Not a day goes by without a new story on the perils of technology. We hear of increasingly clever machines that surpass human capability and comprehension, of tech billionaires imploring each other to stop the ‘out-of-control race’ to produce the most powerful artificial intelligence which poses ‘profound risks to society’, we hear of genetic technologies capable of altering the human genome in ways we cannot predict and a future two-tier humanity consisting of those of us who are genetically enhanced and those who are not. How can we respond to these stories? What should we do politically? By way of exploring these questions (using the UK as the primary example of context), I want to move beyond the usual arguments and legal devices that serve to identify tech developers, and users, as being at fault for individual acts of wrongdoing, recklessness, incompetence or negligence, and ask instead how we might address the broader structural dynamics intertwined with the increasing use of AI and Repro-tech. My argument will be that to take a much sharper structural perspective on these transformative technologies is a vital requirement of contemporary politics.

The Athenian experience may help us to sharpen several decisive questions of our time: In what form do the mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion that run through a group build a true society that is more than the sum of its disparate networks? Conversely, by what processes does a society come to tear itself apart, or even disintegrate? How do heterogeneous social arenas and temporalities coexist within it? Under what conditions should the fervor of exceptional situations be maintained without sinking into totalitarian unity? All these questions unfold with clarity in one quite singular moment of the history of Athens: the civil war of 404/3 BC.

The College of Cardinals is a key constituent organ within the papacy, its members being charged with electing the pope and with advising him. Cardinals were originally priests and deacons who assisted the pope in his liturgical and charitable duties around the city of Rome during the first millennium and also the Bishops of Rome’s neighboring “suburbicarian” dioceses. These three orders of clerics cohered into a single College during the Gregorian reform of the eleventh and twelfth centuries: their status and role in papal affairs has waxed and waned in the centuries since. Today the College is more diverse and representative of global Catholicism than at any point in the past. However, it is also a larger and a less cohesive body, whose members are less familiar with each other – or with the pope – than their predecessors were.

Throughout this book, we have suggested that the notion of choruses offers a metaphor through which these diverse collectives can be understood. Granted, this metaphor is not a typical concept that historians ordinarily use to describe community life, such as the association or the network, which seem at first sight to offer a more stable descriptive framework. We nevertheless argue that the choral reference makes it possible to obtain fine-grained knowledge of the modulations of the Athenian city in 404/3, since it is anchored in Greek thought and social practices. Indeed, viewed through the lens of chorality, the Athenian community landscape appears in a new light, defined by plurality and contingency. Legal status is no longer a fixed barrier assigning place to individuals once and for all: Divergent temporalities constantly overlap and weave together the polyrhythmic fabric of the city. The question that guides the whole of our investigation is ultimately about the choral essence of the city. Is it possible to see the Athenian polis, and all the groups of which it is composed, as a choral song? Illustrating the scope of the Athenian social space does not consist only in describing its polyphony, but also in listening to the harmonics, be they consonant or dissonant, which cut across it.

This Introduction distinguishes three approaches to studying politics: political science, political philosophy, and the history of political thought. It identifies the last of these as the focus of the chapters in the collection. It then uses an example from Abraham Lincoln’s 1858 Illinois US Senate debates with Stephen A. Douglas to characterize literature’s relationship to politics. Finally, it distinguishes three approaches to literary history, which it labels poststructuralist discourse analysis, standpoint epistemology, and pragmatism. It treats pragmatism as the most suitable description of the mode of literary history practiced in the chapters in the collection.

Johnson’s political views were complex, partly because they were based on a deeper philosophy of the individual and society. Placed here by divine providence, each person has something to do for the good of others; and legislators, too, can play their part in preserving human relationships from individual malice. Crucially, governments must also keep order, and ward off the possibility of social breakdown – the Civil War was within living memory when Johnson was growing up. Thus he praised hierarchy and state-enforced religious unity, inasmuch as it mean harmony and security. Johnson’s political writings are often combative and bluntly phrased: in his early work as an Opposition journalist, outraged at censorship and creeping tyranny; in his fierce critiques of imperial exploitation and slavery; and in his contempt for the radicals who appealed to ‘liberty’ – a slogan Johnson regarded with some suspicion. In his journey to the Scottish Highlands, meanwhile, Johnson praised traditional authority while showing no nostalgia for feudalism.

The chapter provides an introduction to the relationship between politics and semiotics, to Cognitive CDA as a framework for studying politics and semiotics, and to shifts in political performance and media landscapes which demand a multimodal approach to political discourse analysis. It starts by highlighting the symbolic nature of politics and the discursive means by which politics is primarily performed. The historical development of Cognitive CDA is described. The practical aims, theoretical commitments and methodological practices of Cognitive CDA are also discussed. The central position of the media in communicating politics is considered alongside the relationship between political and media institutions. Changes brought about by the advent of the internet and digital social media are discussed with a focus on the new genres of political discourse that have emerged as a result and on the more participatory forms of politics that are potentially afforded. The chapter discusses the rise of right-wing populism that has coincided with changes to the media landscape and the shifts in communicative style by which it is marked.

In this chapter, I argue that geographical location and spatial orientation influence how residents of Tehran think about who they are and how they define and negotiate boundaries. In Tehran, the spatial locations of self and others in the hierarchical structure of the city remain signifiers of social status, yet the use of public spaces in different parts of the city and easier access to these spaces have complicated established social relations. I discuss how social, symbolic, and spatial boundaries are negotiated in a changing urban environment and how such processes create a sense of belonging or alienation – of being included or excluded – in different spaces. Furthermore, I show that while dividing lines among social groups in Tehran are conceptually powerful, they are not entirely class-based; rather, they are defined by a complex set of values and relations that are constantly questioned and renegotiated in public spaces.

Economic inequality is not the only form of inequality in urban contexts. In this chapter, I discuss other forms of marginalization in public spaces. Although my main focus is on social relations among citizens, the state’s control of public spaces is consequential in creating and sustaining structural inequalities that directly or indirectly impact social relations in public spaces. Whether controlling appearance and behavior (particularly for women) or suppressing certain belief systems and lifestyles, these state-imposed restrictions create inequalities that extend well beyond economic inequality in use of space. I argue that discriminatory laws or conventions (especially against women and those whose lifestyles or beliefs are not aligned with the ideals promoted by the state) are translated into unequal power relations in public spaces. This chapter examines how these inequalities impact perceptions of class and culture as social groups interact in public spaces and how public spaces are used to create spaces of being and belonging for marginalized groups.

The afterword discusses the author’s return to Surama Village in 2019–2020 and describes recent political and economic changes. The chapter further addresses the consequences following the death of the local shaman (Mogo) and the elevation of one of the early promoters of eco-tourism in Surama to national political prominence. This final chapter addresses the mixed record of ‘development’ in Surama Village and the still changing nature of the eco-tourism economy in the context of Covid-19 and political uncertainties. It also further connects the book’s themes with the Amazonian ethnological literature as part of a broader examination of Makushi practices of drawing in the outside through persons, objects, and organisations. The chapter reiterates the significance of a shamanic relational mode for contemporary Makushi interactions with certain visitors (particularly tourists) in the village and the importance of these relations to the Makushi in forming partnerships with outsiders aimed at addressing contemporary challenges.

This chapter provides an overview of Tehran’s urban development and shows how the city’s growth has been influenced by natural settings, cultural ideals, and economic and political processes. I explain the class structure of the city (moving from the north to the south, one perceives a gradual shift from wealthier neighborhoods to poorer ones) and its historical and geographical evolution. With an emphasis on grand urban visions, I discuss how natural, historical, and political forces have contributed to the unequal structure of the city.

The Introduction reviews the widely shared understanding of Schopenhauer as an apolitical thinker. It then articulates the challenge to this view. Schopenhauer, this book argues, defined politics as the rational management of perpetual human strife. The Introduction lays out the two main steps for recovering the full scope of Schopenhauer’s political thought. First, his attitude to politics must be historically contextualized. Against the backdrop of his era and the political ideas of other thinkers, the individual profile and polemical significance of Schopenhauer’s conception of politics come into view more clearly. Second, his textually dispersed political ideas must be assembled into a recognizable whole. Many of Schopenhauer’s reflections on political skills, values, ideologies, and regimes can be found in sections that do not explicitly deal with politics, and his core conception of politics becomes visible through a series of contrasts between politics and religion, politics and morality, and politics and sociability.

This chapter examines how poet, orator, and early speech therapist John Thelwall engages with embodied materialist models of involuntary, yet autonomous, utterance to support his lifelong belief in the necessity of free and active speech. It investigates how Thelwall’s work presents both politicised notions of the speaking body and a physiological and sometimes pathologised understanding of political silencing and argues that Thelwall’s later elocutionary work develops a concern with embodied speech already fundamental to his more overtly political writing, resulting in a theory of speech production and impediment which remains suggestive of a radical politics in its materialist conception of the human body’s operation and agency. Drawing on his unpublished ‘Derby Manuscript’, the chapter considers how Thelwall’s cross-disciplinary theory of ‘rhythmus’, which positions the elements of elocution as fundamental physical laws, rather than practical or cultural rules, gives credence to the notion of speech as a materially potent force.