The Attack of the Blob

by Pitkin, Hanna Fenichel

• ISBN13: 9780226669908
• ISBN10: 0226669904
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1998-10-01
• Publisher: Univ of Chicago Pr

Summary

One of the most brilliant political theorists of our time, Hannah Ardent intended her work to liberate, to convince us that the power to improve our flawed arrangements is in our hands. At the same time, Ardent developed a metaphor of "the social" as an alien, appearing as if from outer space to gobble up human freedom; she blamed it-not us-for our public paralysis. In The Attack of the Blob, Hanna Pitkin seeks to resolve this seeming paradox by tracing Ardent's notion of "the social" throughout her writings. Doing this, Pitkin developes a resolution that considers everything from language to the nature of political theory itself.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	vii
The Problem of the Blob	1	(18)
Jewish Assimilation: The Pariah and the Parvenu	19	(16)
Biographical Interlude: Philosophy, Love, Exile	35	(17)
The Refugee as Parvenu and the Conscious Pariah	52	(17)
The Birth of the Blob	69	(29)
Writing The Human Condition	98	(17)
Absent Authorities: Tocqueville and Marx	115	(30)
Abstraction, Authority, and Gender	145	(32)
The Social in The Human Condition	177	(26)
Excising the Blob	203	(23)
Why the Blob?	226	(25)
Rethinking ``the Social''	251	(34)
Notes	285	(44)
Bibliography	329	(10)
Index	339