Following the previous volume of essays by Jacques Rancière from the 1970s, Staging the People: The Proletarian and His Double, this second collection focuses on the ways in which radical philosophers understand the people they profess to speak for. The...

When Crisis Becomes the Norm: What Can We Do to Demand Change?Crisis dominates the present historical moment. The economy is in crisis, politics in both its past and present forms is in crisis and our own individual lives are in crisis, made vulnerable...

Rhetoric -- the theory of oral discourse -- affected and indeed pervaded all aspects of classical thought. Bearing the stamp of its impact were the Homeric hymns, the Iliad and the Odyssey, Aeschylus' Eumenides, the great dramatic tragedies, the elegiac...

This book for advanced composition courses focuses on the theories of Kenneth Burke (rhetoric as “equipment for living”) in order to help students move beyond a mere accumulation of knowledge about the field of rhetoric and move toward a genuine ability...

An integrative approach to Jewish and Muslim philosophy in al-AndalusAl-Andalus, the Iberian territory ruled by Islam from the eighth to the fifteenth centuries, was home to a flourishing philosophical culture among Muslims and the Jews who lived in...

The stirring speech given by Peter Sloterdijk in Lucerne in October 2022.From time immemorial, humanity has had to organize their “metabolism with nature.” For Marx, the most important factor in this process was labor. When Prometheus, according to the...

The Pragmatism Reader is the essential anthology of this important philosophical movement. Each selection featured here is a key writing by a leading pragmatist thinker, and represents a distinctively pragmatist approach to a core philosophical problem...

Forty years after the defeat of Nazism, and twenty years after the great wave of decolonization, how is it that racism remains a growing phenomenon? What are the special characteristics of contemporary racism? How can it be related to class divisions and...

Very Short Introductions: Brilliant, Sharp, Inspiring 'Know thyself' is said to have been one of the maxims carved into the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. On the face of it, this does not seem like a very difficult task. My self is with me at every moment...

Race is a known fiction—there is no genetic marker that indicates someone's race—yet the social stigma of race endures. In the United States, ethnicity is often positioned as a counterweight to race, and we celebrate our various hyphenated-American...

Friedrich Nietzsche was a troublesome genius, a figure outside the mainstream philosophical tradition whose very apartness has made him central to contemporary philosophy. Nietzsche and Political Thought reclaims the political implications of Nietzsche's...

This newly translated Fear and Trembling, a foundational document of modern philosophy and existentialism, could not be more apt for our perilous times. First published in 1843 under the pseudonym Johannes de silentio ("John of Silence"), Søren...

Our societies today are characterized by a universal algophobia: a generalized fear of pain. We strive to avoid all painful conditions – even the pain of love is treated as suspect. This algophobia extends into society: less and less space is given to...

Against the backdrop of an alarming rise in authoritarianism and the crisis of liberal democracy, few would consider extoling the virtues of politics today. Yet in this lively dialogue with journalist Aude Lancelin, leading French thinker Alain Badiou...

In this important new book the leading philosopher Jacques Rancière continues his reflections on the representative power of works of art. How does art render events that have spanned an era? What roles does it assign to those who enacted them or those...

After the execution of Socrates in 399 BC, a number of his followers wrote dialogues featuring him as the protagonist and, in so doing, transformed the great philosopher into a legendary figure. Xenophon’s portrait is the only one other than Plato’s to...

Towards a Genealogy of Spectacle is an exploration of contemporary experience of spectacle in its multiple layers, as it attempts to expose the forces that are at work in the making of spectacular events. It sets before itself two goals: to understand...

Michel Foucault's History of Sexuality has been one of the most influential books of the last two decades. It has had an enormous impact on cultural studies and work across many disciplines on gender, sexuality, and the body. Bringing a new set of...