Law and Agonistic Politics

'Agonism is often described in terms of what it opposes or lacks rather than what it stands for. Its critics claim agonists have little to say about law. This important volume says otherwise. Most of its first rate contributions stand up for agonism, promoting agonistic politics as best fitted to the plural, fractious situation of late modern democracies. Distinguishing among different brands of agonism and covering a wide variety of thinkers and cases, this book will quite simply change the way political and legal theorists think about agonism and law. A must-read.' Bonnie Honig, Northwestern University, USA 'Schaap's collection should be considered a timely and welcome contribution to the field of agonistic critique, as too often that body of literature elides engagement with the question of law as such. To note that a politics of conflict is always already launched within a legal context, and then to ask what sort of problematic relation such a politics takes in relation to that context, is already an achievement. This volume goes well beyond, however, sketching in broad strokes the complex terms by which agonistic politics is shot through with the law, even as it moves to displace it.' Law, Culture & the Humanities ’The volume, thus, deserves to be read not only by agonistic theorists, but also by democratic theorists more generally.’ Contemporary Political Theory