anthropology
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p o l i t i ca l t h e o ry
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philosophy
Disappointment
Toward a Critical Hermeneutics of Worldbuilding JA R R ET T Z IGO N
“A clear and powerful rethinking of the concept of the political grounded in the world of situations rather than the subject of enunciations, Disappointment announces the arrival of a major new figure in the ontological turn in anthropology.” — E L I Z A B ET H P OVI N ELLI , Columbia University
208 pages 978-0-8232-7824-4 • Paper • $30.00 (SDT), £25.99 978-0-8232-7823-7 • Cloth • $105.00 (SDT), £90.00 Simultaneous electronic edition available DECE MBE R
Increasingly, anthropologists, political theorists, and philosophers are calling for imaginative and creative analyses and theories that might help us think and bring about an otherwise. Disappointment responds to this call by showing how collaboration between an anthropologist and a political movement of marginalized peoples can disclose new possibilities for being and acting politically. Drawing from nearly a decade of research with the global anti–drug war movement, Jarrett Zigon puts ethnography in dialogue with both political theory and continental philosophy to rethink some of the most fundamental ontological, political, and ethical concepts. The result is to show that ontological starting points have real political implications, and, thus, how an alternative ontological starting point can lead to new possibilities for building worlds more ethically attuned to their inhabitants. JAR R ETT ZIG ON is William and Linda Porterfield Professor of Biomedical Ethics and Professor of Anthropology at the University of Virginia.
p o l i t i ca l t h e o ry
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philosophy
Stasis Before the State Nine Theses on Agonistic Democracy D I M I TR IS VARDOU LAKIS
“A beautiful and lyrical book. Over the course of nine theses Vardoulakis contends with some of the central issues of contemporary politics and shows that we need not fear conflict but should embrace it as a critical aspect of democratic life.” — JA MES MA RT EL, San Francisco State University
128 pages, 5 x 7½ 978-0-8232-7740-7 • Paper • $25.00 (SDT), £21.99 978-0-8232-7739-1 • Cloth • $90.00 (SDT), £77.00 Simultaneous electronic edition available Commonalities SE PTE MBE R
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This book critiques the relation between sovereignty and democracy. Across nine theses, Vardoulakis argues that sovereignty asserts its power by establishing exclusions: the sovereign excluding other citizens from power and refugees and immigrants from citizenship. Within this structure, to resist sovereignty is to reproduce the logic of exclusion characteristic of sovereignty. In contrast to this “ruse of sovereignty,” Vardoulakis proposes an alternative model for political change based not on sovereign exclusion but on agonistic democracy. The term stasis, which refers both to the state and to revolution against it, helps to show how agonism is more primary than exclusion. In elaborating this ancient but only recently recovered concept of stasis, Vardoulakis illustrates the radical potential of democracy to move a sovereignty marked by exclusion. D I M I TR I S VARDOU LAKIS
Sydney University.
is Associate Professor and Deputy Chair of Philosophy at Western
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