Plastic Sovereignties: Agamben and the Politics of Aesthetics (Incitements)

Does Sovereignty Have A Future In The 21st Century?through A Sustained Engagement With The Work Of The Italian Philosopher Giorgio Agamben, And Against The Background Of Contemporary Political Phenomena, Arne De Boever Explores What Positive Political Possibilities The Notion Of Sovereignty Might Still Hold. Using The Philosophy Of Catherine Malabou, He Argues That These Possibilities Reside In An Aesthetic Reconceptualisation Of Sovereignty As A Plastic Power That Is Able To Give, Receive And Explode The Forms Of Our Political Future. A new work of scholarship in the 'practice' of rhetorical reading. This monograph provides readings of literary and philosophical texts that work through the rhetoric of tropes to the material inscription at the origin of these texts. The book focuses on the practice and pedagogical value of rhetorical reading. Its readings follow an itinerary from poetic texts (such as those by Wordsworth and Keats) through theoretical or philosophical texts (by Descartes and Nietzsche) to narrative fiction (by Henry James). The book also contains two essays on Paul de Man and literary theory and an interview on the topic of Deconstruction at Yale." All three of these latter texts are explicitly about the inescapable function and importance of the rhetoric of tropes for any critical reading or literary study worthy of the name.As Andrzej Warminski demonstrates, 'rhetorical reading' is a species of 'deconstructive reading'-in the full 'de Manian' sense-but one that, rather than harkening back to a past over and done with, would open the texts to a different future Through a sustained engagement with the work of Giorgio Agamben and Catherine Malabou, and against the background of contemporary political phenomena, Arne De Boever explores what positive political possibilities the notion of sovereignty might still hold