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REVIEWS:

“What a compelling idea to take Franz Rosenzweig as an original political thinker and antagonist to Carl Schmitt. In this book, Bonnie Honig shows that political theory and Judaism can be read differently, not simply to deconstruct them but in order to reshape democratic theory beyond its paradox. Torn between needs and ideals, democracy is not doomed or apocalyptic: it can survive by virtue of a 'state of emergency' that is not merely the unpredictable gesture of the sovereign, but the plural and contingent agency of the people.”

—Adriana Cavarero, University of Verona

“An essential corrective to democratic theorists' current obsession with Carl Schmitt, Emergency Politics confronts the leading challenges of democratic theory—the status of emergency powers, the ground of legitimacy, the scope of rights—and offers a perspective that finds generative potential in the paradox that we the people are always and necessarily both law's authors and law's subjects. A moving and hopeful take on issues that have led so many to profound skepticism.”

—David Cole, author of Justice at War: The Men and Ideas That Shaped America's War on Terror

“By redescribing 'emergency moments' as typical of political life generally, this book makes a compelling case for the adequacy of democratic politics—when conceived in a rich, agonistic fashion—to meet and make moments both ordinary and extraordinary.”

—Danielle S. Allen, Institute for Advanced Study

“This is an exciting book. Its fresh and bold approach to such long-studied questions of politics as founding, membership, legitimation, rights, liberation, cosmopolitanism, exception, discretion, and law invites a fundamental shift in perspective that substantially advances political science.”

—Jill Frank, University of South Carolina