
2018-03-15
Utgiver
Vendor
Duke University Press
Vekt
363 gr
Høyde
229 mm
Bredde
152 mm
Aldersnivå
P, 06
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Heftet

Forfatter

Biographical note

Michael J. Shapiro is Professor of Political Science at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa and the author of numerous books, most recently Politics and Time.