Envisioning the Good Life

Benjamin Noys is Professor of Critical Theory at the University of Chichester. His books include Crisis and Criticism: Essays, 2009–2021 (Brill, 2024), The Matter of Language: Abstraction and Poetry (Seagull, 2023), Malign Velocities: Accelerationism and Capitalism (Zero, 2014), and The Persistence of the Negative: A Critique of Contemporary Theory (Edinburgh University Press, 2010).

• PrefaceAcknowledgementsIntroduction: Extracting LifeChapter I. Savage Life: Foucault, Deleuze and Ontological Anarchy 1. Ontologies of Annihilation2. Crowned Anarchy3. Blows Against the Empire4. The Ethics of ExcessChapter II. Damaged Life: Negri, Laruelle, Adorno and the Victim1. Job’s Great Complaint2. Black Celebration3. The Damage Done4. Present PessimismChapter III. Redeemed Life: Henry, Laruelle, Žižek and the Figure of Christ1. Personal Jesus2. Christ Heretic3. Christ Dialectical4. Incarnating CommunityChapter IV. Global Life: Schmitt, Blanchot and the Abstraction of Community1. Enemy Life2. Partisan Life3. The Absolute Enemy4. A Communism of Abstraction5. Combined and Uneven LifeConclusion: Beyond FinitudeBibliography

In this book, Benjamin Noys is a kind of philosophical surgeon, dissecting our social needs and desires. We are obsessed with "Life" as a power and source of values, but we do not know concretely how to live. Noys probes this dilemma, and offers us glimpses of a way out.