At the Limits of the Political

Inna Viriasova is a Lecturer in the Department of Politics at Acadia University, where she teaches Political Theory. Her current research is in the areas of modern and contemporary political philosophy, critical refugee studies, non-Western political thought, and post-humanist security. She has published articles on questions of freedom, life, biopolitics, community, animism, speculative realism, and human displacement, as well as co-edited a book entitled Roberto Esposito: Biopolitics and Philosophy (SUNY Press, 2018).

• Introduction: Beyond Politics / Part I / 1. Carl Schmitt: The General Economy of the Political / 2. Michel Foucault: Power and Biopolitics / 3. Jean-Luc Nancy: Primordial Politics of Being-With / 4. Massimo Cacciari and Roberto Esposito: The Category of the Impolitical / 5. Giorgio Agamben: Bare Life and Form-of-Life / Part II / 6. The Great Outdoors of Politics: Quentin Meillassoux on Ancestrality, Justice, and Extinction / 7. Unpolitical Life: Michel Henry and the Real Limits of Biopolitics / 8. Decolonizing Political Thought: Buddhist Compassion at the Limits of Western Politics / Conclusion / References / Index

In this book, Inna Viriasova competently and brightly retraces the most influential theories of the impolitical, connecting them to questions of great relevance: with respect to political action, how does what is outside its external borders act? How does the political ‘outside’ establish itself and what effects does it produce when it is situated into it? In a substantial philosophical weave intertwining all contemporary thought, the author offers original and innovative answers to these questions.