Literature : John Cayley

When discussing literature in the early 1990s, Jacques Derrida was quick to remark, “The name ‘literature’ is a very recent invention.” Historically and politically located, therefore. Literature, particularly when it is taken to derive from or include oral linguistic aesthetic practices, has also been understood as an inevitable, evolved, ‘universal’ consequence of human creative activity, and even as constitutive of the ‘human.’ …

Literature : John Cayley

When discussing literature in the early 1990s, Jacques Derrida was quick to remark, “The name ‘literature’ is a very recent invention.” Historically and politically located, therefore. Literature, particularly when it is taken to derive from or include oral linguistic aesthetic practices, has also been understood as an inevitable, evolved, ‘universal’ consequence of human creative activity, and even as constitutive of the ‘human.’ …

Exposure : Erin Graff Zivin

Two propositions. First proposition: exposure is a political concept. Second proposition: exposure is a method describing the performative articulation of political concepts. The current formulation, as well as the limits, of the concept “exposure” are found in Emmanuel Levinas’s thought, characterized by some as ethical philosophy” …

Exposure : Erin Graff Zivin

Two propositions. First proposition: exposure is a political concept. Second proposition: exposure is a method describing the performative articulation of political concepts. The current formulation, as well as the limits, of the concept “exposure” are found in Emmanuel Levinas’s thought, characterized by some as ethical philosophy” …

Imperception : Alex Moskowitz

Phillis Wheatley Peters’s collection of poems, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral was published in 1773. First appearing in London, the collection is perhaps best remembered today for the poem titled “On Being Brought from Africa to America” …

Imperception : Alex Moskowitz

Phillis Wheatley Peters’s collection of poems, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral was published in 1773. First appearing in London, the collection is perhaps best remembered today for the poem titled “On Being Brought from Africa to America” …

Performativity : Bonnie Honig

“Everybody’s talking about performativity, now,” Eve Sedgwick said in 1993.1 She said it was because of Judith Butler’s book Gender Trouble, which cast sex/gender as performative, that is to say, as a discursive product, not the natural cause, of words uttered, gestures performed, clothes worn, bodies moving. But, as Sedgwick knew …

Performativity : Bonnie Honig

“Everybody’s talking about performativity, now,” Eve Sedgwick said in 1993.1 She said it was because of Judith Butler’s book Gender Trouble, which cast sex/gender as performative, that is to say, as a discursive product, not the natural cause, of words uttered, gestures performed, clothes worn, bodies moving. But, as Sedgwick knew …

Domestic Violence : Barbara N. Nagel

To call “domestic violence” a “political concept” presents a provocation inasmuch as the domos is generally understood to stand apart from the political (or not to really be part of the polis): “domestic violence” suggests a small, domesticated form of violence. And yet, the domos has existed historically at different scales …

Domestic Violence : Barbara N. Nagel

To call “domestic violence” a “political concept” presents a provocation inasmuch as the domos is generally understood to stand apart from the political (or not to really be part of the polis): “domestic violence” suggests a small, domesticated form of violence. And yet, the domos has existed historically at different scales …

Like : Jacques Lezra

Cher: “So, Okay, like right now, for example, the Haitians need to come to America. But some people are all “What about the strain on our resources?” But it’s like, when I had this garden party …

Like : Jacques Lezra

Cher: “So, Okay, like right now, for example, the Haitians need to come to America. But some people are all “What about the strain on our resources?” But it’s like, when I had this garden party …

Dreadlocked Logics of Impossibility : Janine Jones

“I do not believe that genocide and slavery can be contained.” Due to ways in which Indigenous and Black peoples’ subjugation has been co-produced through land dispossession, logics of elimination, and the abjection of Black people through Black disvalue, Indigenous genocide and Black enslavement cannot be contained. Thinking about this claim led me to wonder why …

Dreadlocked Logics of Impossibility : Janine Jones

“I do not believe that genocide and slavery can be contained.” Due to ways in which Indigenous and Black peoples’ subjugation has been co-produced through land dispossession, logics of elimination, and the abjection of Black people through Black disvalue, Indigenous genocide and Black enslavement cannot be contained. Thinking about this claim led me to wonder why …

Necropolitics : Andrés Fabián Henao Castro

Achille Mbembe’s “Necropolitics” (2003) represents death’s entrance into the conceptual field of political science.1 Since Socrates defined philosophy as the art of dying in order to qualify the nature of being human in the Phaedo, death had been under philosophy’s conceptual domain in the Western tradition.2 Other disciplines, however, had already started to think about death differently . . .

Necropolitics : Andrés Fabián Henao Castro

Achille Mbembe’s “Necropolitics” (2003) represents death’s entrance into the conceptual field of political science.1 Since Socrates defined philosophy as the art of dying in order to qualify the nature of being human in the Phaedo, death had been under philosophy’s conceptual domain in the Western tradition.2 Other disciplines, however, had already started to think about death differently . . .

Paradise : Iván Hofman

Among the privileged concepts that may belong to a politico-theological lexicon, “Paradise” has been endowed with both the loftiness characteristic of the solemn promise it augurs, as well as with the light-headed, almost ludic, good news (gospel) of the future it sets forth. The history of its concept has been marked by the obsession to find not only its spiritual but also its ‘corporeal’ reality . . .

Paradise : Iván Hofman

Among the privileged concepts that may belong to a politico-theological lexicon, “Paradise” has been endowed with both the loftiness characteristic of the solemn promise it augurs, as well as with the light-headed, almost ludic, good news (gospel) of the future it sets forth. The history of its concept has been marked by the obsession to find not only its spiritual but also its ‘corporeal’ reality . . .

Pornography : April Alliston

For political reasons, there has never been consensus around any definition of pornography. The concept remains among the most radically unthought and unquestioned terms in common use. Twentieth-century political battles over its definition were virtually silenced by overwhelming resistance to theorizing the concept . . .

Pornography : April Alliston

For political reasons, there has never been consensus around any definition of pornography. The concept remains among the most radically unthought and unquestioned terms in common use. Twentieth-century political battles over its definition were virtually silenced by overwhelming resistance to theorizing the concept . . .

Dictatorship : Andreas Kalyvas

“Dictatorship,” Vladimir Lenin wrote a century ago, “is a big word, and big words should not be thrown about carelessly.” Lenin may have been wrong on many things, but he was certainly right in this case. Dictatorship is indeed a “big word” or, to be more precise, a master concept, a concept with a pivotal continuous presence in political . . .

Dictatorship : Andreas Kalyvas

“Dictatorship,” Vladimir Lenin wrote a century ago, “is a big word, and big words should not be thrown about carelessly.” Lenin may have been wrong on many things, but he was certainly right in this case. Dictatorship is indeed a “big word” or, to be more precise, a master concept, a concept with a pivotal continuous presence in political . . .

Entrepreneurial Science : Yarden Katz

‘Entrepreneurial science’ is not the most intellectually scintillating concept, but I chose it because it seemed politically urgent. So, what is ‘Entrepreneurial Science’? We can begin by asking: who is the entrepreneurial scientist? But for that, we will need to know: Who is the scientist? In his elegantly written book The Scientific Life (2008) . . .

Entrepreneurial Science : Yarden Katz

‘Entrepreneurial science’ is not the most intellectually scintillating concept, but I chose it because it seemed politically urgent. So, what is ‘Entrepreneurial Science’? We can begin by asking: who is the entrepreneurial scientist? But for that, we will need to know: Who is the scientist? In his elegantly written book The Scientific Life (2008) . . .

Lex Animata: Jesús R. Velasco

For a medievalist, thinking about a political concept for our modernity is at the same time a curse and a moment of revelation. For some, the Middle Ages are just too far away, constituting a radical alterity. Others, like Hans Robert Jauss, view this alterity as an advantage, as something that could beget a new, fresher view on modernity. The Middle Ages . . .

Lex Animata: Jesús R. Velasco

For a medievalist, thinking about a political concept for our modernity is at the same time a curse and a moment of revelation. For some, the Middle Ages are just too far away, constituting a radical alterity. Others, like Hans Robert Jauss, view this alterity as an advantage, as something that could beget a new, fresher view on modernity. The Middle Ages . . .

Bios : Brooke Holmes

What kind of work is needed to map the concept of bios? The word is ancient Greek. Its translation as “life” will be recognized as partial by most readers as a result of the ubiquity of the claim, made most forcefully by Giorgio Agamben (with acknowledged debts to Hannah Arendt and Michel Foucault), that ancient Greek “life” is divided at its core into bios . . .

Bios : Brooke Holmes

What kind of work is needed to map the concept of bios? The word is ancient Greek. Its translation as “life” will be recognized as partial by most readers as a result of the ubiquity of the claim, made most forcefully by Giorgio Agamben (with acknowledged debts to Hannah Arendt and Michel Foucault), that ancient Greek “life” is divided at its core into bios . . .

Decolonization : Seloua Luste Boulbina

How—from the North—does one lose direction [comment . . . perdre le nord]? It is hard to keep count, from the perspective of the post-empire, of the number of objects to which “decolonization” is applied today. It is as if it were necessary to decontaminate profoundly toxic ways of being, of acting, and of thinking. Decolonization, as a concept . . .

Decolonization : Seloua Luste Boulbina

How—from the North—does one lose direction [comment . . . perdre le nord]? It is hard to keep count, from the perspective of the post-empire, of the number of objects to which “decolonization” is applied today. It is as if it were necessary to decontaminate profoundly toxic ways of being, of acting, and of thinking. Decolonization, as a concept . . .