Merleau-Ponty and Modern Politics After Anti-Humanism

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In this important new book, Diana Coole shows how existential phenomenology illuminates and enlivens our understanding of politics. Merleau-Pontys 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-Pontys 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-Pontys 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-Pontys 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.

Reviews

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

Author Bio

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.