Sovereignty and Its Other

Dimitris Vardoulakis is Associate Professor and deputy chair of philosophy at Western Sydney University.

"Dimitris Vardoulakis's new book, Sovereignty and Its Other, is a powerful attempt to critically analyse and deconstruct the definition and the mechanisms of the exercise of sovereignty in both its historical and contemporary versions." -Thesis Eleven "This book moves easily across various disciplines-philosophy, political science, theology, and literature-while illustrating certain key points with cases drawn from recent events." -- -Jonathan Strauss Miami University "Vardoulakis's wide-ranging critique of sovereignty takes us on an exciting journey from Thucydides through Rousseau to Foucault, providing us with new perspectives and fresh insights on some of the classical sources of the western political tradition. Against the logic of sovereignty and its justification of violence, Vardoulakis puts forward an original formulation of agonistic democracy and political judgment built on the solid ground of a brilliant interpretation of Spinoza's political thought. This book will do much to keep alive the revolutionary embers in the spirit of Arendt and Derrida." -- -Miguel Vatter School of Social Sciences, University of New South Wales, Australia

• Preface Preamble, or Power and Its Relations 1. Judgment and Justification Justification or Judgment? Sovereign Discomfort: The Immediacy of Justification Dejustification, or the Historicization of the Trinity of Justification Democratic Judgment, or the Exigency of Participation An Other Narrative: On Method 2. The Vicissitude of Participation: On Ancient Sovereignty War and the State: On the Foundation and Perpetuation of the Polis in Thucydides Self-sufficiency: Pericles's "Funeral Oration" "Invincible Eros" in Sophocles's Antigone: For the Love of Democracy Universal Agape in Christian Sovereignty: Augustine's City of God 3.The Propinquity of Nature: Absolute Sovereignty The Subject of Psychology and the Law: Machiavelli and Bodin Fear Thy Neighbor as Thyself: Hobbes's Artificialities There Must Be Madmen... The Absoluteness of the Sovereign in the Leviathan Melancholia as Dejustification: Hamlet's Anti-absolutism 4. Revolution and the Power of Living: Popular Sovereignty "The Sovereign Is Always What It Should Be": Rousseau's Perpetual Revolution The Other of Obedience: Spinoza's Dejustification of Sovereignty The Regime of Broken Promises: The Possibility of Democracy The Paroxysm of the Aleatory: Kleist's Michael Kohlhaas 5. Democracy and Its Other: Biopolitical Sovereignty Normalizing the Exception The Unsavables: Marx's Wager Acts of Democracy: The Primacy of the Effect in Foucault's Theory of Power The Unexceptional: Coetzee's Michael K. and Resistance Epilogue: A Relational Ontology of the Political Notes Bibliography Index