Introduction

This is a summary preamble to a detailed and complex argument, historical and theoretical, about the invention of politics as a modern idea, and its relation to a configuration of other modern categories. I believe that, in order for the human species to save itself from extinction, we at least need a widespread critical problematising of the dominant categories that organise our thinking, and that perform such a pervasive role in our representations of ‘reality’. When one considers how the dominant discourses on ‘politics’ actually operate in public rhetoric, in academic texts, and in our internalised representations, then politics ceases to look like the road to our salvation, and appears as part of our problem.

The argument is addressed primarily to those readers who share the author’s view that, if the human species is to survive, then we need a radical change amounting to a revolution in our thinking, in our morality and in our relationships. This is already a widely held viewpoint, I am not a prophet offering a new insight, but unfortunately it does not seem to press itself with urgency on those who put their personal careers above everything else – i.e. our leaders. The question for me is not whether we need a radical change in consciousness, but how we should make that change possible. (more…)

Some readers might take the expression in the title, Abolishing Politics, as a description of what is happening before our eyes, though not necessarily with our consent. That is to say, that on a certain historically informed understanding of the meaning of the word ‘politics’, it is indeed being abolished. I say this especially from the viewpoint of the UK, EU and USA, though I suspect it might be a much wider perception globally. In this foreword I want to summarise the kind of recent developments, especially since 2003, that some readers might suppose I am referring to in the title, and then to take the story much deeper. (more…)