We can no longer speak of a state of war in any traditional sense; yet there is currently no viable theory to account for the manifold internal conflicts; or civil wars; that increasingly afflict the world's populations. Meant as a first step toward such a theory; Giorgio Agamben's latest book looks at how civil war was conceived of at two crucial moments in the history of Western thought: in ancient Athens (from which the political concept of stasis emerges) and later; in the work of Thomas Hobbes. It identifies civil war as the fundamental threshold of politicization in the West; an apparatus that over the course of history has alternately allowed for the de-politicization of citizenship and the mobilization of the unpolitical. The arguments herein; first conceived of in the immediate aftermath of 9/11; have become ever more relevant now that we have entered the age of planetary civil war.
#1515134 in Books Stanford University Press 2004-06-07Original language:EnglishPDF # 1 9.00 x .60 x 6.00l; .73 #File Name: 0804750289248 pages
Review
0 of 2 people found the following review helpful. Interesting bookBy Torbjørn HovdeA thorough account of a turbulent time in Russia. The book covers the most important events in the context of the 1905 Revolution
