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Life Beyond Politics: Toward The Notion Of The Unpolitical, Inna Viriasova

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This study presents a critique of post-foundational political thought, suggesting that it lacks a positive account of the unpolitical, of a radical outside of politics. I argue that political thought that oscillates around the distinction between “politics” and “the political” is correlationist and totalizing, resulting in the forgetting of its “Great Outdoors.” This critique is advanced through a close analysis of texts by Carl Schmitt, Michel Foucault, Jacques Rancière, and Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy. Against this background stand out Massimo Cacciari's and Roberto Esposito's categories of “the impolitical,” and Giorgio Agamben's notion of “bare life.” “The impolitical” is positively …