Anti-democratic thought and political theology

Please circulate widely! Blog about it! etc.

Imprint Academic has just released the long-awaited new book

"Anti-Democratic Thought", by Erich Kofmel (Editor), Exeter and Charlottesville: Imprint Academic, 250 pages, paperback

The book can be ordered from any bookstore on- and offline.

For example, Amazon:

www.amazon.com/Anti-Democratic-Thought-Erich-Kofmel/dp/1845401247/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1233149632&sr=8-1

Back cover description:

From a historical and cross-cultural perspective it cannot be denied that most democracies failed. Only western democracies for a short while - from the fall of Soviet communism to the rise of radical Islam - believed themselves to be invincible. It has therefore become necessary to think about political alternatives once more and to study threats to democracy from within and without as well as common modes of failure of democracy across times and cultures.

This book marks the start of a daring new debate and re-introduces anti-democratic thought and practice to the academic discourse and into the syllabus.

It wishes to offer a serious discussion of anti-democratic thought, rather than an apology of democracy.

"I am the proponent of a new engagement with anti-democratic thought. This book outlines a positive agenda for the future." - Erich Kofmel (Editor)

In a comprehensive overview, contributors to this volume discuss theoretical perspectives as well as examples of anti-democratic thought from ancient Greece to modern-day Israel and Bangladesh.

A book that grew out of an international workshop on Anti-Democratic Thought organized by the Sussex Centre for the Individual and Society (SCIS) and held at the 2007 annual conference "Workshops in Political Theory" in Manchester, England.

The book is fully searchable on Google Book Search:

books.google.com/books?printsec=frontcover&id=KkMdJtaaeOYC

Contents relevant to political theology include in particular:

- "'The Sovereign Disappears in the Voting Booth': Carl Schmitt and Martin Heidegger on Sovereignty and (Perhaps) Governmentality" (Thomas Crombez, Theatre Studies, University of Antwerp; on Carl Schmitt's "Political Theology")

- "Leo Tolstoy's Anarchist Denunciation of State Violence and Deception" (Alexandre J.M.E. Christoyannopoulos, Political Science, University of Kent; on Christian anarchism)

- "The Criticism of Democracy in Rabbi E.E.M. Shach's Thought" (Moshe Hellinger, Political Studies and Law, Bar-Ilan University; on orthodox religious Judaism)