
Towards an Improper Politics
Mark Devenney(Author)
Edinburgh University Press
Published on 7. January 2020
Book
Hardback
224 pages
978-1-4744-5403-2 (ISBN)
Description
This book systematically introduces the idea of an improper politics. Introducing a conceptual vocabulary, it engages with the politics of the proper, propriety and property from a post-foundational perspective. Mark Devenney argues that this triad is central to understanding the maintenance of global inequality, both economic and political. He characterises democratic politics as improper, challenging the proper bounds of reason, accepted behaviours, and the policing of proper order. The conceptualisation of democracy as an improper practice of equality accords a dignity to forms of politics often deemed marginal.
Reviews / Votes
The strength of the book is Devenney's knowledgeable and subtle engagement with a range of post-foundational thinkers, bringing forward and accentuating what is useful among its interlocutors. -- Torrey Shanks, University of Toronto * Contemporary Political Theory * For those with a thorough grounding in left political theory, Towards an Improper Politics provides a thorough, detailed and persuasive argument. Devenney demonstrates a mastery in the field of high radical democratic theory, as well as contemporary political left critique, and populist politics from a decolonial lens, and this book will be of interest to any with an academic interest or expertise in those areas. Devenney's expertise, creativity and theoretical innovation are undeniable. -- Francesca Kilpatrick * Interfere * Mark Devenney's book with its interweaving of high theory, political critique and empirical historical analysis is exemplary within the fields of critical and democratic theory. The result is a work of critical political theory like no other I have read in recent years. -- Liam Farrell, University of Limerick * Journal of Political Power * To say this book is timely would be pure understatement: we need this book now because we needed it a decade ago. The turn to the question of property as a question of propriety provides an essential analysis of our contemporary social order, because we will not find a future path toward sustaining, re-affirming, or (better) remaking democracy, without the radical rethinking of property on offer here. * Samuel A. Chambers, John Hopkins University *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Edinburgh
United Kingdom
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 157 mm
Thickness: 15 mm
Weight
386 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-4744-5403-2 (9781474454032)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

Mark Devenney
Towards an Improper Politics
E-Book
01/2020
1st Edition
Edinburgh University Press
€0.00
Available for download
Person
Mark Devenney is Professor of Critical Theory at the University of Brighton
Content
Introduction
Thinking Proprietary Order
Theorising the Improper
The Performative Politics of a Brick
Equivalence or Equality?
'Democracy is not a Regime'
Transnational Populist Politics
Conclusion Bibliography
Thinking Proprietary Order
Theorising the Improper
The Performative Politics of a Brick
Equivalence or Equality?
'Democracy is not a Regime'
Transnational Populist Politics
Conclusion Bibliography