SEEKING ENDORSEMENT
AUTHOR APPROVED

The first collection of essays to evaluate Agamben's work from a postcolonial perspective

Svirsky and Bignall assemble leading figures to explore rich philosophical linkages between the political concerns investigated by Agamben and by postcolonial theory.

The 12 essays deal with colonial and postcolonial issues in Russia, Israel and Palestine, Africa, the Americas and Australia. This wide geographical spread is grounded in examples of external and settler colonialism, providing specific case studies combined with philosophical analysis. The essays extend and appraise Agamben's concepts by locating them in colonial contexts, at the same time as providing new possibilities for postcolonial thinking.

Tackled from an interdisciplinary perspective, this book offers new insights into contemporary debates on colonial exclusion, racism and postcolonial society. It will appeal to students of Agamben's work and researchers in political and postcolonial studies, critical theory, social and political philosophy.

Marcelo Svirsky is a Lecturer and Marie-Curie Researcher at the Centre for Critical and Cultural Theory, Cardiff University. Simone Bignall is an adjunct Senior Lecturer in the School of History and Philosophy at the University of New South Wales in Sydney.

Marcelo Svirsky is a Lecturer in International Studies at the University of Wollongong, Australia

Simone Bignall is an adjunct Senior Lecturer in the School of History and Philosophy at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. She has published widely on issues concerning colonialism and postcolonialism. She is the author of Postcolonial Agency (2010) and the co-editor, with Paul Patton, of Deleuze and the Postcolonial (2010), both published by Edinburgh University Press.

Acknowledgements; Introduction: Agamben and Colonialism, Simone Bignall and Marcelo Svirsky; I. Colonial States of Exception; Imperialism, Exceptionalism and the Contemporary World, Yehouda Shenhav; 1. The Management of Anomie: The State of Exception in Post-communist Russia, Sergei Prozorov; 2. The Cultural Politics of Exception, Marcelo Svirsky; II. Colonial Sovereignty; 4. Indigenising Agamben: Rethinking Sovereignty in Light of the 'Peculiar' Status of Native Peoples, Mark Rifkin; 5. Reading Kenya's Colonial State of Emergency after Agamben, Stephen Morton; 6. Colonial Sovereignty, Forms of Life and Liminal Beings in South Africa, Stewart Motha; III. Bare Life and Bio-Politics; 7. Encountering Bare Life in Italian Libya and Colonial Amnesia in Agamben, David Atkinson; 8. Abandoning Gaza, Ariella Azoulay and Adi Ophir; 9. Colonial Histories: Biopolitics and Shantytowns in the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area, Silvia Grinberg; IV. Method, History and Potentiality; 10. Metropolis and Colonisation, Leland de la Durantaye; 11. 'The Work of Men is Not Durable': History, Haiti and the Rights of Man, Jessica Whyte; 12. Potential Postcoloniality: Sacred Life, Profanation and the Coming Community, Simone Bignall; Notes on Contributors; Index.