Fictive Theories

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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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.

• imagination
• Immanuel Kant
• intervention
• Jacques Derrida
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau
• Karl Marx
• knowledge
• morality
• political theory
• politics
• Roland Barthes
• Rousseau
• Thomas Hobbes
• understanding
• work

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

Policies and ethics