This books ushers in a new way of talking about social phenomena. It develops an ontology of social objects on the basis of the claim that registration or inscription--the leaving of a trace to be called up later--is what is most fundamental to them. In doing so, it systematically organizes concepts and theories that Ferraris's predecessors--most notably Derrida, in his project of a positive grammatology--left in an impressionistic state.

Ferraris begins by redefining ontology as a way of cataloguing the world. Before any epistemology can discuss the validity of scientific or...

This books ushers in a new way of talking about social phenomena. It develops an ontology of social objects on the basis of the claim that registration or inscription--the leaving of a trace to be called up later--is what is most fundamental to them. In doing so, it systematically organizes concepts and theories that Ferraris's predecessors--most notably Derrida, in his project of a positive grammatology--left in an impressionistic state.

Ferraris begins by redefining ontology as a way of cataloguing the world. Before any epistemology can discuss the validity of scientific or...

In this new book, Dimitris Vardoulakis asks how it is possible to think of a politics that is not commensurate with sovereignty. For such a politics, he argues, sovereignty is defined not in terms of the exception but as the different ways in which violence is justified. Vardoulakis shows how it is possible to deconstruct the various justifications of violence. Such dejustifications can take place only by presupposing an other to sovereignty, which Vardoulakis identifies with radical democracy. In doing so, Sovereignty and Its Other puts forward both a novel critique of sovereignty and an...

Is Christianity exclusively a religious phenomenon, which must separate itself from all things political, or do its concepts actually underpin secular politics? To this question, which animated the twentieth-century debate on political theology, Liturgical Power advances a third alternative. Christian anti-politics, Heron contends, entails its own distinct conception of politics. Yet this politics, he argues, assumes the form of what today we call "administration," but which the ancients termed "economics." The book's principal aim is thus genealogical: it seeks to understand our...

Is Christianity exclusively a religious phenomenon, which must separate itself from all things political, or do its concepts actually underpin secular politics? To this question, which animated the twentieth-century debate on political theology, Liturgical Power advances a third alternative. Christian anti-politics, Heron contends, entails its own distinct conception of politics. Yet this politics, he argues, assumes the form of what today we call "administration," but which the ancients termed "economics." The book's principal aim is thus genealogical: it seeks to understand our...

A comparative analysis of the radical aesthetic and social experiments undertaken by two exile intellectuals who studied and attempted to carry forward the radical dissidence of the aesthetic and social practices they encountered in the predominantly black slums of Trinidad and Brazil.

A comparative analysis of the radical aesthetic and social experiments undertaken by two exile intellectuals who studied and attempted to carry forward the radical dissidence of the aesthetic and social practices they encountered in the predominantly black slums of Trinidad and Brazil.

Touch: A Study of Caste attempts a break from the tradition of caste studies, using versions of phenomenology, structuralism and post-structuralism; and gives a description of touchability and untouchability in terms of a rhetoric and semantics of touch.

Touch: A Study of Caste attempts a break from the tradition of caste studies, using versions of phenomenology, structuralism and post-structuralism; and gives a description of touchability and untouchability in terms of a rhetoric and semantics of touch.