Politics of Emancipation

A systematic overview of French Philosopher Miguel Abensour's groundbreaking work and the two inseparable projects that govern it: a radical critique of all forms of domination and a search for a politics of emancipation.

Despite his influence in utopian studies and democratic theory, French philosopher Miguel Abensour (1939–2017) has yet to be fully discovered in the English-speaking world as only a fraction of his work has been translated. A Politics of Emancipation fills this void by translating a selection of his seminal essays into English for the first time. The Reader provides a systematic overview of Abensour's work and the two inseparable projects that govern his approach to political theory: on the one hand, a radical critique of all forms of domination and, on the other, a desire to conceptualize the political as the realm of freedom and emancipation. For Abensour, both projects are to be undertaken together in order to avoid the double trap of an evacuation of conflict from politics and the reduction of politics to a form of domination. In other words, a politics of emancipation requires a "ruthless" critique of domination coupled with an analysis of politics as the domain within which human beings experience freedom and equality.

Martin Breaugh is Professor of Political Theory at York University. He is the author of The Plebeian Experience: A Discontinuous History of Political Freedom. Paul Mazzocchi is Adjunct Professor at York University. Together they are coeditors (with Christopher Holman, Rachel Magnusson, and Devin Penner) of Thinking Radical Democracy: The Return to Politics in Post-War France.