Modernity and the Political Fix

Reviews / Votes

It is to be recommended for its expansiveness, generosity and singular orientation ... A unique and insightful work. Its central theses deserve to be respected. * Pli: The Warwick Journal of Philosophy * For those looking to better understand the specificity of our current 'political predicament' ... a bounty of riches awaits. * James Joyce Broadsheet * Heeding vast amounts of historical, literary and conceptual work, Gibson weaves a compelling narrative that enlists thinking modalities from a wide variety of genres. What is especially important about Gibson's framing of the investigation is that in turning to the idea of "ironical modernity" the book challenges Richard Rorty's stultifying assertion that irony is alien to political commitment. Politics and irony are intimately interconnected for Gibson, precisely because he embraces a politics that accepts historical contingency as much as it does the contingencies of subjectivity. Crucially Gibson embraces a political theology that is yet to come. He focuses on how we can enrich our political grasp of modernity to elaborate a theologically-influenced conception of historical or human time "without finality." -- Michael Shapiro, Professor of Political Science, University of Hawai'i, USA Andrew Gibson's is a very significant book - a cultural intervention in the Nietzschean vein and, at times, manner. Paradoxically, it proposes a political theology that is resolutely secular, but justifies its resort to the materials of theology; in other words, it finesses the commonplace argument that modern political thought is necessarily if unwittingly and, in defiance of its own resolutions to the contrary, theological. It is a profound and passionate meditation on modernism - its achievements as well as its discontents - and I recommend it without reservation. -- Martin Dzelzainis, Professor of Renaissance Literature and Thought, University of Leicester, UK