Need/Emergency - by Benjamin Lewis Robinson (Paperback)

About the Book

"Modern politics is preoccupied with states of emergency. Yet emergency politics obscures underlying socio-economic, infrastructural, and ecological conditions of need. Prompted by Hannah Arendt's claim that theater is "the political art par excellence," Benjamin Lewis Robinson treats this political perplexity as a theatrical problem. In the company of Arendt and political thinkers including Carl Schmitt and Giorgio Agamben, Karl Marx and the Frankfurt School, Rosa Luxemburg and Martin Heidegger, Robinson revisits the entwined histories of politics and theater, analyzing plays that stage the political scene as an always asymmetrical coupling of need and emergency. In Arendt's view, the defining tendency in modern politics is for need to emerge where it has no right to appear, posing a threat to politics as such. In contrast, the works of theater addressed in Need/Emergency concern moments when, whether it ought to or not, need does appear - demanding justice. Writing in exigent times, Elfriede Jelinek, Heinrich von Kleist, Georg Bèuchner, Bertolt Brecht, and Friedrich Hèolderlin produced formally innovative political theater. Not reducible to the drama of emergency, these plays bring into focus the very need for politics. Moving fluently between theory and theater, Robinson offers a critical study of biopolitics and emergency politics in times of poverty, plague, infrastructural predation, and forced displacement, from the French Revolution to the climate crisis"--

Book Synopsis

Modern politics is preoccupied with states of emergency. Yet emergency politics obscures underlying socioeconomic, infrastructural, and ecological conditions of need. Prompted by Hannah Arendt's claim that theater is "the political art par excellence," Benjamin Lewis Robinson treats this political perplexity as a theatrical problem. In the company of political thinkers including Carl Schmitt and Giorgio Agamben, Karl Marx and the Frankfurt School, Rosa Luxemburg and Martin Heidegger, Robinson revisits the entwined histories of politics and theater, analyzing plays that stage the political scene as an always asymmetrical coupling of need and emergency.

In Arendt's view, the defining tendency in modern politics is for need to emerge where it has no right to appear, posing a threat to politics as such. In contrast, the works of theater addressed in Need/Emergency concern moments when, whether it ought to or not, need does appear--demanding justice. Writing in exigent times, Elfriede Jelinek, Heinrich von Kleist, Georg Büchner, Bertolt Brecht, and Friedrich Hölderlin produced formally innovative political theater. Not reducible to the drama of emergency, these plays bring into focus the very need for politics. Moving fluently between theory and theater, Robinson offers a critical study of biopolitics and emergency politics in times of poverty, plague, infrastructural predation, and forced displacement, from the French Revolution to the climate crisis.

Review Quotes

"Need/Emergency articulates an illuminating argument about the special relation between theatricality and politics in the modern era. A valuable contribution for readers in political theory, dramatic arts, literary studies, performance studies, and philosophy."--Kevin McLaughlin, Brown University

"In a brilliant and seemingly effortless manner, Robinson works his way through the major figures of political theory and of political theater. Each chapter presents some truly new and insightful readings of canonical texts."--Teresa Kovacs, Indiana University

About the Author

Benjamin Lewis Robinson is Assistant Professor of German at NYU.