UC Irvine

Politics concerns the fact that it is not obvious how we are supposed to live together in community, and that community is a question and a problem rather than a self-evident given. I explore the implications of this idea and develop a theory of politics as the perpetual disruption and transformation of sedimented social structures, orders, and institutions and explore the implications that this has for the idea and practice of political legitimacy. I seek to develop a principled approach to mediating the co-constitutive forces constituting the very possibility of human community of the disruptive and transformative power of politics and the solidifying and stabilizing power of social structures, orders, and institutions.