Political Theory and the Displacement of Politics

Bonnie Honig concludes the introduction to this fine book by invokingthe virago: the female warrior who will not be contained within categoriesthat oppose masculinity against femininity or human rationality against theforces of nature. It is a fitting emblem for a book that takes up and perturbs an opposition that functions variously to divide reason from violence, liberal humanism from poststructuralist skepticism, and feminine passivity from masculine bravado. This is the opposition between virtu and virtue, and Honig calibrates it against a new measure she terms the 'displacement of politics.'. -- Lisa Disch * Political Theory * Honig's sharp genealogical sensibilities and insights, her development of a position of agonistic amendable authority, the questions which she raises and the soothing answers she refuses, come together in an excellent book that engages and provokes its readers in ways which exemplify political theory at its best, animated but not displaced by politics. -- Romand Coles * Journal of Politics * Thinkers as diverse as Plato, Aquinas, Hobbes, Locke, and Marx have relied,explicitly or implicitly, on the belief that there is some set of political and social arrangements most conducive to themaximization of human well-being and happiness. Bonnie Honig's illuminating and disquieting book provides an acute and much-needed analysis of some of the consequences and implications of this teleological assumption for contemporary political theory and, more generally, for the ways in which people tend to conceive of politics. Indeed, Honig argues that politics itself, at least insofar as it entails or expresses ultimately irreducible conflict, dissonance, resistance, and agonal struggle, has largely been displaced from or written out of political theory. -- Lawrence J. Biskowski * American Quarterly *

Bonnie Honig is Nancy Duke Lewis Professor in the departments of Modern Culture and Media (MCM) and Political Science at Brown University. She is the author of Antigone, Interrupted; Emergency Politics: Paradox, Law, Democracy; and Democracy and the Foreigner.

1. Negotiating Positions: The Politics of Virtue and Virtu 2. Kant and the Concept of Respect for Persons Beginnings Respect for the Moral Law Reverence-Respect for Persons Teleological Respect for Persons Liberal Respect for Persons Setting the Conditions for Moral Improvement Kant's Virtue Theory of Politics 3. Nietzsche and the Recovery of Responsibility Three Kinds of Recovery The Genealogical Recovery of Responsibility The Re-covery of Responsibility: Against Remorse The Re-covery of Responsibility: Eternal Recurrence Alternative Responsibilities: The Self as a Work of Art Nietzsche's Re-covery of Virtue as Virtu Nietzsche's Reverence for Institutions 4. Arendt's Accounts of Action and Authority Action, Identity, and the Self Acting through Speech: Promising and Forgiveness The Postulates of Action Stabilizing Performatives: Arendt, Austin, and Derrida Acting through Writing: Founding the New American Republic The Undecidability of the American Declaration of Independence Intervention, Augmentation, and Resistability: Arendt's Practice of Political Authority Making Space for Arendt's Virtu Theory of Politics 5. Rawls and the Remainders of Politics Reconciliation or Politicization? The Politics of Originating Positions The Practice of Punishment Irresponsible Rogues and Idiosyncratic Misfits Liberal and Other Alternatives 6. Sandel and the Proliferation of Political Subjects Two Kinds of Dispossession The Communitarian Subject of Possession Occasions for Politics Politics as Friendship Morally Deep Questions Morally Deep Answers The Rawlsian Supplement 7. Renegotiating Positions: Beyond the Virtue-Virtu Opposition