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Fictive Theories

Towards a Deconstructive and Utopian Political Imagination

  • Book
  • © 2005

Overview

Authors:
  1. Susan McManus
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Part of the book series: Studies in European Culture and History (SECH)

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Table of contents (8 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-vii
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  2. Introduction

    1. Introduction

      • Susan McManus
      Pages 1-15

  3. Speculative Beginnings

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 17-17
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    2. Hobbes: Restraining Fictions

      • Susan McManus
      Pages 19-35

    3. Rousseau: Conceiving the Inconceivable

      • Susan McManus
      Pages 37-56

    4. Excursus: “Mere High-Flown Fantasy …?” (Kant on Holiday)

      • Susan McManus
      Pages 57-74

  4. Fictions of Self-Evidence

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 75-75
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    2. Stirner (with Marx and Derrida): Neither Material nor Utopian?

      • Susan McManus
      Pages 77-101

    3. Epiphany and/or Politics? Nietzsche

      • Susan McManus
      Pages 103-143

  5. Fabricating the Future

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 145-145
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    2. Bloch’s Utopian Imagination: Fictive Theories

      • Susan McManus
      Pages 147-165

    3. Toward a Conclusion: Fictive Theories and Creative Epistemologies of Possibility

      • Susan McManus
      Pages 167-170

  6. Back Matter

    Pages 171-227
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Keywords

About this book

Fictive Theories is a significant and innovative intervention in key debates in political theory concerning the ways theory should be philosophically grounded, and the task that political theory should set itself. Susan McManus argues that political theory has been grounded in controlling fictions (from fictions of human nature, to morals laws) that function to close possibility. Starting by interrogating the often hidden work of fictions in political theories, she argues that all theorizing is a form of world-creating. Rather than hiding the fictions at work in political theory, McManus argues that theory should become self-consciously fictive, and that there are political and ethical advantages to so doing. She then develops a uniquely deconstructive and utopian understanding of the project of political theory grounded in the 'fictive': a creative and future-oriented imagination. Rather than seeking to provide blueprints of how a polity should be organized, fictive theories seek to fabricate futures through the anticipatory articulation of possibility. Drawing on a rich range of thinkers from the traditions of political theory (Hobbes, Rousseau, Kant), deconstructive theory (Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida) and utopian studies (Ernst Bloch), this book will be of interest to researchers, teachers and students in the fields of political theory, utopian studies, literary theory and cultural studies.

About the author

SUSAN MCMANUS is Lecturer in Political Theory at Queens University, Belfast, UK.

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