Gillian Rose

In this book Kate Schick brings off the seemingly impossible: she renders Gillian Rose's thought clear without losing sight of its subtle profundity and obstinate difficulty. In doing so she makes it apparent just why we might now be more receptive to this thought and what it still has to teach us: that against the already actualised dystopic utopia of the right, and an increased left oscillation between impossible utopia and entire resignation to evil, Rose offers us the abstract contours of a hopeful realism or a realistic hope. Schick rightly edges that vision a little further away from aporia and a little further towards practical realisation. Thereby she has crafted a real contribution not just to scholarship and political theory, but to the future of political practice in the UK and beyond.--John Milbank, The University of Nottingham