Wild Materialism: The Ethic of Terror and the Modern Republic

Jacques Lezra

Published by Fordham University Press 2010

Wild Materialism

The Ethic of Terror and the Modern Republic

Jacques Lezra

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780823293544

Overview
Contents

About this book

Wild Materialism speaks to three related questions in contemporary political philosophy. How, if different social interests and demands are constitutively antagonistic, can social unity emerge out of heterogeneity? Does such unity require corresponding universals, and, if so, what are they, where are they found, or how are they built? Finally, how must the concept of democracy be revised in response to economic globalization, state and nonstate terrorism, and religious, ethnic, or national fundamentalism? Polemically rehabilitating the term terror, Lezra argues that it can and should operate as a social universal. Perched perilously somewhere between the private and the public domains, terror is an experience of unboundable, objectless anxiety. It is something other than an interest held by different classes of people; it is not properly a concept (like equality or security) of the sort universal claims traditionally rest on. Yet terror’s conceptual deficiency, Lezra argues, paradoxically provides the only adequate, secular way to articulate ethical with political judgments. Social terror, he dramatically proposes, is the foundation on which critiques of terrorist fundamentalisms must be constructed. Opening a groundbreaking methodological dialogue between Freud’s work and Althusser’s late understanding of aleatory materialism, Lezra shows how an ethic of terror, and in the political sphere a radically democratic republic, can be built on what he calls “wild materialism.” Wild Materialism combines the close reading of cultural texts with detailed treatment of works in the radical-democratic and radical-republican traditions. The originality of its closely argued theses is matched and complemented by the breadth of its focus—encompassing the debates over the “ticking bomb” scenario; the circumstances surrounding ETA’s assassination of Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco in Madrid in 1973; the films of Gillo Pontecorvo; Sade’s republican writing; Marx’s Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right; and the roots of contemporary radical republicanism in early modern political theology (Bodin, Shakespeare, Parsons, Siliceo).

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Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Illustrations Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	xi
Introduction: Terrible Ethics Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1. The Ethic of Terror Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	34
2. Phares; or, Divisible Sovereignty Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	63
3. The Logic of Sovereignty Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	88
4. Materia in the Critique of Autonomy Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	110
5. A Sadean Community Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	150
6. Three Women, Three Bombs Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	173
Conclusion: Distracted Republic Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	202
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	223
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	285
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	309

Language: English
Publisher: Fordham University Press
Audience: College/higher education;
Pages
- Main content: 400

eBook

Published: March 24, 2022
ISBN: 9780823293544