Introduction

Abstract

Introduction Michael J. Shapiro, Editor In addition to the election symposium organized and introduced by Jodi Dean and Tom Dumm, we have essays dealing with diverse topics: Kathleen Arnold examines the ways in which prerogative power invests the policies toward the poor and locates her investigation within a critical reading of the conceptual terrain of biopower, as it has been constructed in he writings of Foucault and Agamben. Her essay provides an exemplary inter-articulation of political theory and policy analysis. Jodi Dean begins with an examination of the uses of the ascription of evil to one’s political foes in President George W. Bush’s “axis of evil” invocation and proceeds to a critical treatment of the many prior uses of the conception of evil by U.S. presidents since Franklin D. Roosevelt. She concludes with a critical analysis of the ideological matrix within which “evil” has habitually taken up residence and become an “ontological fact” that animates antagonisms. Peter Paik treats Slavoj Zizek’s valorizing of Saint Paul and Soren Kierkagaard, whose conceptions of faith, according to Zizek, can serve to frame a revolutionary politics. Paik provides a nuanced reading of both the objects of Zizek’s theoretical/political zeal and his conceptual armature. Paolo Palladino does a critical reading of Ridley Scott’s film Black Hawk Down, analyzing the role of zoological figuration of foes in the legitimation of war. His main focus is on the trope of swarming, showing both thematically and cinematically how the film constructs the “Somali foe” as animal. With his emphasis on the metaphorics of global life (as opposed to the traditional “ethics of international affairs”), Palladino challenges those who extol the pax Americana that has (violently) shaped the “new world order.” Pasi Valiaho employs a broad concept of cinema to examine our contemporary auto visual era and treats the epistemological frame within which a cinema-oriented modern aesthetic has emerged. He goes on to examine the body politics implicated in a cinematic modernity, with special attention to the cinematographic work of George Melies. Finally, we have reviews by: Renee Heberle, Timothy V. Kaufman-Osborne, Davide Panagia, Keith Robinson, and Nicholas Tampio. Copyright © 2005 The Johns Hopkins University Press