At the Limits of the Political : Affect, Life, Things

Offering a critical introduction to the philosophical debate on the concept of the political, this book explores recent developments in continental philosophy. Viriasova engages with key contemporary thinkers: Agamben, Esposito, Henry and Meillassoux and explores the current debate in the context of the Italian concept of the impolitical.

The question of the limits of politics has been at the forefront of debates in critical theory for decades, especially in the French and Italian contexts. This book argues that the question of the real or radical outside of politics has been lost in the midst of post-War critiques of politics. The notion of ‘the political’ has grown into a totality of a new kind, one which refuses both to complete itself and to let go of its totalizing ambition. Inna Viriasova addresses this question by offering a critical introduction to the philosophical debate on the concept of the political and its outside, as well as an intervention into the debate framed by the Italian notion of the impolitical, suggesting several ways in which we may think the real limits of politics beyond this notion. The book explores such recent developments in continental philosophy as radical phenomenology of life, speculative realism, and non-Western ontological models. The book makes a vital contribution to the emerging body of literature in contemporary political philosophy
and shifts the debate on the outside of politics from the impolitical to a realist framework.