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Mark Potocnik (ed.), Frank Ruda (ed.), ...: Beyond Potentialities?

Mark Potocnik (ed.), Frank Ruda (ed.), Jan Völker (ed.)

Beyond Potentialities?
Politics between the Possible and the Impossible

Softcover, 216 pages

PDF, 216 pages

Politics between the Possible and the Impossible

Nearly the whole history of political thought is spanned between two poles: one of founding, establishing, and justifying a stable and just order on one side and of justified transformation and necessary break with that same order on the other side. Between institution and emancipation, reform and revolution, the question of possibility is always arising for politics. Are there possibilities to change the order of society? Are there possibilities for a different justice? Where to find them and how to define them? Are they already present in the situation, or do they have to be actively created? Or does one have to rethink collective emancipation in a way that it does not rely upon given possibilities?

The question of possibility is raised in philosophy itself in different terms: as a question of potentiality and potentials but also as a question of the impossibilities of changing political order. In recent political discussions this question is more present than ever and is newly posed in fundamental ways by thinkers such as Agamben, Badiou, and Deleuze, or Lacan and Žižek. The present volume assembles articles that investigate this question and the new guise it took from different perspectives and highlight its relevance for contemporary political thought.

»One could say that political thought is one of the most obvious areas to question and reconfigure the relation between the actual and the potential.«

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Mark Potocnik

Mark Potocnik

holds a research position at the Collaborative Research Centre 626 at the Freie Universität Berlin. He earned his Ph.D. with a thesis on »Mediocrity: Poetics of the Average Man«.

Other texts by Mark Potocnik for DIAPHANES
Frank Ruda

Frank Ruda

holds a research position at the Collaborative Research Centre 626 at the Freie Universität Berlin. He is co-editor of the book series morale provisoire at the Berlin based publishing house Merve. He has translated works by Badiou and Rancière into German and has published broadly on questions of contemporary philosophy.

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Jan Völker

Jan Völker

holds a research position at the Collaborative Research Centre 626 at the Freie Universität Berlin. His research and publications focus on Kantian aesthetics, contemporary political philosophy, and the relation of art and politics. He is co-editor of the series morale provisoire at the Berlin based publisher Merve and co-translator of works by Alain Badiou and Jacques Rancière. Publications include: Ästhetik der Lebendigkeit. Kants dritte Kritik (2011), »Kant and the ›spirit as an enlivening principle‹« in: Filosvni vesnik (2009).

Other texts by Jan Völker for DIAPHANES
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