Hannah Arendt and Political Glory - by Peg Birmingham (Hardcover)

About the Book

Offers a systematic account of the notion of political glory in Hannah Arendt's work.

Book Synopsis

In this book, Peg Birmingham argues that privileging the event of natality and new beginnings in Hannah Arendt's political thought overlooks her central problematic with the modern and contemporary production of economic and political superfluousness, treating all life and the earth itself as disposable.

In the face of this unrelenting production, that will not stop until it has destroyed all worlds and the earth itself, Birmingham shows that Arendt's primary concern is with radically rethinking the Greek notion of immortality and its heroic glory as earthly immortality. This is rooted in a new form of universal solidarity with those who have been produced as superfluous and consigned to holes of oblivion at sea, desert crossings, prisons and camps.

Review Quotes

Hannah Arendt and Political Glory is a powerful work of critical political thought. Peg Birmingham challenges the received view that Arendt was primarily interested in the human condition of natality and new beginnings. This concern, she argues, only makes sense in the context of Arendt's broader worry about the unrelenting production of "superfluousness," the condition that places human and non-human life under the threat of imminent annihilation. Action in concert is a call for solidarity with those who have been targeted for elimination through consignment to various "holes of oblivion." Birmingham captures the sheer urgency of Arendt's unique voice for facing and resisting the reality of our political present. A tour de force.--Linda M. G. Zerilli, University of Chicago

Peg Birmingham's original and masterful study of Hannah Arendt revolutionises our interpretations of Arendt's project. Scholarship to-date largely focuses on the generative concepts of natality and the new as creating political possibilities, but these readings overlook contemporary forms of superfluousness--a key concern for Arendt. Birmingham shows how Arendt's thought focuses instead on earthly immortality, and it is within this framework that multiplex forms of contemporary superfluousness can be resisted and combatted. New forms of solidarity and political affect arise. This book is unquestionably a game-changer. Birmingham single-handedly shifts how we are to understand and read Arendt.--Antonio Calcagno, King's University College at Western University