Johnson’s political views were complex, partly because they were based on a deeper philosophy of the individual and society. Placed here by divine providence, each person has something to do for the good of others; and legislators, too, can play their part in preserving human relationships from individual malice. Crucially, governments must also keep order, and ward off the possibility of social breakdown – the Civil War was within living memory when Johnson was growing up. Thus he praised hierarchy and state-enforced religious unity, inasmuch as it mean harmony and security. Johnson’s political writings are often combative and bluntly phrased: in his early work as an Opposition journalist, outraged at censorship and creeping tyranny; in his fierce critiques of imperial exploitation and slavery; and in his contempt for the radicals who appealed to ‘liberty’ – a slogan Johnson regarded with some suspicion. In his journey to the Scottish Highlands, meanwhile, Johnson praised traditional authority while showing no nostalgia for feudalism.

The chapter provides an introduction to the relationship between politics and semiotics, to Cognitive CDA as a framework for studying politics and semiotics, and to shifts in political performance and media landscapes which demand a multimodal approach to political discourse analysis. It starts by highlighting the symbolic nature of politics and the discursive means by which politics is primarily performed. The historical development of Cognitive CDA is described. The practical aims, theoretical commitments and methodological practices of Cognitive CDA are also discussed. The central position of the media in communicating politics is considered alongside the relationship between political and media institutions. Changes brought about by the advent of the internet and digital social media are discussed with a focus on the new genres of political discourse that have emerged as a result and on the more participatory forms of politics that are potentially afforded. The chapter discusses the rise of right-wing populism that has coincided with changes to the media landscape and the shifts in communicative style by which it is marked.

In this chapter, I argue that geographical location and spatial orientation influence how residents of Tehran think about who they are and how they define and negotiate boundaries. In Tehran, the spatial locations of self and others in the hierarchical structure of the city remain signifiers of social status, yet the use of public spaces in different parts of the city and easier access to these spaces have complicated established social relations. I discuss how social, symbolic, and spatial boundaries are negotiated in a changing urban environment and how such processes create a sense of belonging or alienation – of being included or excluded – in different spaces. Furthermore, I show that while dividing lines among social groups in Tehran are conceptually powerful, they are not entirely class-based; rather, they are defined by a complex set of values and relations that are constantly questioned and renegotiated in public spaces.

Economic inequality is not the only form of inequality in urban contexts. In this chapter, I discuss other forms of marginalization in public spaces. Although my main focus is on social relations among citizens, the state’s control of public spaces is consequential in creating and sustaining structural inequalities that directly or indirectly impact social relations in public spaces. Whether controlling appearance and behavior (particularly for women) or suppressing certain belief systems and lifestyles, these state-imposed restrictions create inequalities that extend well beyond economic inequality in use of space. I argue that discriminatory laws or conventions (especially against women and those whose lifestyles or beliefs are not aligned with the ideals promoted by the state) are translated into unequal power relations in public spaces. This chapter examines how these inequalities impact perceptions of class and culture as social groups interact in public spaces and how public spaces are used to create spaces of being and belonging for marginalized groups.

The afterword discusses the author’s return to Surama Village in 2019–2020 and describes recent political and economic changes. The chapter further addresses the consequences following the death of the local shaman (Mogo) and the elevation of one of the early promoters of eco-tourism in Surama to national political prominence. This final chapter addresses the mixed record of ‘development’ in Surama Village and the still changing nature of the eco-tourism economy in the context of Covid-19 and political uncertainties. It also further connects the book’s themes with the Amazonian ethnological literature as part of a broader examination of Makushi practices of drawing in the outside through persons, objects, and organisations. The chapter reiterates the significance of a shamanic relational mode for contemporary Makushi interactions with certain visitors (particularly tourists) in the village and the importance of these relations to the Makushi in forming partnerships with outsiders aimed at addressing contemporary challenges.

This chapter provides an overview of Tehran’s urban development and shows how the city’s growth has been influenced by natural settings, cultural ideals, and economic and political processes. I explain the class structure of the city (moving from the north to the south, one perceives a gradual shift from wealthier neighborhoods to poorer ones) and its historical and geographical evolution. With an emphasis on grand urban visions, I discuss how natural, historical, and political forces have contributed to the unequal structure of the city.

The Introduction reviews the widely shared understanding of Schopenhauer as an apolitical thinker. It then articulates the challenge to this view. Schopenhauer, this book argues, defined politics as the rational management of perpetual human strife. The Introduction lays out the two main steps for recovering the full scope of Schopenhauer’s political thought. First, his attitude to politics must be historically contextualized. Against the backdrop of his era and the political ideas of other thinkers, the individual profile and polemical significance of Schopenhauer’s conception of politics come into view more clearly. Second, his textually dispersed political ideas must be assembled into a recognizable whole. Many of Schopenhauer’s reflections on political skills, values, ideologies, and regimes can be found in sections that do not explicitly deal with politics, and his core conception of politics becomes visible through a series of contrasts between politics and religion, politics and morality, and politics and sociability.

This chapter examines how poet, orator, and early speech therapist John Thelwall engages with embodied materialist models of involuntary, yet autonomous, utterance to support his lifelong belief in the necessity of free and active speech. It investigates how Thelwall’s work presents both politicised notions of the speaking body and a physiological and sometimes pathologised understanding of political silencing and argues that Thelwall’s later elocutionary work develops a concern with embodied speech already fundamental to his more overtly political writing, resulting in a theory of speech production and impediment which remains suggestive of a radical politics in its materialist conception of the human body’s operation and agency. Drawing on his unpublished ‘Derby Manuscript’, the chapter considers how Thelwall’s cross-disciplinary theory of ‘rhythmus’, which positions the elements of elocution as fundamental physical laws, rather than practical or cultural rules, gives credence to the notion of speech as a materially potent force.

This chapter reconstructs Schopenhauer’s critical engagement with thinkers from his own era. It notes that Schopenhauer often focused his scrutiny of Kant and Hegel on their political arguments. In the former case, Schopenhauer claimed that Kant’s moral theory was in fact a concealed political theory. In the latter case, he claimed that Hegel’s philosophy of the state conflated politics, religion, and morality for the purpose of serving the Prussian state. The chapter concludes that Schopenhauer’s reputation as an apolitical thinker is misleading since his elaborate criticisms of Kant and Hegel are partly generated by his conception of politics. It also argues that Schopenhauer’s demystifying critique of statehood in German Idealism places him in a position similar to the radical Young Hegelians, including the early Marx. Yet while the young Marx attacked the bourgeois vision of state rule over a market society composed of atomized, competitive individuals, Schopenhauer affirmed it.

Taking the notion of the ‘mechanic’ as its starting point, this chapter outlines how an interest in the mechanic and scientific aspects of speech production is a pervasive feature of Romantic-era treatments of spoken utterance. The chapter investigates the numerous contemporary senses of the term ‘mechanic’, to highlight these senses’ common concern with physical movement, whether of the human hands, a constructed machine, or the material world. It examines how Romantic innovations in the theory of speech production which present utterance as a form of motion – of bodies, of machines, and of matter itself – combine, engage with, and react to traditions of materialist philosophy and elocution teaching and explores how such studies of speech rely on blending knowledge-based fields of study with traditionally non-theoretical practices including medicine and elocution.

“Eusynoptos” takes its title from the Aristotelian notion of εὐσύνοπτος: “easily taken in at a glance.” In the Politics, Aristotle maintains that the size of a city is strictly delimited by the number of citizens that can be visually comprehended at a glance. But what if a machine were to augment the sensory capacities of humans? Could a political entity then be expanded beyond its natural limits? Confronting these questions in his film theory, Walter Benjamin modernizes eusynoptos by showing how the movie camera records large masses of individuals in a manner impossible for the naked eye. Informed by Benjamin’s idiosyncratic Marxism, the coda examines the reception of Nazi propaganda films in the United States in order to develop a critical theory of collective spectatorship that promotes a rational politics, thereby pressing back on an irrationalist tradition in aesthetics leading from Schelling and Schopenhauer through Nietzsche to fascism.

The conclusion reviews Schopenhauer’s conception of politics as the management of human strife. For Schopenhauer, politics was both indispensable and insufficient: rational political coordination can prevent society from descending into a chaos of mutual aggression, but because rationality itself is limited and metaphysically subordinate, it cannot redeem a fundamentally broken world. Schopenhauer’s attitudes – a sincere sensitivity to human and animal suffering, an uncompromising commitment to frank philosophizing, but also a fearful antidemocratic and anti-emancipatory view of society – place him outside the major ideologies of the modern age, such as liberalism, libertarianism, progressivism, and conservatism.

This chapter reconstructs Schopenhauer’s complex discussion of human sociability. Schopenhauer thought that agents in the domains of politics and morality cannot conceive of human togetherness. For him, the areas of politics and morality correspond to the exercise of egoism and the spontaneous feeling of compassion, respectively. But he added that egoism is rooted in a form of practical solipsism, and compassion is rooted in a metaphysical insight into the inessential nature of individuals. It follows that neither egoistic nor compassionate individuals ultimately care about others as others. Yet Schopenhauer supplemented these treatments of others as reducible with his discussion of sociability. His analysis of social interaction exemplified by conversations, games, and other diversions includes accounts of interpersonal harmony and friction among individuals who remain distinct from one another. Even though Schopenhauer rejected sociable interaction as superficial and embraced misanthropy, his reflections on sociability contain a conception of human community.

Chapter 5 argues that the increasing number of female servants and resulting visibility of women at court had political ramifications. By exploring the more active roles played by ladies and damsels in political events of the realm, I demonstrate how female courtiers found ways to access privilege for themselves, their families, and other associates through intercession. For example, they dramatically assisted Isabella’s coup against her husband Edward II and courageously stood by Catherine of Aragon during her divorce crisis. On the other hand, when national sentiment turned xenophobic, a queen’s foreign attendants faced scorn, retribution, and even banishment during periods of conflict. Some female attendants faced misogynistic attitudes that attacked their perceived propensity toward immodest sexuality, greed, and darker forces like witchcraft and poisoning. This role of women at court – apart from queens and particularly notorious examples like Edward III’s mistress Alice Perrers – has been neglected in many discussions of medieval court politics and patronage. I contend that the hostility experienced by some female courters highlights how medieval contemporaries themselves recognized women’s potential access to insider information about monarchs and the favors that could be bestowed to their kin, friends, and associates.

Chapter 10, A world political problem (June 11 - June 16). This chapter recounts the endgame of the Austrian crisis, while instability spreads to Germany. Norman comes to realize that in reality there is not much the central banks can do, since the real issue is "a world political problem" going all the way back to the Versaille Peace Agreement of 1919, the German war reparations and the allied’s war debts. The International Creditors Committee negotiate in Vienna with the Credit Anstalt and the Austrian government and at the very last minute they succeed in getting guarantee for their deposits, while promising to leave them for at least two years. At the same time, on June 16, negotiations with French bankers over the Austrian bond loans fails, and the Bank of England singlehandedly steps in with a bridge credit to the government. Together, the loan and the standstill agreement stops the Austrian crisis, at least for a while.