Dimitris Vardoulakis's Books

Sovereignty and Its Other

Toward the Dejustification of Violence

By: Dimitris Vardoulakis

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Sovereignty and Its Other

Toward the Dejustification of Violence

By: Dimitris Vardoulakis

In this new book, Dimitris Vardoulakis asks how it is possible to think of a politics that is not commensurate with sovereignty. For such a politics, he argues, sovereignty is defined not in terms of the exception but as the different ways in which violence is justified. Vardoulakis shows how it is possible to deconstruct the various justifications of violence. Such de-justifications can only take place by presupposing an other to sovereignty, which Vardoulakis identifies with radical democracy. In doing so, Sovereignty and Its Other puts forward both a novel critique of sovereignty and an original philosophical theory of democratic practice.

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Page Count

289

Publisher

Fordham Univ Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0823251357

ISBN 13

9780823251353

Spinoza Now

By: Dimitris Vardoulakis

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Spinoza Now

By: Dimitris Vardoulakis

The interdisciplinary relevance of Spinoza today.

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Page Count

405

Publisher

U of Minnesota Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0816672806

ISBN 13

9780816672806

Spinoza, the Epicurean

Authority and Utility in Materialism

By: Dimitris Vardoulakis

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Spinoza, the Epicurean

Authority and Utility in Materialism

By: Dimitris Vardoulakis

By radically re-reading the 'Theological Political Treatise', Dimitris Vardoulakis argues that Spinoza's Epicurean influence has profound implications for his conception of politics and ontology. This reconsideration of Spinoza's political project, set within a historical context, lays the ground for an alternative genealogy of materialism.

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Page Count

368

Publisher

Edinburgh University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1474476074

ISBN 13

9781474476072

The Doppelgänger

Literature's Philosophy

By: Dimitris Vardoulakis

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The Doppelgänger

Literature's Philosophy

By: Dimitris Vardoulakis

This book presents literature as the double of philosophy. This relation is historically rooted in the genesis of the doppelgänger as literature's response to the philosophical focus on subjectivity: the term doppelgänger was coined by the German author Jean Paul in 1796 as a critique of idealism's assertion of subjective autonomy, individuality, and human agency. This critique prefigures late twentieth century extrapolations of the subject as decentered. From this perspective, the doppelgänger has a family resemblance to current conceptualizations of subjectivity. It becomes the emblematic subject of modernity. This book examines authors such as Franz Kafka, Maurice Blanchot, and Alexandros Papadiamantes and philosophers such as Immanuel Kant, Walter Benjamin, and Jacques Derrida to show how the doppelgänger emerges as a hidden and unexplored element both in conceptions of subjectivity and in philosophy's relation to literature.

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Page Count

344

Publisher

Fordham Univ Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0823232980

ISBN 13

9780823232987

Stasis Before the State

Nine Theses on Agonistic Democracy

By: Dimitris Vardoulakis

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Stasis Before the State

Nine Theses on Agonistic Democracy

By: Dimitris Vardoulakis

This book critiques the relation between sovereignty and democracy. Across nine theses, Vardoulakis argues that sovereignty asserts its power by establishing exclusions: the sovereign excluding other citizens from power and excludes refugees and immigrants from citizenship. Within this structure, to resist sovereignty is to reproduce the logic of exclusion characteristic of sovereignty. In contrast to this “ruse of sovereignty,” Vardoulakis proposes an alternative model for political change. He argues that democracy can be understood as the structure of power that does not rely on exclusions and whose relation to sovereignty is marked not by exclusion but of incessant agonism. The term stasis, which refers both to the state and to revolution against it, offers a tension that helps to show how the democratic imperative is presupposed by the logic of sovereignty, and how agonism is more primary than exclusion. In elaborating this ancient but only recently recovered concept of stasis, Vardoulakis illustrates the radical potential of democracy to move beyond the logic of exclusion and the ruse of sovereignty.

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Fordham Univ Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0823277410

ISBN 13

9780823277414

Spinoza, the Epicurean

Authority and Utility in Materialism

By: Vardoulakis Dimitris Vardoulakis

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Spinoza, the Epicurean

Authority and Utility in Materialism

By: Vardoulakis Dimitris Vardoulakis

Through a radical new reading of the 'Theological Political Treatise', Dimitris Vardoulakis argues that the major source of Spinoza's materialism is the Epicurean tradition that re-emerges in modernity when manuscripts by Epicurus and Lucretius are rediscovered. This reconsideration of Spinoza's political project, set within a historical context, lays the ground for an alternative genealogy of materialism. Central to this new reading of Spinoza are the theory of practical judgment (understood as the calculation of utility) and its implications for a theory of democracy that is resolutely positioned against authority.

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Page Count

495

Publisher

Edinburgh University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1474476066

ISBN 13

9781474476065

Freedom from the Free Will

On Kafka's Laughter

By: Dimitris Vardoulakis

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Freedom from the Free Will

On Kafka's Laughter

By: Dimitris Vardoulakis

Many of Kafka's narratives place their heroes in situations of confinement. Gregor Samsa is locked in his room in the Metamorphosis, and the land surveyor in The Castle is stuck in the village unable either to leave or to gain access to the castle. Dimitris Vardoulakis argues that Kafka constructs these plots of confinement in order to laugh at his heroes' futile attempts to express their will. In this way, Kafka emerges as a critic of the free will and as a proponent of a different kind of freedom: one focused within the confines of one's experience and mediated by one's circumstances. Vardoulakis contends that his sense of humor is the key to understanding Kafka as a political thinker. Laughter, in this account, is the tool used to deconstruct power. By placing Kafka in dialogue with philosophy and political theory, Vardoulakis shows that Kafka can give us invaluable insights into how to be free—and how to laugh.

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Page Count

214

Publisher

State University of New York Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1438462417

ISBN 13

9781438462417

The Ruse of Techne

Heidegger’s Magical Materialism

By: Dimitris Vardoulakis

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The Ruse of Techne

Heidegger’s Magical Materialism

By: Dimitris Vardoulakis

The Ruse of Techne offers a reappraisal of Heidegger’s entire work by focusing on the forms of activity he regards as separate from instrumentality. Non-instrumental activities like authenticity, poetry, and thinking—in short, the ineffectual—are critical for Heidegger as they offer the only path to the truth of being throughout his work. By unearthing the source of the conception of non-instrumental action in Heidegger’s reading of Aristotle, Vardoulakis elaborates how it forms part of Heidegger’s response to an old problem, namely, how to account for difference after positing a single and unified being that is not amenable to change. He further demonstrates that an action without ends and effects leads to an ethics and politics rife with difficulties and contradictions that only become starker when compared to other responses to the same problem that we find in the philosophical tradition and which rely on instrumentality. Heidegger’s conception of an action without ends or effect forgets the role of instrumentality in the tradition that posits a single, unified being. And yet, the ineffectual has had a profound influence in how continental philosophy determines the ethical and the political since World War II. The critique of the ineffectual in Heidegger is thus effectively a critique of the conception of praxis in continental philosophy. Vardoulakis proposes that it is urgent to undo the forgetting of instrumentality if we are to conceive of a democratic politics and an ethics fit to respond to the challenges of high capitalism.

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Page Count

213

Publisher

Fordham Univ Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1531506763

ISBN 13

9781531506766

Sovereignty and Its Other

Toward the Dejustification of Violence

By: Dimitris Vardoulakis

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Sovereignty and Its Other

Toward the Dejustification of Violence

By: Dimitris Vardoulakis

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Page Count

289

Publisher

Fordham Univ Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0823251357

ISBN 13

9780823251353

Freedom from the Free Will

On Kafka's Laughter

By: Dimitris Vardoulakis

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Freedom from the Free Will

On Kafka's Laughter

By: Dimitris Vardoulakis

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Page Count

214

Publisher

State University of New York Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1438462417

ISBN 13

9781438462417

The Ruse of Techne

Heidegger’s Magical Materialism

By: Dimitris Vardoulakis

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The Ruse of Techne

Heidegger’s Magical Materialism

By: Dimitris Vardoulakis

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Page Count

325

Publisher

Fordham Univ Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1531506771

ISBN 13

9781531506773

The Political Animal

Special Issue of SubStance, Issue 117, 37:3 (2008)

By: Chris Danta,Dimitris Vardoulakis

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The Political Animal

Special Issue of SubStance, Issue 117, 37:3 (2008)

By: Chris Danta,Dimitris Vardoulakis

In the variegated history of the philosophical definitions of man, one has survived since it has been given the status of the self-evident. The definition in question comes from Aristotle’s Politics: “the human is a political animal” (1253a3). There is something indisputable about this characterization: humans are, indeed, the most social of animals – they are denizens of the polis with its institutions and laws, its rulers, judges and generals. It would be difficult to contend that any other animal has recourse to the political as much as the human. Aristotle’s Politics need not be surrendered to the strictures of humanism. It remains amenable to the new schema for the political animal that we are sketching here. Each article collected in this issue responds – in its own way and by establishing its own protocols – to the exigency of the animal as it was formulated in Aristotle’s Politics. Each article is an act of response, a moment of interruption.

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Page Count

391

Publisher

Univ of Wisconsin Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0299238334

ISBN 13

9780299238339

In the Name of Italy

Nation, Family, and Patriotism in a Fascist Court

By: Maura Elise Hametz

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In the Name of Italy

Nation, Family, and Patriotism in a Fascist Court

By: Maura Elise Hametz

What was the nature of justice in Italian Fascist society? Through the lens of the case of Luigia Paulovich, a legal appeal filed against the Prefect of Trieste in 1931, In the Name of Italy: Nation, Family, and Patriotism in a Fascist Court demonstrates the inconsistencies of the Fascist attack on traditional political liberties and the incomplete nature of Fascist legal reform. A compelling narrative of an elderly widow's successful challenge to the "italianization" of her surname, the book reveals institutional uncertainty, signs of underlying discontent, and legal opposition to Fascistization in the first decade of Mussolini's rule. It explores the world of Fascist justice in the halls of the Italian Administrative Court, highlighting the interplay of Italian law and the judiciary in the interpretation of Fascist expectations and the enforcement of Fascist policies against the backdrop of inherited cultural, political, and gendered beliefs. Fascist aims to create a "new" society clashed with conservative notions of family, church, and patriotism to affect the perception and practice of justice. Competing visions of nationalism from Italy's Adriatic borderlands, Dalmatia, and Rome show how the persistence of regional cultural and legal particularities impeded Fascist efforts to promote national standardization and enforce government centralization. Focusing on the proceedings of the case revealed in local documents and national court records, the account of the woman who pit Fascist officials against the national government engages legal scholars, historians, onomasticians, and theorists of Fascism, nationalism, and borderlands in debates over the nature of citizenship and the meanings of nationalism, patriotism, and justice. It explores Fascist legal reform and sheds light on the nature of Fascist authority, demonstrating the fragmentation of power, the constraints of dictatorship, and the limits of popular quiescence. The widow's triumph indicates that while Fascist dictatorship appeared in many guises, dissent adopted many masks.

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Page Count

278

Published Date

ISBN 10

0823246302

ISBN 13

9780823246304

Book's by Dimitris Vardoulakis

Sovereignty and Its Other

Sovereignty and Its Other

Spinoza Now

Spinoza Now

Spinoza, the Epicurean

Spinoza, the Epicurean

The Doppelgänger

The Doppelgänger

Stasis Before the State

Stasis Before the State

Spinoza, the Epicurean

Spinoza, the Epicurean

Freedom from the Free Will

Freedom from the Free Will

The Ruse of Techne

The Ruse of Techne

Sovereignty and Its Other

Sovereignty and Its Other

Freedom from the Free Will

Freedom from the Free Will

The Ruse of Techne

The Ruse of Techne

The Political Animal

The Political Animal

In the Name of Italy

In the Name of Italy

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