Skip to main content

The Attack of the Blob

Hannah Arendt’s Concept of the Social

"The European intellectual Hannah Arendt worried about the tendency of social structures to take on a life of their own and paralyze individual action. Pitkin . . . is determined to trace our problems to the actions of individuals. This book is thus a battle of wits. . . . [A] vivid sketch of the conflict between two basic outlooks."—Library Journal

"[O]ne leaves this book feeling enriched and challenged. Pitkin prompts us to rethink our understanding of Arendt and to demythologize the pervasive sense of political helplessness Arendt herself sought so hard to articulate. . . . [A] cause for celebration."—Peter Baehr, Times Literary Supplement

"[Arendt] is certainly among the most original and outstanding political theorists of the twentieth century. . . . It is difficult to imagine a hostile critic examining more effectively than Pitkin . . . Arendt’s concept of the social, for hostility would inhibit the acquisition of the mastery of Arendt’s texts that Pitkin displays at every turn."—Peter Berkowitz, New Republic

374 pages | 6 x 9 | © 1998

Philosophy: Philosophy of Society

Sociology: Social Change, Social Movements, Political Sociology

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
1: The Problem of the Blob
2: Jewish Assimilation: The Pariah and the Parvenu
3: Biographical Interlude: Philosophy, Love, Exile
4: The Refugee as Parvenu and the Conscious Pariah
5: The Birth of the Blob
6: Writing The Human Condition
7: Absent Authorities: Tocqueville and Marx
8: Abstraction, Authority, and Gender
9: The Social in The Human Condition
10: Excising the Blob
11: Why the Blob?
12: Rethinking "the Social"
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Be the first to know

Get the latest updates on new releases, special offers, and media highlights when you subscribe to our email lists!

Sign up here for updates about the Press