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Featuring essays by some of the most prominent names in contemporary political and cultural theory, Sovereignty in Ruins presents a form of critique grounded in the conviction that political thought is itself an agent of crisis. Aiming to develop a political vocabulary capable of critiquing and transforming contemporary political frameworks, the contributors advance a politics of crisis that collapses the false dichotomies between sovereignty and governmentality and between critique and crisis. Their essays address a wide range of topics, such as the role history plays in the development of a politics of crisis; Arendt's controversial judgment of Adolf Eichmann; Strauss's and Badiou's readings of Plato's Laws; the acceptance of the unacceptable; the human and nonhuman; and flesh as a biopolitical category representative of the ongoing crisis of modernity.

Sovereignty. --- World politics. --- Biopolitics. --- Crisis management in government. --- Government crisis management --- Political behavior --- Colonialism --- Global politics --- International politics --- Political history --- Sovereignty --- State sovereignty (International relations) --- Law and legislation --- Public administration --- Human behavior --- Political science --- Sociobiology --- World history --- Eastern question --- Geopolitics --- International organization --- International relations --- International law --- Common heritage of mankind (International law) --- Self-determination, National --- Philosophy --- Biopolitics --- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel --- Karl Marx --- Michel Foucault

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"This monograph argues that melancholia is not an affliction in need of a remedy but instead the contemplative attitude that forms the basis of philosophical inquiry"-- "Why melancholia is a vital form of social critique and a catalyst for political renewal. Melancholia is wrongly condemned as a condition of withdrawal and despair that alienates its sufferer from community. Countering that misconception, A Politics of Melancholia reclaims an understanding of melancholia not as an affliction in need of a remedy but as an affirmative stance toward decay and ruination in political life, and restores the melancholic figure-by turns inventive and destructive, outraged and inspired-to their rightful place as the poet of political thought. George Edmondson and Klaus Mladek identify pivotal moments of political melancholia in ancient and modern texts, offering new perpectives on the death of Socrates in Plato's dialogues, the fratricide in Hamlet, Woyzeck's killing of Marie in Georg Büchner's Woyzeck, the murder of Moses in Freud's thought, and the betrayal of the revolutionary idea that Hannah Arendt identifies in her critique of eighteenth-century revolutions. Melancholia emerges here as a disposition that is mournful but also jubilant, a mood of unbending disconsolation that remains faithful to a scene of downfall, to events that cannot be forgotten, and to things that cannot be governed.Recovering a tradition of thought that is both affirmative and hopeful, this eloquent book reveals how political melancholia embodies a shared condition of discontent that binds communities together and inspires change"--

Melancholy (Philosophy) --- Melancholy in literature --- Political science --- Philosophy