Rethinking the Political

by Falasca-Zamponi, Simonetta

• ISBN13: 9780773539013
• ISBN10: 0773539018
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-12-01
• Publisher: McGill Queens Univ

Summary

Rethinking the Political demonstrates that the College de Sociologie's quest to create a new place for the sacred in modern collective life ostensibly entailed avoiding the theorization of both aesthetics and politics. While the College condemned manipulation by totalitarian regimes, its understanding of community also led to a rejection of democratic and communist forms of political organization, leaving the group open to accusations of flirting with fascism. Acknowledging these political ambiguities, the author goes beyond a narrow ideological reading to reveal the College's important contribution to our thinking about the relationships between community formation, politics, aesthetics, and the sacred in the modern world. She expands her historical account of the members' thought, including their relationship to Surrealism, beyond the group's dissolution, and shows how the work of Claude Lefort extends, but also resolves, many of the College's key theoretical insights. A fascinating study of some of the twentieth-century's most daring thinkers, Rethinking the Political offers crucial insights into the contradictions at play in modern notions of community that still resonate today.

Author Biography

Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi is a professor of sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	p. xi
Acknowledgments	p. xiii
Introduction	p. 3
Representing the Social: Emile Durkheim and Marcel Mauss	p. 25
Against Aesthetics: The Anthropology of Objects	p. 63
The Avant-Garde Meets Politics	p. 104
From Contre-Attaque to the College: A Headless Interlude	p. 144
At the College: The Social in Excess	p. 165
Politics at the College	p. 201
Rethinking the Political	p. 227
Conclusions	p. 253
Bibliography	p. 265
Index	p. 285
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.