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    Merleau-Ponty and modern politics after anti-humanism

    Coole, Diana (2007) Merleau-Ponty and modern politics after anti-humanism. Modernity and Political Thought. Lanham, Maryland, USA: Rowman and Littlefield. ISBN 9780742533387.

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    Abstract

    Book synopsis: In this important new book, Diana Coole shows how existential phenomenology illuminates and enlivens our understanding of politics. Merleau-Ponty's focus on embodied experience allows us to approach political life in a manner that is both critical and engaged. With breadth of vision and penetrating insight, Coole demonstrates that political questions were always central to Merleau-Ponty's philosophical project. Her examination of his complete body of work presents us with a rigorous philosophy that maintains our capacities for agency despite moving beyond a philosophy of the subject. Merleau-Ponty and Modern Politics after Anti-humanism is the first major work on Merleau-Ponty's political philosophy in over two decades. Coole presents his later philosophy of flesh as the outline for a new understanding of the political, which forms the basis for reconsidering humanism after, but also through, anti-humanism. She also shows how Merleau-Ponty's concern with contingency anticipated arguments by thinkers such as Derrida, Foucault and Deleuze, while sustaining a robust sense of politics as the domain of collective life. The result is a philosophical analysis that speaks to our contemporary concerns in which we seek a coherent account of our actions, our environment and ourselves, such that we might become exemplary political actors within a complex and uncertain world.

    Metadata

    Item Type: Book
    Keyword(s) / Subject(s): political science, history, theory
    School: Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of Social Sciences
    Depositing User: Sarah Hall
    Date Deposited: 03 Oct 2017 15:04
    Last Modified: 02 Aug 2023 17:35
    URI: https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/19885

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