ABSTRACT

Roberto Esposito: Law, Community and the Political provides a critical legal introduction to this increasingly influential Italian theorist’s work, by focusing on Esposito’s reconceptualisation of the relationship between law, community and the political. The analysis concentrates primarily on Esposito’s Catégories de l’Impolitique, Communitas, Immunitas and Bíos, which, it is argued, are animated by an abiding concern with the position of critique in relation to the tradition of modern and contemporary legal and political philosophy.

Esposito’s fundamental rethinking of these notions breaks with the existing framework of political and legal philosophy, through the critique of its underlying presuppositions. And, in the process, Esposito rethinks the very form of critique. As the first monograph-length study of Esposito in English, Roberto Esposito: Law, Community and the Political will be of considerable interest to those working in the areas of contemporary legal and political thought and philosophy.

chapter 1|9 pages

Introduction

chapter 2|10 pages

Rethinking community and law as genealogy

The mode of critique in Catégories de l'Impolitique

chapter 3|26 pages

Catégories de l'Impolitique I

From the closure of political theology to the negativism of Canetti

chapter 4|22 pages

Catégories de l'Impolitique II

From the negative anthropology of Canetti to the negative community of Bataille

chapter 5|10 pages

From the unpolitical to Communitas

chapter 6|25 pages

Communitas

chapter 7|7 pages

From Communitas to Immunitas

chapter 8|18 pages

Immunitas

chapter 9|7 pages

From Immunitas to Bíos

The outline of an affirmative biopolitics

chapter 10|25 pages

Bíos I

Rethinking biopolitics – from Foucault to Nietzsche

chapter 11|24 pages

Bíos II

Towards an affirmative biopolitics

chapter 12|13 pages

Conclusion