Economic, financial and social commentators from all directions and persuasion are obsessed with the prospect of recovery. The world remains mired in a deep, prolonged crisis, and the key question seems to be how to get out of it. The purpose of our paper is to ask a very different question that...

Pt. 1, Critique of sovereignty. Singularity or the dignity of individuation ; Exception and critique ; Bataille's special use of the concept of sovereignty -- Pt. 2, Sovereignty and labor. Ax and fire : knowledge production and the superexploitation of contingent academic labor ; Sovereign,...