Radical Politics

Framed by a distilled and incisive analysis of the current conjuncture, Peter D. Thomas draws on his expert knowledge of Gramsci's revolutionary thought to challenge contemporary figures like Laclau and Negri, to clarify the recent cycles of mass mobilization and neoliberal reaction, and to help us 'break with the self-defeating structures of feeling and response' that remain such profoundly entrenched features of our age. * Peter Hallward, The Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy, Kingston University London *
Peter D. Thomas asks perhaps the most fundamental strategic question of radical politics: how can the wide-ranging and various movements for self-emancipation gain power together while also fostering the diversity of aims and strategies that is their core strength and value? This question has gained new urgency in the last decade, Thomas reminds us, as a wave of radical movements sweeps the world, astonishing in their resilience and creativity. It is also an old question, however, and Thomas shows us how we can think with-and not merely venerate-those who have faced it before, above all the Italian communist Antonio Gramsci. This book not only offers new insights to both political theorists and political activists, but also opens a place of dialogue for radical theory and radical practice. * Angela Zimmerman, Elliott School of International Affairs, The George Washington University *
In this book, Peter Thomas teases out the far-reaching implications of Gramsci's insistence that we approach the state not as some fixed entity, but rather as unstable assemblages of relationships that are themselves unstable, continually shifting as they move through history - an approach that offers genuine emancipatory potential in our 21st century moment when so many of the old fixed certainties of political identity seem to have crumbled. Deploying a deeply informed survey of the last half century of debate among leftists on the nature of the state, Radical Politics is essential reading for all those interested in Gramsci, and in the potential for transformative change in our seemingly ever more broken world. * Kate Crehan, Professor Emerita of Anthropology & Women's and Gender Studies, Graduate Center, CUNY, author of Gramsci's Common Sense. Inequality and Its Narratives *
With Radical Politics: On the Causes of Contemporary Emancipation Peter Thomas enhances his already outstanding reputation as one of the most original and profound political theoreticians of our times. * Adam David Morton, Professor of Political Economy, University of Sydney, author of Unravelling Gramsci: Hegemony and Passive Revolution in the Global Political Economy *
In Radical Politics, the author of The Gramscian Moment returns to Gramsci to answer [...] questions which remain central for both political theory and practical action today. Neither mere archaeology of Gramscian thought, nor indulgent pleasuring in 'left melancholia,' Peter Thomas' compelling new book offers a timely and propositive clarification of the goals, nature, methods and forms of contemporary movements underway. * Roberto M. Dainotto, Professor of Literature, Romance Studies & International Comparative Studies, Duke University, author of Europe (in Theory) and co-editor of Gramsci in the World *
In Radical Politics Peter D. Thomas refuses left melancholia and pessimism, foregrounding instead the vibrant emancipatory movements that have sprung up in the past 20 years. As the pre-eminent interpreter of Antonio Gramsci's writings for Anglophone audiences since the publication of The Gramscian Moment in 2009, Thomas now insists on the imperative for re-reading Gramsci in the present conjuncture to complement and extend new ways of doing politics. This exciting and challenging book will stimulate debate for years to come. * Gillian Hart, Professor Emerita at the University of California, Berkeley and Distinguished Professor at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, author of Rethinking the South African Crisis: Nationalism, Populism, Hegemony and co-editor of Gramsci: Space, Nature, Politics *
Peter Thomas' Radical Politics brilliantly invites us to leave behind left-melancholia and to understand our political present - the social movements and left experimentations of the past twenty years - in their own terms. This does not mean leaving behind the left's theoretical or historical past. On the contrary, Thomas' book engages us in a tight dialogue between the mobilizations of recent years and a renewed and original interpretation of Gramsci's notion of hegemony and of the integral state, with the goal of making us alert to what the new forms, compositions, and methods of recent movements can teach us about winning the struggle for emancipation. * Cinzia Arruzza, Philosophy at The New School for Social Research, author of A Wolf in the City: Tyranny and the Tyrant in Plato's Republic and co-author of Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto *
Radical Politics adopts an Aristotelian framework of the causes to analyze Gramsci's theories and their applications to contemporary radical politics...Thomas provides a new insight into Gramsci and, through Aristotle, creates a vehicle for translating Gramsci for contemporary radical politics. * Choice *