Envisioning the Good Life: The Limits of Contemporary Vitalism

Envisioning the Good Life is a call to re-imagine our lives beyond the limits of recent understandings. While contemporary thinkers of life have promoted a vision of life as excess to escape the crises that beset the present, these vitalist visions leave life detached from reality and fragmented. Contemporary vitalism imagines life as excessive, savage life, as damaged life that flees power, and as redeemed life that forms a new dispersed community. While exploring these visions of life, this book argues for an integrated understanding of the good life. Reading against the limits of the current imaginary, Envisioning the Good Life suggests that our lives are not defined by the limits of illness, death, and finitude. This book urges us to rediscover the vision of the good life in the collective and to grasp our own powers to transform our lives and the world. Preface: Pandemic Life Acknowledgements Introduction: Extracting Life This Vital Century Parasitical Life Vitalism and Epidermalisation Life Values 1. Savage Life: Foucault, Deleuze and Ontological Anarchy Ontologies of Annihilation Crowned Anarchy Blows Against the Empire The Ethics of Excess 2. Damaged Life: Negri, Laruelle, Adorno and the Victim Job’s Great Complaint Black Celebration The Damage Done Present Pessimism 3. Redeemed Life: Henry, Laruelle, Žižek and the Figure of Christ Personal Jesus Christ Heretic Christ Dialectical Incarnating Community 4. Global Life: Schmitt, Blanchot and the Abstraction of Community Enemy Life Partisan Life The Absolute Enemy A Communism of Abstraction Combined and Uneven Life Conclusion: Beyond Finitude Bibliography Index