Politics as Activity

Katarina Sjöblom is working as a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. Her doctoral dissertation, defended in November 2023, explored the nature of political activity by engaging with the thoughts of Giorgio Agamben, Hannah Arendt, Alexandre Kojève, and other prominent thinkers in the continental tradition of political thought. More generally, her research interests include modern political theory, social and resistance movements, biopolitics, and the relation between aesthetics and politics.

• 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 From sector to activity 1.2 Legacy: praxis and poiēsis 1.3 Structure of analysis 2 AGAMBEN’S CONCEPTUAL LOGIC 2.1 Potentiality 2.2 The taking place of language2.3 The coming community 2.4 Gesture and pure means 2.5 Inoperativity 2.6 Manner and profanation 2.7 A different use of praxis and poiēsis 3 BEYOND POIĒSIS 3.1 Productive negativity3.2 Agamben and the end of history 3.2.1 Animality and snobbery 3.2.2 The suspension of the dialectic 3.3 Production unraveled 4 BEYOND PRAXIS 4.1 The vulnerability of new beginnings 4.2 Stability in the realm of human affairs 4.3 The limits of founding: Arendt on Montesquieu and power 4.4 Principles of action 4.5 The contamination of praxis 4.6 Within praxis and poiēsis5 GESTURES AND PERFORMATIVES 5.1 From institutional performatives to faith in the word: J.L. Austin and Agamben 5.2 Iterability versus pure performatives: Derrida, Butler, and Agamben 5.3 The Shadow of Derrida 6 CONCLUSIONS: ACTION UPON ACTION6.1 Undoing the doing, unmaking the making 6.2 Being versus action: notes on identity politics REFERENCES