Dispossession

"When a person acts upon the emotions aroused by what they see, feel, and learn, they always find themselves thrown into another place, another scene, or a social world in which they are not at the center. We view this type of dispossession as a form of sensibility that leads to action and resistance, to becoming visible with others and demanding an end to injustice. One form that injustice takes is the systematic dispossession of peoples, for example, through forced migration, unemployment, homelessness, occupation, and conquest. We examine how collectivities, formed by dispossessing oneself in the sense of relinquishing the ownership of the dominant self, can oppose forms of dispossession that systematically deny certain populations collective belonging and justice."

The articles in this book emerged from a dialogue between the two authors in the months between the most intense days of the Egyptian revolution and the period when the Left in Greece was showing serious opposition to neoliberal austerity policies.

Athena Athanasiou, particularly drawing from Irigaray's works, Heidegger's critique of technology, Foucault's concept of biopolitics, and post-Lacanian psychoanalysis, and Judith Butler, starting from Foucault and speech act theory, gender theory, queer activism, and heterodox psychoanalysis, pursue the question "What makes political sensibility possible?" sometimes agreeing and sometimes disagreeing.