The Persistence of the Negative: A Critique of Contemporary Continental Theory

by Benjamin Noys

Overview

A compelling critique of contemporary continental theory. Through a series of incisive readings of leading theoretical figures of affirmationism - Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, Bruno Latour, Antonio Negri and Alain Badiou - Benjamin Noys contests the tendency of recent theory to rely on affirmation, and especially an affirmative thinking of resistance. He reveals a profound current of negativity that allows theory to return to its political calling.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780748649044
Publisher:	Edinburgh University Press
Publication date:	03/13/2012
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.20(h) x 0.70(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Benjamin Noys is Reader in English at the University of Chichester

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements vii

Preface ix

Introduction 1

1 On the Edge of Affirmation: Derrida 23

Unconditional Affirmation 25

'Not Necessarily Negative' 30

Saint Nietzsche 33

Unemployed Nietzsche 37

Spectral Subjects 41

2 Adieu to Negativity: Deleuze 51

The Positivisation of Difference 53

The Problem of the Negative 56

The Grandeur of Marx 61

Revolutionary Subjectivity 66

3 The Density and Fragility of the World: Latour 80

Disputing the Modern 82

Acritical 88

Acts of Violence 92

Forms of Violence 96

4 Immeasurable Life: Negri 106

Constituent Power 108

The Art of the Multitude 118

The Ontological Fabric of Empire 122

Downgrading the Negative 125

5 On the Edge of the Negative: Badiou 134

Historicising the Negative 136

Formalising the Negative 141

Active Nihilism 147

The Subject of Courage 149

The Line of the Negative 153

Conclusion 162

Bibliography 176

Index 194

What People are Saying About This

In this bold and highly original book, Benjamin Noys rethinks the role of the negative in both ontology and political practice. His critical revaluations of familiar figures in recent European thought move in surprising new directions; they have forced me to reconsider much that I thought I knew.

Peter Hallward

Benjamin Noys' brilliant and wide-ranging new book is a timely reminder that no revolutionary and egalitarian approach to politics and philosophy can afford to overlook the disruptive 'labour of the negative', or to neglect the active contribution that contradiction and antagonism make to a critique of actually-existing forms of domination on the one hand and a renewal of emancipatory agency on the other.

Steven Shaviro

In this bold and highly original book, Benjamin Noys rethinks the role of the negative in both ontology and political practice. His critical revaluations of familiar figures in recent European thought move in surprising new directions; they have forced me to reconsider much that I thought I knew.

Editorial Reviews

In this bold and highly original book, Benjamin Noys rethinks the role of the negative in both ontology and political practice. His critical revaluations of familiar figures in recent European thought move in surprising new directions; they have forced me to reconsider much that I thought I knew.

Steven Shaviro

Benjamin Noys' brilliant and wide-ranging new book is a timely reminder that no revolutionary and egalitarian approach to politics and philosophy can afford to overlook the disruptive "labour of the negative", or to neglect the active contribution that contradiction and antagonism make to a critique of actually-existing forms of domination on the one hand and a renewal of emancipatory agency on the other.

Peter Hallward

Benjamin Noys' important new book The Persistence of the Negative: A Critique of Contemporary Continental Theory singularly reverses the recent tendency toward caricature in its fine-grained readings of the contemporary thinkers of what he terms ‘affirmationism’ … He [raises] complex and important questions in a deft, clearly written and intellectually generous fashion.

Mute - Tom Eyers

It is a strong argument ... communicated philosophically rather than politically, for dialectics, critique and contradiction... it is a progressive argument that arises not out of pure philosophising but out of the necessity to rescue emancipatory critique and agency from the recuperation by state and capital.

Shift Magazine

Noys’ text constitutes a vital contribution to a resurrection of the negative as key to thinking political antagonism and will set a precedent for the decisive status of thinking the negative in the present. More importantly, perhaps, it is also an injunction to thinking political antagonism again, to a return to the level of form in order to address real abstraction in a way that is foreclosed by a prevailing affirmationist culture.

Parrhesia: A Journal of Critical Philosophy

Noys’ thesis has the virtue of being, once formulated as tightly and consistently as is done here, both original and completely self-evident. It is a thesis that will define, I hope, polemics around and among the factions and currents in contemporary thought for years to come.

Theory & Event