Apologies, cross-postings, Terrell

-----Forwarded Message-----
>From: Benjamin Arditi <[log in to unmask]>
>Sent: Jan 24, 2006 7:52 PM
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: call for book proposals
>
>Dear All,
>
>Please find the text of an open call for
>proposals for the book series on Continental
>political thought we edit for EUP. We have
>outlined the basics about the proposals as well
>as the type of themes we are interested in. The
>content of the message is also included in the attached .PDF file.
>
>Best regards,
>
>Benjamin and Jeremy
>
>
>
>CALL FOR PROPOSALS
>Taking on the Political, EUP
>
>
>We�re making an open call for manuscript
>proposals for our series �Taking on the
>Political�, published by Edinburgh University
>Press. EUP has a worldwide sales and distribution
>network, including an excellent distribution
>arrangement in North America with Columbia
>University Press. Depending on the likely market
>for individual titles in the US, EUP does also
>look for co-publishing partners where appropriate.
>
>The main characteristics of books in the �Taking
>on the Political� series are that:
> * they are relatively short, ranging between 60,000 and 75,000 words;
> * they draw primarily from Continental thought;
> * they are not about the way a given thinker
>conceives the political (i.e., not �So and So on
>the Political�) but what can be done when using a
>particular approach or theorist(s) to think the political;
> * they �take on� a theorist, debate or theme:
>polemicization is the distinguishing trait of the
>series. We welcome manuscripts that are willing
>to run risks by venturing beyond the mainstream
>and interrogating commonplace truths.
>The series has published the following volumes:
>
>Polemicization: The Contingency of the
>Commonplace by Benjamin Arditi and Jeremy Valentine
>Untimely Politics by Samuel A. Chambers
>Cinematic Political Thought by Michael Shapiro
>Speaking Against Number by Stuart Elden
>
>Forthcoming titles in 2006/2007 include:
>
>Post-Marxism versus Cultural Studies by Paul Bowman
>Post-Foundational Political Thought by Oliver Marchart
>Politics and Aesthetics by Jon Simons
>Further details about these titles can be found
>on EUP�s website:
><http://www.eup.ed.ac.uk/series_titles.aspx>http://www.eup.ed.ac.uk/series_titles.aspx
>- follow the link for �Taking on the Political�.
>
>We are particularly interested in manuscripts
>dealing with some of the broad themes outlined
>here, but not necessarily exhausted by them. We
>list them in no particular order:
>
>The interface between political theory and
>international political thought with regard to war and security
>
>People from Clausewitz to Morgenthau and from
>Schmitt to Derrida, Foucault and Virilio have
>written about it. Foucault�s Society must be
>Defended, for example, develops the theme of
>politics as the continuation of war. What is the
>relation between war and politics? Is the
>Hobbesian theme of security the new overriding
>concern for politics? If this is the case, is
>security limited to the fear of violent death
>alone or does it also include a minimal threshold
>of welfare, migratory flows or open access to
>energy resources too? How can war be
>conceptualised in an age of �bruised
>sovereignty�, when the hitherto untouchable aura
>of Westphalian sovereignty fades and the
>belligerent parties are not only nation-states
>but also nations without states and sub-statal
>political and religious movements? There seems to
>be a consensus that the defence of human rights
>trumps sovereignty and undermines the principle
>of non-intervention advocated by newly
>independent states in the second post-war. Does
>this legitimise imperial enterprises in the name
>of democracy and human rights? Is the idea of a
>�war on terrorism� an oxymoron? Can one ever win
>such wars and does waging them make people more
>secure? Do theories of war and international
>relations �as well as international law� change
>in the face of unilateral initiatives such as the
>2002 National Security Strategy of the US, which
>claims that offensive war is a legitimate form of
>self-defence when the adversaries are not
>nation-states? Does war and peace, politics and
>governance change in the light of Agamben�s claim
>that the state of exception �as theorised by
>Benjamin and Schmitt� has become a normal mode of
>politics in contemporary democracy?
>
>Global Politics
>
>We are also interested in this area, particularly
>in critical engagements with the Deleuzian and
>neo-Spinozist theorisations of progressive
>politics. This would include, for example,
>monographs addressing the themes of multitude
>versus people, exodus, general intellect, and
>radical civil disobedience that emerged with the
>Italian autonomista movement of the 1970s
>(Lazzarato, Bifo, Virno, Negri) and was later
>popularised outside Italy with the publication of
>Empire and A Grammar of the Multitude. Is there a
>politics of the multitude or are we simply
>witnessing ingenious conceptual coreographies?
>This broad Deleuzian genealogy also includes the
>theorisation of post-1960s politics by the
>Critical Art Ensemble (primarily by invoking
>rhizome and proposing a tactic of electronic
>civil disobedience), the encounter between
>hackers and political activists in the figure of
>the hacktivist, the guerrilla theatre of a myriad
>of groups battling neo-liberal globalisation
>(like the Electrohippies) and pro-Zapatista
>groups like the Electronic Disturbance Theatre,
>and so on. Are the immanentist theories derived
>from Deleuze and Spinoza useful for thinking
>current politics and opening windows of
>opportunity for political interventions?
>
>Political Economy
>
>A third area has to do with the much-forgotten
>question of political economy after years of
>post-Marxist criticisms of economic determinism
>and the metaphysics of the last instance. What,
>if anything, has taken the place of political
>economy and its critique? Does the economy still
>have any significant relation to politics and the
>ordering of social formations which is thinkable
>without relying on redundant axioms to do so?
>There are two sides to this issue and it would be
>interesting to see if they converge. Firstly, the
>empirical hegemony of finance capital and the
>technologies and forms of calculation which have
>been invented to develop it, including the
>re-configuration of state, law and political
>imaginaries. In the light of these does it any
>longer make sense to refer to the economy,
>capitalist or otherwise, as a unified object and
>if so what are the political consequences?
>Secondly, what has happened to the various
>attempts, generally from a critical materialist
>perspective, to conceptualise the morphologies of
>economy, which began after the Althusserian
>interventions of the 1960s? Can these approaches
>be synthesised or have they been displaced by the
>ethnographic turn in political economy as the
>only alternative to the algebra of equilibrium
>models? If not, then what conceptual and
>theoretical inventions are required to develop
>critical materialist perspectives?
>
>Technology and objects
>
>A fourth theme points toward technology and
>objects. Has the turn to these themes of in
>political thought contributed to a real expansion
>of the terrain of the political or merely of its
>dominant ordering metaphors derived from the
>modern episteme of the machine? In which case do
>the modern political values of liberalism,
>representation and consensus go with it or does
>the turn to technology and objects result in
>genuine gains in the advancement of political
>thought and practice? Or do they amount to
>losses, for example by the displacement of
>subjectivity? These questions are posed by the
>successes of Actor Network Theory in particular,
>but are also raised by the more general
>fascination with post-humanism and the corrosion
>of the 'useful illusion' of thought and agency
>originating in consciousness and the unconscious
>stimulated by the 'neuro' and 'nano' sciences,
>and by the recognition of the political agency of
>phenomena which cannot easily be reduced to the
>self-image of the human such as genomes,
>geological and ecological shifts. Are the
>political implications of these perspectives
>self-evident or do they need to be supplemented
>by a more critical conceptualisation of the political?
>
>Culture and Politics
>
>Last, but by no means least, we are interested in
>critical engagements with the interface of
>culture and politics, with what happened to the
>radical promise of culture and politics. Is it
>still credible to argue for the validity of the
>cultural dimensions of political formations, or
>have the conditions in which doing so made sense
>evaporated into status competition for resources?
>Does Bourdieu-style reductionism explain the
>value of counter-intuitive �readings� of cultural
>artefacts? Are notions connected to the idea of
>culture as transformation and transgression
>simply elite liberal-modernist imaginaries which
>have no place in the global political sphere, and
>which may even be hostile to the values of those
>who seek to resist and oppose the injustices of
>globalisation? How is culture doing in its
>long-established opposition to nature, or has the
>distinction broken down under the hegemony of
>evolutionary biology and the like? In short, we
>would be interested in a manuscript that looks
>into what is being done with culture politically and what can be done with it.
>
>Please contact us
>(<mailto:[log in to unmask]>[log in to unmask]
>and
><mailto:[log in to unmask]>[log in to unmask])
>if you have a proposal that fits these broad
>themes or even if you wish to surprise us with
>something else that might be considered for the
>series �Taking on the Political�.
>
>A final word on the way we deal with manuscripts.
>We follow a very straightforward procedure:
> * If you have a proposal, the first thing to
>do is to send us an initial e-mail with a broad
>description of the project and its present stage
>of development (approximately 400-500 words).
> * If we believe the project fits the aims of
>the series we will invite you to submit a formal
>proposal following the guidelines for authors of
>EUP (download at
><http://www.eup.ed.ac.uk/>www.eup.ed.ac.uk � see
>�Contact Us� section), together with two sample chapters.
> * The formal proposal and sample chapters are
>then reviewed by the editors and sent to two
>external readers, one in the US and one in the
>UK. The decision on whether we will submit the
>project to the Press and Editorial Committees of
>EUP depends largely on the reports of the
>external readers and on your willingness to take
>on board their comments and those of the series editors.
> * Once we approve a proposal the project then
>goes to EUP�s Press and Editorial Committees and,
>if approved, EUP will send you a contract which
>will specify the date of submission.
>All best wishes,
>
>Benjamin Arditi and Jeremy Valentine
>
>Series Editors, �Taking on the Political�
>Edinburgh University Press


Professor Terrell Carver
Department of Politics
University of Bristol
10 Priory Road
Bristol
BS8 1TU
United Kingdom
+44 (0)117 928 8826
www.bristol.ac.uk/politics