ABSTRACT

This book emerged from a fascination and two questions: what is ‘negativity’ and how does it relate to politics? Frequently appearing in political theory or continental philosophy, the term negativity seemed to suggest something profound if elusive, yet in many cases it was used rather promiscuously, even casually, by these traditions’ expositors. Rarely deployed with precision, much less defined, it seemed that there was both a vague and rather general way in which the term was being used and a constellation of meanings that supported this. Although an association with political radicalism was often implicit, occasionally negativity would be violently denounced as inimical to socially-transformative processes. My initial plan was accordingly to pursue the sort of careful analytical procedure I associate with a British tradition of the history of political thought, seeking out the concept’s appearances and adducing its meaning(s) within an evolving intellectual and historical context.1