This book systematically introduces the idea of an improper politics. Introducing a conceptual vocabulary, it engages with the politics of the proper, propriety and property from a post-foundational perspective. Mark Devenney argues that this triad is central to understanding the maintenance of global inequality, both economic and political. He characterises democratic politics as improper, challenging the proper bounds of reason, accepted behaviours, and the policing of proper order. The conceptualisation of democracy as an improper practice of equality accords a dignity to forms of politics often deemed marginal.
Mark Devenney is Professor of Critical Theory at the University of Brighton
Introduction Thinking Proprietary Order Theorising the Improper The Performative Politics of a Brick Equivalence or Equality? ‘Democracy is not a Regime’ Transnational Populist Politics Conclusion Bibliography
The strength of the book is Devenney’s knowledgeable and subtle engagement with a range of post-foundational thinkers, bringing forward and accentuating what is useful among its interlocutors.