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Planetary PoliticsArendt, Anarchy and the Climate Crisis

By Lucy Benjamin

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£19.99

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About this book

Explores the connection between ecological crisis and Arendtian politics of the earth
  • Rereads Hannah Arendt’s writings, with a view to foregrounding her recurrent yet overlooked references to the planetary dimension of politics.
  • Critically reinterrogates Arendt’s engagement with the politics of revolution and her refusal to explicitly confront the violence of colonialism in the US context.
  • Discusses the meaning of political unpredictably and spontaneity in light of climate modelling, planetary ‘tipping points’ and ‘baked in’ climate consequences.
Critical political theory has been transformed since the declaration of the Anthropocene in the early 2000s. However, a substantive account of a planetary politics, which begins by understanding politics as planetary – as opposed to politics applied to the planet – is yet to be developed. Planetary Politics: Arendt, Anarchy and the Climate Crisis offers precisely such an account of political theory. Rereading the key works of Hannah Arendt, it suggests that Arendt was a theorist of the planet and that claims of hers, such as the fact that ‘plurality is the law of the earth,’ have been radically overlooked. Recovering these moments in Arendt’s writing, this book makes the case for a planetary anarchism and the restaging of revolutionary politics.

Reviews

Planetary Politics offers a highly sophisticated and compelling reading of Arendt as a planetary thinker. Based on Arendt's own phenomenological claim that human beings are born into collectivities that pre-exist and then survive their own life, Benjamin adds our geographic location on one vulnerable planet to the mix. This is a treasure trove of a book that does a deep dive into a thinker about whom you may think there is not a lot more to say. With Benjamin's reading, Arendt leaps into full vivid relevance and power, making her speak both to our own time and to the planet's future.
These are darkening times for humanity and the planet. If there is to be hope, it has to be earned. In this indispensable book, Benjamin earns the right to hope by offering an unflinching look at where we are and taking up the collective work of imagining new histories of the future.
Table of contents

Introduction: Locating the Climate Crisis – The Inter Esse Place of Politics
1. Dwelling in Place with Heidegger: The Origin of the Artwork and the Fourfold
2. Benjamin’s Political Theology: A Messianic Project in Earthly Life
3. Confronting Arendtian (An)archism: Natality Despite the American Revolution
4. The Anthropocene or History: Violence, Myths, and Beginnings
5. Overcoming Predictability: Rethinking Future Fates
Conclusion: Amor Mundi in/of Crisis

Bibliography

About the author

Lucy Benjamin

Lucy Benjamin is a British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh