Merleauponty And Modern Politics After Antihumanism Diana Coole by Diana Coole 9780742533370, 9780742533387, 0742533379, 0742533387 instant download after payment.

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.
Review
This book constitutes a timely and highly original intervention in contemporary political theory. In the first full-length study of Merleau-Ponty's political thought to be published since the rise of poststructuralist theory, Diana Coole brilliantly demonstrates Merleau-Ponty's continuing significance as a resource for political theory today. Merleau-Ponty and Modern Politics After Anti-Humanism fruitfully moves us beyond the now-stale debates about humanism and anti-humanism, modernity and postmodernity. (Sonia Kruks, Robert S. Danforth Professor of Politics, Oberlin College; author of Retrieving Experience)
Coole's study of the contributions of Maurice Merleau-Ponty to philosophy and political theory reflects a remarkably deep and thoughtful engagement with his ideas. Coole demonstrates in a very readable way that he was a profoundly political thinker. Her approach to situating and reading Merleau-Ponty as a political thinker is no less than masterful....Highly recommended. (. CHOICE, April 2008, Vol. 45 No. 08)
[Coole] shows how Merleau-Ponty's later work, which was to some extent imbued with anti-humanism, provides us with the basis for a renewed humanism and ― consequently ― a more progressive, transformative politics. Without doubt this is a highly impressive book....timely and ground breaking. (Political Studies Review, Volume 8, Number 1, January 2010)
In this lucid and accessible book, Diana Coole allows us to appreciate Merleau-Ponty anew. Some readers indebted to Gilles Deleuze, Judith Butler or Michel Foucault may find things to challenge in her readings of them. But by placing Merleau-Ponty into sustained discussion with these thinkers, by excavating neglected affinities between the early and late Merleau-Ponty, and, especially, by exploring his engagement with 'the flesh of the political', Diana Coole makes a fresh and indispensable contribution to contemporary political thought. (William E. Connolly, Johns Hopkins University, author of The Fragility of Things: Self Organizing Processes, Neoliberal Fantasies, and Democratic Activism)
About the Author
Diana Coole is professor of political and social theory: Birkbeck College, University of London, and the author of Women in Political Theory: From Ancient Misogyny to Contemporary Feminism and Negativity and Politics: Dionysus and Dialectics from Kant to Poststructuralism.