Pyropolitics: When the World Is Ablaze

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Contents Acknowledgements Kindling: The World on Fire Notes Chapter One: The ABC of Pyropolitics, or the ‘Elemental Regimes’ of Carl Schmitt 1.1. The Idea of Elemental Politics 1.2. The Elements, Nomos and Anomie 1.3. Through Air to Fire 1.4. Pyropolitics and the Spatial Imaginary 1.5. Toward a Pyropolitical Phenomenology 1.6. The Risk of Pyropolitics Notes Chapter Two: Light without Heat, Heat without Light, and the Problem of Evil 2.1. The Cold Light of the Enlightenment 2.2. The Two ‘Powers’ of Fire 2.3. Dark Heat, or Evil from the Perspective of the Enlightenment 2.4. The Substance, of Which Evil Is Made 2.5. Absolute Separation and Evil 2.6. A New Synthesis of Light and Heat? Notes Chapter Three: Pyropolitical Theology I: The Fires of Revolution 3.1. Flying Sparks 3.2. A Flaming Ideal 3.3. The Inflammations of Revolutionary Spirit 3.4. Hegel on Fire 3.5. Revolutionary Alchemy 3.6. Catching Fire, or How Revolutions Spread Notes Chapter Four: Pyropolitical Theology II: The Politics of Sacrifice 4.1. The Theology of Burnt Offerings 4.2. Self-Immolation and Sovereignty 4.3. An Interlude: Extremist Politics 4.4. On Holocausts, or Burnt Offerings at the Extreme 4.5. The Burning Question of the Inquisition 4.6. Global Energy Production, or ‘What Do They Salvage from the Great Fire of Life?’ Notes Chapter Five: The End of Heliotropic Utopias: When the Sun Sets on the City upon the Hill 5.1. Around the Sun(s) 5.2. Heliocentric Unity and Its Discontents 5.3. The Solar Fetish of the Empire 5.4. A Shining City upon a Hill: The Pyropolitical Sublime 5.5. Westernisation, Nihilism, and the Setting Sun 5.6. Coda: Politics of Fire and Sexual Difference Notes Chapter Six: Around the Hearth: Politics in the Kitchen 6.1. The Power of the Hearth, or the Domestication of Politics 6.2. The Inner Fire of the ‘Kitchen Cabinet’ 6.3. What’s Cooking in the Melting Pot? 6.4. In Search of Perfection: The Arts of Cooking and Politics 6.5. Revolutionary and Postrevolutionary Political Kitchens 6.6. Consuming Ourselves: Pyropolitical Cannibalism Notes Extinguishing: The Politics of Ashes Notes Index About the Author