Hannah Arendt and Political Glory

Peg Birmingham is Professor of Philosophy at DePaul University. She is the author of Hannah Arendt and Human Rights: The Predicament of Common Responsibility (Indian UP, 2006), co-editor (with Philippe van Haute), Dissensus Communis: Between Ethics and Politics (Koros, 1996) and co-editor (with Anna Yeatman), Aporia of Rights: Citizenship in an Era of Human Rights (Bloomsbury, 2014). She is the author of numerous articles and book chapters on Agamben, Arendt, Derrida, Foucault, Heidegger, Hobbes, and Rousseau. She is the editor of Philosophy Today.

Peg Birmingham’s original and masterful study of Hannah Arendt revolutionises our interpretations of Arendt’s project. Scholarship to-date largely focuses on the generative concepts of natality and the new as creating political possibilities, but these readings overlook contemporary forms of superfluousness—a key concern for Arendt. Birmingham shows how Arendt’s thought focuses instead on earthly immortality, and it is within this framework that multiplex forms of contemporary superfluousness can be resisted and combatted. New forms of solidarity and political affect arise. This book is unquestionably a game-changer. Birmingham single-handedly shifts how we are to understand and read Arendt.

• AcknowledgementsList of AbbreviationsIntroduction: Rethinking Glorious ImmortalityPART ONEChapter 1 Superfluousness, Radical Evil, and the Death of Immortality1. Imperialism and the Production of Superfluousness2. Extreme Superfluousness and Holes of Oblivion3. Precarity and Superfluousness: Butler and Arendt on Eichmann’s BanalityChapter 2. The Superflousness of Factual Truth and the Problematic of Historical Immortality1. A Mutation in the History of the Lie: “Lying the Truth”2. Historical Immortality in the Modern Age3. Arendt and Benjamin: Reposing the Problem of Historical ImmortalityChapter 3. The Vita Activa: Earthly Immortality in an Age of Superflousness1. Arendt’s Critical Diagnosis of the Modern Age2. Arendt’s Phenomenology of Appearances: Recovering the Sensus Communis3. The Vita Activa and Earthly Immortalitya. The Life of Labor: The Fecundity and Regeneration of Lifeb. The Life of the Homo Faber: The Endurance of the Kalonc. The Life of Political Action: Bearing Untimely BeginningsIntermezzo: Arendt’s Disavowal of Economic SuperfluousnessPART TWOChapter 4. Revolutionary Immortality: Sacralized Violence. Secularization, and Glory1. Hobbes and Rousseau: Sacralized Violence and Immortal Glory2. Revolutionary Violence, Secularization, and the Problem of Authority3. The Council System: Revolutionary Immortality without Sovereignty or GloryChapter 5. Immortal Affects: The Pathos of Earthly Endurance1. A Phenomenology of Appearance: The Double Sensus Communis2. Arendt’s Complicated Heart3. Superfluous Sentiments: Forsaking Worldly Reality4. Immortal Affects: A New Form of SolidarityConclusion: Politics without Glory: Potential Earthly ImmortalityBibliographyIndex