Class

Andrea Cavalletti

Translated by Elisa Ficcadori

 

5 x 8.5 inches, 136pp. May 2019

ISBN : 9780857424372

Rs  599.00 (HB)
$21.00 (HB)
£14.50 (HB)

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In 1936, Walter Benjamin defined the revolutionary 'class' as being in opposition to a dense and dangerous 'crowd', prey to imitation and fear of the foreign, and under the spell of anti-Semitic madness. Today, with barely changed features, formations great or small, that sad figure of the revolutionary returns, the hatred of minorities is rekindled and the pied-pipers of the crowd stand triumphant. In a striking montage of diverse material—Marx and Jules Verne, Benjamin and Gabriel Tarde— Andrea Cavalletti asks whether the untimely concept of class is once again thinkable. Faced with new pogroms and state racism, he challenges us to imagine a movement that would unsettle and eventually destroy the crowd.

Andrea Cavalletti is professor of aesthetics and contemporary literature at the IUAV University of Venice. He is the author of Suggestion and The Biopolitical City.

 

Elisa Ficcadori is an independent researcher and translator. She received her PhD from Goldsmiths, University of London, with a thesis investigating the relation between exception and security in the context of 'the war on terror'.

Political Philosophy
Literary Criticism
Italian List
Culture Studies