Winner, 1996 Elaine and David Spitz Book Prize for the best book onliberal and democratic theory, Conference for the Study of Political Thought. Winner, 1994 First Book Prize, Foundations of Political Thought Organized Section, American Political Science Association. Between the Norm and the Exception contributes historical insight to the ongoing debate over the future of the rule of law in welfare-state capitalist democracies. The core issue is whether or not society can offer its citizens welfare-state guarantees and still preserve the liberal vision of a norm-based legal system. Franz Neumann and Otto Kirchheimer, in an age dominated by Hitler and Stalin, sought to establish a sound theoretical basis for the "rule of law" ideal. As an outcome of their sophisticated understanding of the liberal political tradition, their writings suggest a theoretical missed opportunity, an alternative critical theory that might usefully be applied in understanding (and perhaps countering) the contemporary trend toward the deformalization of law.

Two months after the attacks of 9/11, the Bush administration, in the midst of what it perceived to be a state of emergency, authorized the indefinite detention of noncitizens suspected of terrorist activities and their subsequent trials by a military commission. Here, distinguished Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben uses such circumstances to argue that this unusual extension of power, or "state of exception," has historically been an underexamined and powerful strategy that has the potential to transform democracies into totalitarian states. The sequel to Agamben's Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, State of Exception is the first book to theorize the state of exception in historical and philosophical context. In Agamben's view, the majority of legal scholars and policymakers in Europe as well as the United States have wrongly rejected the necessity of such a theory, claiming instead that the state of exception is a pragmatic question. Agamben argues here that the state of exception, which was meant to be a provisional measure, became in the course of the twentieth century a normal paradigm of government. Writing nothing less than the history of the state of exception in its various national contexts throughout Western Europe and the United States, Agamben uses the work of Carl Schmitt as a foil for his reflections as well as that of Derrida, Benjamin, and Arendt. In this highly topical book, Agamben ultimately arrives at original ideas about the future of democracy and casts a new light on the hidden relationship that ties law to violence.

Connecting critical issues of state sovereignty with empirical concerns, Borderscapes interrogates the limits of political space. The essays in this volume analyze everyday procedures, such as the classifying of migrants and refugees, security in European and American detention centers, and the DNA sampling of migrants in Thailand, showing the border as a moral construct rich with panic, danger, and patriotism. Conceptualizing such places as immigration detention camps and refugee camps as areas of political contestation, this work forcefully argues that borders and migration are, ultimately, inextricable from questions of justice and its limits. Contributors: Didier Bigo, Institut d’Études Politiques, Paris; Karin Dean; Elspeth Guild, U of Nijmegen; Emma Haddad; Alexander Horstmann, U of Münster; Alice M. Nah, National U of Singapore; Suvendrini Perera, Curtin U of Technology, Australia; James D. Sidaway, U of Plymouth, UK; Nevzat Soguk, U of Hawai‘i; Decha Tangseefa, Thammasat U, Bangkok; Mika Toyota, National U of Singapore. Prem Kumar Rajaram is assistant professor of sociology and social anthropology at the Central European University, Budapest, Hungary. Carl Grundy-Warr is senior lecturer of geography at the National University of Singapore.

Many international obligations are subject to exceptions. These can be expressed in several ways: an obligation may be vitiated by the presence of one of its constitutive negative requirements, an obligation may be set aside by the application of another more specific rule, or an actor might have a right to act in a certain way notwithstanding a contrary obligation. Exceptions are also of fundamental practical importance: for example, they affect the allocation of the burden of proof. This volume provides a systematic and analytic study of exceptions to legal obligations in international law and defences for breaches of these obligations. It features contributions written by legal philosophers, who introduce various theoretical approaches to the role of exceptions, and scholars of international law, who elaborate on generic issues applicable to exceptions in international law as well as examine specific issues arising from exceptions in their respective areas of expertise. Topics covered include the use of force, international criminal law, human rights, trade, investment, environment, and jurisdictional immunities.

This concise companion explores the history of psychoanalytic theory and its impact on contemporary literary criticism by tracing its movement across disciplinary and cultural boundaries. Contains original essays by leading scholars, using a wide range of cultural and historical approaches Discusses key concepts in psychoanalysis, such as the role of dreaming, psychosexuality, the unconscious, and the figure of the double, while considering questions of gender, race, asylum and international law, queer theory, time, and memory Spans the fields of psychoanalysis, literature, cultural theory, feminist and gender studies, translation studies, and film. Provides a timely and pertinent assessment of current psychoanalytic methods while also sketching out future directions for theory and interpretation

Emergency Politics in the Third Wave of Democracy aims to make an important contribution to the study of emergency politics by offering an up-to-date study of how it works in practice. Specifically, it studies the uses given to the “regime of exception” mechanism in Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru in the first decade of the 21st century and analyzes potential incompatibilities with the two pillars of democratic governability: efficiency and legitimacy. This book offers a thorough review of existing literature on emergency politics, offering conceptual clarification, identifying three types or paradigms of emergency politics (repressive, administrative, and disaster) and pointing to regimes of exception as a useful route to their study. It also provides an overview of emergency politics in Latin America throughout history, pointing to the predominance of regimes of exception and the repressive paradigm. The book describes the continuity of the repressive paradigm in Peruvian emergency politics to deal with both social protest and the apparent threat of organized crime and terrorism, as well as how Bolivia has shifted from a repressive to a disaster paradigm in the face of pressure to deal with climate change. It also analyzes the predominance of an administrative paradigm in Ecuadorian emergency politics in the context of weak institutions and difficulties in implementing policy as well as a populist style of leadership. Ultimately, the book offers some “best practices” in relation to the design and use of regimes of exception in democratic contexts. Other studies on emergency politics tend to focus on legal or formal issues in the context of the United States War on Terror. This study is decidedly political and empirical in focus, offering analysis and interpretation as a result of intensive fieldwork carried out by the author in Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru. Consequently, this volume offers important contributions to our understanding of emergency politics in general (with evidence from the periphery) as well as to our understanding of democratization processes in the Third Wave.

Combining close readings of literature and theory, Sex, Time, and Space in Contemporary Fiction opens up new ways to consider the sex-time-space nexus. In an exciting and compelling contribution to contemporary literary studies, this book takes the concept of ‘exceptionality’ as its point of departure as developed through an exploration of Giorgio Agamben’s theory of the state of exception and the work of theorists including Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault. Through an analysis of a range of widely read contemporary fiction, including On Chesil Beach, Gertrude and Claudius, The Act of Love and Room, Ben Davies provides a rigorous exploration of narrative form and offers original theories of the prequel, narrative relations in terms of set theory, and the practice of reading itself.