Democracy and the Political Unconscious

Noelle McAfee

March, 2008
Cloth, 256 pages,
ISBN: 978-0-231-13880-2
$45.00 / £26.50

"This book's cross- and interdisciplinary features raise the bar for democracy and make it a hell of a read. I'm on comfortable ground one moment and then find myself in comparatively unfamiliar territory the next. Noelle McAfee unpacks our collective lives as we live them and charts a more hopeful way forward." — Alison Kadlec, Public Agenda Foundation

"Drawing on the theoretical frameworks of psychoanalysis, semiotics, and critical theory, Noelle McAfee illuminates some of the most pressing and difficult questions confronting democratic societies today. In a realistic yet hopeful manner, her book shows how these resources can be deployed to reconstruct public spheres." — Vincent Colapietro, Liberal Arts Research Professor of Philosophy, Penn State University

"In her forcefully written book, Democracy and the Political Unconscious, Noelle McAfee raises the stakes of political theory—not only bodies and resources, but the very souls or psyches of people hang in the balance. Always informed by concrete events, McAfee's provocative thesis that public discourse can become a form of 'talking cure' explodes psychoanalysis onto the scene of democratic theory in startling and promising ways." — Kelly Oliver, W. Alton Jones Professor of Philosophy, Vanderbilt University

Related Subjects

• Continental/Feminist Philosophy
• Political Philosophy
• Political Theory

Series

• New Directions in Critical Theory

About the Author

Noelle McAfee is a visiting associate professor of philosophy at George Mason University and the associate editor of the Kettering Review. Her previous publications include Habermas, Kristeva, and Citizenship; Julia Kristeva; and most recently a special issue of Hypatia on feminist engagements in democratic theory.

top of page