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Unexceptional Politics: On Obstruction, Impasse, and the Impolitic
A new vision of politics “below the radar”
One way to grasp the nature of politics is to understand the key terms in which it is discussed. Unexceptional Politics develops a political vocabulary drawn from a wide range of media (political fiction, art, film, and TV), highlighting the scams, imbroglios, information trafficking, brinkmanship, and parliamentary procedures that obstruct and block progressive politics. The book reviews and renews modes of thinking about micropolitics that counter notions of the “state of exception” embedded in theories of the “political” from Thomas Hobbes to Carl Schmitt.
Emily Apter develops a critical model of politics behind the scenes, a politics that operates outside the norms of classical political theory. She focuses on micropolitics, defined as small events, happening in series, that often pass unnoticed yet disturb and interfere with the institutional structures of capitalist parliamentary systems, even as they secure their reproduction and longevity. Apter’s experimental glossary is arranged under headings that look at the apparently incidental, immaterial, and increasingly virtual practices of politicking: “obstruction,” “obstinacy,” “psychopolitics,” “managed life,” “serial politics.” Such terms frame an argument for taking stock of the realization that we really do not know what politics is, where it begins and ends, or how its micro-events should be described.
One way to grasp the nature of politics is to understand the key terms in which it is discussed. Unexceptional Politics develops a political vocabulary drawn from a wide range of media (political fiction, art, film, and TV), highlighting the scams, imbroglios, information trafficking, brinkmanship, and parliamentary procedures that obstruct and block progressive politics. The book reviews and renews modes of thinking about micropolitics that counter notions of the “state of exception” embedded in theories of the “political” from Thomas Hobbes to Carl Schmitt.
Emily Apter develops a critical model of politics behind the scenes, a politics that operates outside the norms of classical political theory. She focuses on micropolitics, defined as small events, happening in series, that often pass unnoticed yet disturb and interfere with the institutional structures of capitalist parliamentary systems, even as they secure their reproduction and longevity. Apter’s experimental glossary is arranged under headings that look at the apparently incidental, immaterial, and increasingly virtual practices of politicking: “obstruction,” “obstinacy,” “psychopolitics,” “managed life,” “serial politics.” Such terms frame an argument for taking stock of the realization that we really do not know what politics is, where it begins and ends, or how its micro-events should be described.
- GenresPoliticsNonfictionTheory
288 pages, Hardcover
Published February 6, 2018
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105 people want to read
About the author
Emily Apter
28 books11 followersEmily Apter is Professor of Comparative Literature and French at New York University. Her published works include The Translation Zone: A New Comparative Literature and Continental Drift: From National Characters to Subjects.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
January 23, 2019
While the book attempts to explore politics at the cellular level as opposed to the body politic, it gets lost in its own tedious blind alleyways that read like dry exploratory research.
Apter doesn’t understand Alain Badiou at all, which is amusing to me because I learned of this book from her review on the back of Badiou’s seminar on Lacan. Apter doesn’t get easily defined concepts from Badiou’s work such as ‘Intervallic Period’ and worse still brings in other authors like Hallward to attempt to explain things like ‘count as one’.
The book lacks a narrative or even an intent. Each chapter meticulously explores a concept through chunky block quotes and offers no stake or consequences. I can’t recommend this book. This shit reads like a half-ass philosophy of (pop culture topic) series.
Apter doesn’t understand Alain Badiou at all, which is amusing to me because I learned of this book from her review on the back of Badiou’s seminar on Lacan. Apter doesn’t get easily defined concepts from Badiou’s work such as ‘Intervallic Period’ and worse still brings in other authors like Hallward to attempt to explain things like ‘count as one’.
The book lacks a narrative or even an intent. Each chapter meticulously explores a concept through chunky block quotes and offers no stake or consequences. I can’t recommend this book. This shit reads like a half-ass philosophy of (pop culture topic) series.
Displaying 1 of 1 review