Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Impasse as a Figure of Political Space

Impasse as a Figure of Political Space Spatial figures of impasse appear when politics is in trouble, and preserve political expectation when its prospects are poor. They take their meaning from the assumption that the political order is synonymous with social reality—as though people could do nothing when political movement is blocked. Focusing on Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks and the critical reception of Hegel’s master-slave dialectic among other references, this essay argues that the model of impasse and breakthrough occludes politics’ narrowness as compared with other organizations of collective well-being. By seeming to preserve political potential, perceptions of impasse encourage people to accept political processes as the only social reality despite their violence, their limitation of reality, and their contempt for the agential resources of nonpolitical being. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Comparative Literature Duke University Press

Impasse as a Figure of Political Space

Download PDF
15 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/duke-university-press/impasse-as-a-figure-of-political-space-joToJPJN5W
Copyright
Copyright © 2020 by University of Oregon
ISSN
0010-4124
eISSN
1945-8517
DOI
10.1215/00104124-8127438
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Spatial figures of impasse appear when politics is in trouble, and preserve political expectation when its prospects are poor. They take their meaning from the assumption that the political order is synonymous with social reality—as though people could do nothing when political movement is blocked. Focusing on Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks and the critical reception of Hegel’s master-slave dialectic among other references, this essay argues that the model of impasse and breakthrough occludes politics’ narrowness as compared with other organizations of collective well-being. By seeming to preserve political potential, perceptions of impasse encourage people to accept political processes as the only social reality despite their violence, their limitation of reality, and their contempt for the agential resources of nonpolitical being.

Journal

Comparative Literature – Duke University Press

Published: Jun 1, 2020

References

  • No Need for an Apology: Fanon’s Untimely Critique of Political Consciousness
    Aching, Gerard
  • We Refugees
    Arendt, Hannah Feldman, Ron H.
  • Hegel’s Master-Slave Dialectic and a Myth of Marxology
    Arthur, Chris
  • On the Aporias of Marxian Politics: From Civil War to Class Struggle
    Balibar, Étienne
  • Catastrophic Equilibrium and Point of Bifurcation
    Fidler, Richard Linera, Álvaro García Fidler, Richard
  • The Idea of Slavery: Abstraction, Analogy, and Anti-Blackness
    Sorentino, Sara-Maria.
  • Hegel’s Racism for Radicals
    Terada, Rei
  • No Need for an Apology: Fanon’s Untimely Critique of Political Consciousness
    Aching, Gerard
  • We Refugees
    Arendt, Hannah Feldman, Ron H.
  • Hegel’s Master-Slave Dialectic and a Myth of Marxology
    Arthur, Chris
  • On the Aporias of Marxian Politics: From Civil War to Class Struggle
    Balibar, Étienne
  • Catastrophic Equilibrium and Point of Bifurcation
    Fidler, Richard Linera, Álvaro García Fidler, Richard
  • The Idea of Slavery: Abstraction, Analogy, and Anti-Blackness
    Sorentino, Sara-Maria.
  • Hegel’s Racism for Radicals
    Terada, Rei