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Elías José Palti argues that the dimension of reality known as the political is not a natural, transhistorical entity. Instead, the horizon of the political arose in the context of a series of changes that affirmed the power of absolute monarchies in seventeenth-century Europe and was successively reconfigured from this period up to the present.
List of contents
Series Editor's Foreword, by Dick Howard
Acknowledgments
Introduction: A Conceptual History of the Political—the Archaeological Project
1. The Theological Genesis of the Political
2. The Tragic Scene: The Symbolic Nature of Power and the Problem of Expression
3. The Discourse of Emancipation and the Emergence of Democracy as a Problem: The Latin American Case
4. The Rebirth of the Tragic Scene and the Emergence of the Political as a Conceptual Problem
Conclusion: The End of a Long Cycle—the Second Disenchantment of the World
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Elías José Palti is principal researcher for the National Scientific and Technical Research Council of Argentina, a professor at both the Universidad Nacional de Quilmes and the Universidad de Buenos Aires, and the director of the Center for Intellectual History at the Universidad Nacional de Quilmes. He is a 2009 Guggenheim Fellow and the author of thirteen books in Spanish.
Summary
Elías José Palti argues that the dimension of reality known as the political is not a natural, transhistorical entity. Instead, the horizon of the political arose in the context of a series of changes that affirmed the power of absolute monarchies in seventeenth-century Europe and was successively reconfigured from this period up to the present.
Additional text
An Archaeology of the Political is notable not only for its breathtaking scope and its conceptual originality but also for the range of sources used, from political texts to a detailed and sophisticated dialogue with figurative arts, dramatic performance, and even music, and with a good ear for social historical questions thrown in.
