Abstract
While this essay recognizes the significant (and constitutive) tension between ‘freedom’ and ‘life’ in Arendt’s conceptualization of pariahdom (and, more broadly, in her political theory of action), it also suggests that the spatial imaginary that underpins Fehér’s argument offers a somewhat reductive reading of Arendt’s pariah(s). Insofar as Fehér equates marginality with a peripheral location of the subject, he is not able to problematize bodily figurations of the pariah in Arendt’s writing. In other words, if it is forms of allegorical embodiment that are marginal, and not the social placement of a subject, then the tension between ‘freedom’ and ‘life’ must be redescribed as internal to the modes of rhetorical and allegorical appearance of Arendt’s pariah subject.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | Action and Appearance: Ethics and the Politics of Writing in Hannah Arendt |
Editors | Anna Yeatman, Phillip Hansen, Magdalena Zolkos, Charles Barbour |
Place of Publication | U.S. |
Publisher | Continuum |
Pages | 197-213 |
Number of pages | 17 |
ISBN (Print) | 9781441101730 |
Publication status | Published - 2011 |