Figure of This World

Mathew Abbott is Lecturer in Philosophy at Federation University Australia. He completed his PhD at in philosophy at the University of Sydney. He has taught philosophy, film, aesthetics and poetry at Sydney, the Australian National University and the University of Canberra. He researches modern European philosophy, political philosophy, critical theory and aesthetics.

• Acknowledgements; Series Editor’s Preface; Introduction: The Figure of This World; 1. The Question of Political Ontology; 2. The Poetic Experience of the World; 3. The Myth of the Earth; 4. The Unbearable; 5. The Creature before the Law; 6. The Animal for which Animality is an Issue; 7. Understanding the Happy; 8. The Picture and its Captives; 9. The Passing of the Figure of This World; Bibliography; Index.

Criticism of Giorgio Agamben’s work has tended to denigrate, or apologise for, its political dimensions. Where others have tried to isolate the 'political' in the homo sacer series, Mathew Abbott offers a brilliantly original reading of political ontology as the crux of Agamben’s work. Indispensable for anyone interested in Agamben, and contemporary continental thought more generally.