With the flowering of postcolonialism, we return to Frantz Fanon, a leading theorist of the struggle against colonialism. In this thorough reinterpretation of Fanon’s texts, Ato Sekyi-Otu ensures that we return to him fully aware of the unsuspected formal complexity and substantive richness of his work. A Caribbean psychiatrist trained in France after World War II and an eloquent observer of the effects of French colonialism on its subjects from Algeria to Indochina, Fanon was a controversial figure—advocating national liberation and resistance to colonial power in his bestsellers, Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth.

But the controversies attending his life—and death, which some ascribed to the CIA—are small in comparison to those surrounding his work. Where admirers and detractors alike have seen his ideas as an incoherent mixture of Existentialism, Marxism, and psychoanalysis, Sekyi-Otu restores order to Fanon’s oeuvre by reading it as one dramatic dialectical narrative. Fanon’s Dialectic of Experience invites us to see Fanon as a dramatist enacting a movement of experience—the drama of social agents in the colonial context and its aftermath—in a manner idiosyncratically patterned on the narrative structure of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. By recognizing the centrality of experience to Fanon’s work, Sekyi-Otu allows us to comprehend this much misunderstood figure within the tradition of political philosophy from Aristotle to Arendt.

This is an introduction to the thought of the radical French thinker Félix Guattari. It is ideal for undergraduates and anyone studying political and cultural theory.

Guattari's main works were published in the 1970s and 1980s. His background was in psychoanalysis -- he was trained by Lacan and he practised as a psychoanalyst for much of his life. He developed a distinctive psychoanalytic method informed always by his revolutionary politics.

Guattari was actively involved in numerous political movements, from Trotskyism to Autonomism, tackling ecological and sexual politics along the way. A true believer in collectivity, much of his work was written in collaboration, most famously with Gilles Deleuze, with whom he wrote the hugely influential books Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus. He also wrote with Antonio Negri and others.

This accessible introduction explores his highly original ideas -- including his ground-breaking conception of 'transversal politics' -- and the impact his concern with subjectivity had on wider political theory.

In 2005 Michael Ignatieff left his life as a writer and professor at Harvard University to enter the combative world of politics back home in Canada. By 2008, he was leader of the country’s Liberal Party and poised—should the governing Conservatives falter—to become Canada’s next Prime Minister. It never happened. Today, after a bruising electoral defeat, Ignatieff is back where he started, writing and teaching what he learned.

What did he take away from this crash course in political success and failure? Did a life of thinking about politics prepare him for the real thing? How did he handle it when his own history as a longtime expatriate became a major political issue? Are cynics right to despair about democratic politics? Are idealists right to hope? Ignatieff blends reflection and analysis to portray today’s democratic politics as ruthless, unpredictable, unforgiving, and hyper-adversarial.

Rough as it is, Ignatieff argues, democratic politics is a crucible for compromise, and many of the apparent vices of political life, from inconsistency to the fake smile, follow from the necessity of bridging differences in a pluralist society. A compelling account of modern politics as it really is, the book is also a celebration of the political life in all its wild, exuberant variety.

Addressing a host of hot-button issues, from the barring of Christian student groups and military recruiters from law schools and universities to churches’ immunity from civil rights legislation in hiring and firing ministers, Paul Horwitz proposes a radical reformation of First Amendment law. Arguing that rigidly doctrinal approaches can’t account for messy, real-world situations, he suggests that the courts loosen their reins and let those institutions with a stake in First Amendment freedoms do more of the work of enforcing them.

Universities, the press, libraries, churches, and various other institutions and associations are a fundamental part of the infrastructure of public discourse. Rather than subject them to ill-fitting, top-down rules and legal categories, courts should make them partners in shaping public discourse and First Amendment law, giving these institutions substantial autonomy to regulate their own affairs. Self-regulation and public criticism should be the key restraints on these institutions, not judicial fiat. Horwitz suggests that this approach would help the law enhance the contribution of our “First Amendment institutions” to social and political life. It would also move us toward a conception of the state as a participating member of our social framework, rather than a reigning and often overbearing sovereign.

First Amendment Institutions offers a new vantage point from which to evaluate ongoing debates over topics ranging from campaign finance reform to campus hate speech and affirmative action in higher education. This book promises to promote—and provoke—important new discussions about the shape and future of the First Amendment.

This is a relatively brief, interpretive treatment of the man whom Bakunin called “the greatest conspirator of the century” but whom most English-speaking scholars know, if at all, as an obscure, misspelled name. This is the only English biography of Buonarroti and the only book in any language to treat him as “the first professional revolutionist.” It provides a detailed historiographical analysis of recent Italian Buonarrotian research, bearing on a wide variety of different special aspects of modern European history. It throws light on the conspiratorial underground of the early nineteenth century, on the relationship between the French Revolution and nineteenth century radical movements, on the historiography of the French Revolution, and on the development of the ideology of the totalitarian Left. Perhaps the main contribution made by this study is to provide precise factual data on aspects of pre-Marxian radicalism that have been heretofore treated in a vague, overgeneralized fashion.

Buonarroti is regarded as the focal point for a preliminary investigation into the origins of an important but neglected profession which developed during the early nineteenth century. In the introduction, a distinction is drawn between the “amateur” revolutionist—the doctor, lawyer, or merchant who played a prominent role in various particular revolutions—and the frequently unemployed professional who attempted to create a situation that would make possible the practice of his craft and who had a vested interest in “revolution” in general but did not necessarily play a part in any particular revolution.

In the following chapters, the entire course of Buonarroti’s long career is surveyed chronologically, in an effort to account for the emergence of this new type of man. He is viewed as a youthful disciple of Rousseau, studying law at the University of Pisa; as a follower of Robespierre who served as a Jacobin agent in Corsica and Oneglia and was granted French citizenship by the National Convention; as a colleague of Babeuf and later author of the classic account of the Conspiracy of the Equals; as a political prisoner during the Empire who was involved in anti-Bonapartist plots; as the arch-conspirator whose agents infiltrated the revolutionary secret societies of Metternich’s Europe; as Mazzini’s rival in the Risorgimento; and finally, as the patriarch venerated by radical Frenchmen, who indoctrinated a new generation of young Parisians while directing political propaganda and agitation against the Orleanist Regime and reshaping the mythology of the French Revolution. At each of these stages of Buonarroti’s career, his ideological orientation is analyzed, his present position in historiography examined, and his actual historical contribution suggested.

The concluding chapter offers a reappraisal of the historical significance of Buonarroti’s life and work. As a secular fundamentalist who took the words of the eighteenth-century philosophers literally and as a devout Jacobin who had seen in the First Republic his “heavenly city” materialize on earth, Buonarroti was incapable of coming to terms with the post-Thermidorian world. He achieved a new career by remaining frozen in the heroic pose of 1793 while outliving his times by over four decades. Although he dedicated his life to preparing for the great day that would restore the First Republic and thus shake the world, he failed to accomplish the mission he had set himself. However, he succeeded as a prototype. Others were eventually inspired by his example to adopt a similar vocation, with fateful consequence to all of Western civilization.

The study concludes with a bibliographical essay containing a brief note on the probable role of the Italian Communist Party in stimulating Buonarrotian research in Italy and extensive critical discussion of selected scholarly literature on the various phases of Buonarroti’s career.

"Mayor Richard M. Daley dropped the bomb at a routine news conference at City Hall on Tuesday. With no prelude or fanfare, Mr. Daley announced that he would not seek re-election when his term expires next year. 'Simply put, it's time,' he said." New York Times, September 7, 2010

With those four words, an era ended. After twenty-two years, the longest-serving and most powerful mayor in the history of Chicago—and, arguably, America—stepped down, leaving behind a city that was utterly transformed, and a complicated legacy we are only beginning to evaluate.

Essayist, editor, columnist, author of many books, and winner of a special Pulitzer Prize citation in 1958 for his powers of news analysis, Walter Lippmann both appraised and influenced twentieth-century American politics. No other author of the century dealt with the persistent problems of politics from so many approaches, was so widely read, or varied so widely in his conclusions.

Benjamin F. Wright’s study is the first book devoted to an exposition and analysis of Lippmann’s nine “books of political philosophy,” as James Reston called them. These books provide a fascinating study of changes in the political and economic ideas of the most important journalist of his time.

Lippmann’s books published in 1913 and 1914 reflect the optimism of the Progressive Era, of faith in science and in the ability of people to choose their goals and attain them. In 1922 and 1925, while editor of the New York World, Lippmann wrote searching, often pessimistic analyses of what he believed to be the prevailing assumptions regarding the nature and role of public opinion. Although in the Coolidge era he relegated government to a minor role as mediator, he became an enthusiastic defender of the achievements of the early New Deal. Two years later in a longer look, he found the same New Deal following the path toward totalitarianism. Keynes was discarded and his place taken by the economics of Adam Smith, bolstered by the common law of Coke and the Constitution of the founders. Finally, in 1955, in the extremely popular and very engaging Public Philosophy, there is a lament for the “decline of the West” and a plea to return to the age of civility and natural law.

In a final analytical chapter, Wright presents a critique of Lippmann’s historical understanding and the modern applications of the tradition of natural law. He also assesses Lippmann’s inability to translate the “public philosophy” into programs or institutional changes and the failure to account for the expansion of governmental functions together with the continued strength of constitutional democracy in the West.

She was a friend, lover, and confidante of charismatic Spanish American independence hero Simón Bolívar and, after her death, a nationalist icon in her own right. Yet authors generally have chosen either to romanticize Manuela Sáenz or to discount her altogether. For Glory and Bolivar: The Remarkable of Life of Manuela Sáenz, by contrast, offers a comprehensive and clear-eyed biography of her. Based on unprecedented archival research, it paints a vivid portrait of the Quito-born "Libertadora," revealing both an exceptional figure and a flesh-and-blood person whose life broadly reflected the experiences of women during Spanish America's turbulent Age of Revolution.

Already married at the time of her meeting with the famous Liberator, Sáenz abandoned her husband in order to become not only Bolívar's romantic companion, but also his official archivist, a member of his inner circle, and one of his most loyal followers. She played a central role in Spanish South America's independence drama and eventually in developments leading to the consolidation of new nations. Pamela Murray, for the first time, closely examines Sáenz's political trajectory including her vital, often-overlooked years in exile. She exposes the myths that still surround her. She offers, in short, a nuanced and much-needed historical perspective, one that balances recognition of Sáenz's uniqueness with awareness of the broader forces that shaped this dynamic nineteenth-century woman.

In 1894, on the eve of the French conquest of Morocco, a young Muslim mystic named Muḥammad al-Kattānī decided to abandon his life of asceticism to preach Islamic revival and jihad against the French. Ten years later, al-Kattānī mobilized a socially diverse coalition of Moroccans who called for resistance against French colonization.

In 1909, he met a violent death at the hands of the same Moroccan anti-colonialists he had empowered through his activism. Today, the government of Morocco regards al-Kattānī’s story as subversive, and he has virtually disappeared from the narratives of the early Moroccan anti-colonialism and nationalism. Despite this silencing, al-Kattānī’s remarkable personal transformation and sacrifice is at the heart of the events that, although ultimately failing to prevent French rule, gave birth to Moroccan nationalism and to modern concepts of Moroccan political power and authority.

Forgotten Saints draws on a diverse collection of previously unknown primary sources to narrate the vivid story of al-Kattānī and his virtual disappearance from accounts of modern Moroccan history.

The author's purpose is to understand the philosophical foundations of Hegel's social theory by articulating the normative standards at work in his claim that the three central social institutions of the modern era--the nuclear family, civil society, and the constitutional state--are rational or good. Its central question is: what, for Hegel, makes a rational social order rational? In addressing this question the book aspires to be faithful to Hegel's texts and to articulate a compelling theory of rational social institutions; its aim is not only to interpret Hegel correctly but also to demonstrate the richness and power that his vision of the rational social order possesses.

Frederick Neuhouser's task is to understand the conceptions of freedom on which Hegel's theory rests and to show how they ground his arguments in defense of the modern social world. In doing so, the author focuses on Hegel's most important and least understood contribution to social philosophy, the idea of "social freedom."

Neuhouser's strategy for making sense of social freedom is to show its affinities with Rousseau's conception of the general will. The main idea that Hegel appropriates from Rousseau is that rational social institutions must satisfy two conditions: first, they must furnish the basic social preconditions of their members' freedom; and, second, all social members must be able subjectively to affirm their freedom-conditioning institutions as good and thus to regard the principles that govern their social participation as coming from their own wills.

Fredric Jameson is the most important Marxist critic in the world today. While consistently operating at the cutting edge of literary and cultural studies, Jameson has remained committed to seemingly old-fashioned philosophical discourses, most notably dialectical criticism and utopian thought.

In Fredric Jameson: The Project of Dialectical Criticism, Robert Tally surveys Jameson’s entire oeuvre, from his early studies of Sartre and formal criticism through his engagements with postmodernism and globalisation to his recent readings of Hegel, Marx and the valences of the dialectic.

The book is both a comprehensive critical guide to Jameson’s theoretical project and itself a convincing argument for the power of dialectical criticism to understand the world today.

Winner of the PROSE Award
An NRC Handelsblad Best Book of the Year

“Ambitious and impressive…At a time when the very survival of both freedom and democracy seems uncertain, books like this are more important than ever.”
—The Nation

“Helps explain how partisans on both the right and the left can claim to be protectors of liberty, yet hold radically different understandings of its meaning…This deeply informed history of an idea has the potential to combat political polarization.”
—Publishers Weekly

“Ambitious and bold, this book will have an enormous impact on how we think about the place of freedom in the Western tradition.”
—Samuel Moyn, author of Not Enough

“Brings remarkable clarity to a big and messy subject…New insights and hard-hitting conclusions about the resistance to democracy make this essential reading for anyone interested in the roots of our current dilemmas.”
—Lynn Hunt, author of History: Why It Matters

For centuries people in the West identified freedom with the ability to exercise control over the way in which they were governed. The equation of liberty with restraints on state power—what most people today associate with freedom—was a deliberate and dramatic rupture with long-established ways of thinking. So what triggered this fateful reversal? In a masterful and surprising reappraisal of more than two thousand years of Western thinking about freedom, Annelien de Dijn argues that this was not the natural outcome of such secular trends as the growth of religious tolerance or the creation of market societies. Rather, it was propelled by an antidemocratic backlash following the French and American Revolutions.

The notion that freedom is best preserved by shrinking the sphere of government was not invented by the revolutionaries who created our modern democracies—it was first conceived by their critics and opponents. De Dijn shows that far from following in the path of early American patriots, today’s critics of “big government” owe more to the counterrevolutionaries who tried to undo their work.

As the chief human rights official of the Clinton Administration, John Shattuck faced far-flung challenges. Disasters were exploding simultaneously--genocide in Rwanda and Bosnia, murder and atrocities in Haiti, repression in China, brutal ethnic wars, and failed states in other parts of the world. But America was mired in conflicting priorities and was reluctant to act. What were Shattuck and his allies to do?

This is the story of their struggle inside the U.S. government over how to respond. Shattuck tells what was tried and what was learned as he and other human rights hawks worked to change the Clinton Administration's human rights policy from disengagement to saving lives and bringing war criminals to justice. He records his frustrations and disappointments, as well as the successes achieved in moving human rights to the center of U.S. foreign policy.

Shattuck was at the heart of the action. He was the first official to interview the survivors of Srebrenica. He confronted Milosevic in Belgrade. He was a key player in bringing the leaders of genocide in Bosnia and Rwanda to justice. He pushed from the inside for an American response to the crisis of the Haitian boat people. He pressed for the release of political prisoners in China. His book is both an insider's account and a detailed prescription for preventing such wars in the future.

Shattuck criticizes the Bush Administration's approach, which he says undermines human rights at home and around the world. He argues that human rights wars are breeding grounds for terrorism. Freedom on Fire describes the shifting challenges of global leadership in a world of explosive hatreds and deepening inequalities.

From his birth in the lowest stratum of the samurai class to his assassination at the hands of right-wing militarists, Takahashi Korekiyo (1854-1936) lived through tumultuous times that shaped the course of modern Japanese history. Takahashi is considered "Japan's Keynes" in many circles because of the forward-thinking (and controversial) fiscal and monetary policies--including deficit financing, currency devaluation, and lower interest rates--that he implemented to help Japan rebound from the Great Depression and move toward a modern economy.

Richard J. Smethurst's engaging biography underscores the profound influence of the seven-time finance minister on the political and economic development of Japan by casting new light on Takahashi's unusual background, unique talents, and singular experiences as a charismatic and cosmopolitan financial statesman.

Along with the many fascinating personal episodes--such as working as a houseboy in California and running a silver mine in the Andes--that molded Takahashi and his thinking, the book also highlights four major aspects of Takahashi's life: his unorthodox self-education, his two decades of service at the highest levels of government, his pathbreaking economic and political policies before and during the Depression, and his efforts to stem the rising tide of militarism in the 1930s. Deftly weaving together archival sources, personal correspondence, and historical analysis, Smethurst's study paints an intimate portrait of a key figure in the history of modern Japan.

Theories of social justice are necessarily abstract, reaching beyond the particular and the immediate to the general and the timeless. Yet such theories, addressing the world and its problems, must respond to the real and changing dilemmas of the day. A brilliant work of practical philosophy, Frontiers of Justice is dedicated to this proposition. Taking up three urgent problems of social justice neglected by current theories and thus harder to tackle in practical terms and everyday life, Martha Nussbaum seeks a theory of social justice that can guide us to a richer, more responsive approach to social cooperation.

The idea of the social contract--especially as developed in the work of John Rawls--is one of the most powerful approaches to social justice in the Western tradition. But as Nussbaum demonstrates, even Rawls's theory, suggesting a contract for mutual advantage among approximate equals, cannot address questions of social justice posed by unequal parties. How, for instance, can we extend the equal rights of citizenship--education, health care, political rights and liberties--to those with physical and mental disabilities? How can we extend justice and dignified life conditions to all citizens of the world? And how, finally, can we bring our treatment of nonhuman animals into our notions of social justice? Exploring the limitations of the social contract in these three areas, Nussbaum devises an alternative theory based on the idea of "capabilities." She helps us to think more clearly about the purposes of political cooperation and the nature of political principles--and to look to a future of greater justice for all.