- Title Pages
- Foreword
- Editor’s Introduction
-
Chapter 1 Political Theory as a Vocation -
Chapter 2 Political Theory -
Chapter 3 Transgression, Equality, and Voice -
Chapter 4 Norm and Form -
Chapter 5 Fugitive Democracy -
Chapter 6 Hobbes and the Epic Tradition of Political Theory -
Chapter 7 Hobbes and the Culture of Despotism -
Chapter 8 On Reading Marx Politically -
Chapter 9 Max Weber -
Chapter 10 Reason in Exile -
Chapter 11 Hannah Arendt -
Chapter 12 Hannah Arendt and the Ordinance of Time -
Chapter 13 The Liberal/Democratic Divide -
Chapter 14 On the Theory and Practice of Power -
Chapter 15 Democracy in the Discourse of Postmodernism -
Chapter 16 Postmodern Politics and the Absence of Myth -
Chapter 17 The Destructive Sixties and Postmodern Conservatism -
Chapter 18 From Progress to Modernization -
Chapter 19 Editorial -
Chapter 20 What Revolutionary Action Means Today -
Chapter 21 The People’s Two Bodies -
Chapter 22 The New Public Philosophy -
Chapter 23 Democracy, Difference, and Re-Cognition -
Chapter 24 Constitutional Order, Revolutionary Violence, and Modern Power -
Chapter 25 Agitated Times - Sources
- Index
Postmodern Politics and the Absence of Myth
Postmodern Politics and the Absence of Myth
- Chapter:
- (p.316) Chapter 16 Postmodern Politics and the Absence of Myth
- Source:
- Fugitive Democracy
- Author(s):
Sheldon S. Wolin
, Nicholas Xenos- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
This chapter discusses how the absence of myth is what helps to define the politics of the modern and the postmodern world. Myth was once preeminently discourse about power, about powers immanent and transcendent, and man's relationship to them. In the myths of the Old Testament, the Epic of Gilgamesh, and Hesiod's Theogony we have tales of power centering around the theme of chaos held at bay or overcome, of powers in conflict or rebellion. It was the equivalent of an introductory text to the subject of power. Its special feature was not its poetry but its realism. It is exactly that quality that tends to be obscured by modern social science when it replaces myth not by “realism” but by fiction.
Keywords: political theory, myth, power, modern society, fiction
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- Title Pages
- Foreword
- Editor’s Introduction
-
Chapter 1 Political Theory as a Vocation -
Chapter 2 Political Theory -
Chapter 3 Transgression, Equality, and Voice -
Chapter 4 Norm and Form -
Chapter 5 Fugitive Democracy -
Chapter 6 Hobbes and the Epic Tradition of Political Theory -
Chapter 7 Hobbes and the Culture of Despotism -
Chapter 8 On Reading Marx Politically -
Chapter 9 Max Weber -
Chapter 10 Reason in Exile -
Chapter 11 Hannah Arendt -
Chapter 12 Hannah Arendt and the Ordinance of Time -
Chapter 13 The Liberal/Democratic Divide -
Chapter 14 On the Theory and Practice of Power -
Chapter 15 Democracy in the Discourse of Postmodernism -
Chapter 16 Postmodern Politics and the Absence of Myth -
Chapter 17 The Destructive Sixties and Postmodern Conservatism -
Chapter 18 From Progress to Modernization -
Chapter 19 Editorial -
Chapter 20 What Revolutionary Action Means Today -
Chapter 21 The People’s Two Bodies -
Chapter 22 The New Public Philosophy -
Chapter 23 Democracy, Difference, and Re-Cognition -
Chapter 24 Constitutional Order, Revolutionary Violence, and Modern Power -
Chapter 25 Agitated Times - Sources
- Index
