Plastic Sovereignties: Agamben and the Politics of Aesthetics

Does sovereignty have a future in the 21st century?

Through a sustained engagement with the work of the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben, and against the background of contemporary political phenomena, Arne De Boever explores what positive political possibilities the notion of sovereignty might still hold.

Using the philosophy of Catherine Malabou, he argues that these possibilities reside in an aesthetic reconceptualisation of sovereignty as a plastic power that is able to give, receive and explode the forms of our political future.