Acknowledgments

This study of “conceptual personae” in contemporary political philosophy has evolved over the past fourteen years since the publication of The Non-Philosophy of Gilles Deleuze (2002). Several earlier versions of the following chapters have appeared in journals or edited collections, and I wish to thank the following editors: Ian Buchanan, Eduardo Cadava, Jodi Dean, Aaron Levy, Forbes Morlock, and Nick Thoburn.

This work represents a significant departure from my earlier method of “non-philosophical” commentary, primarily on the works of Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Derrida, and thus was made to serve as a theoretical accompaniment and prolegomena to the Perpetual Peace Project, a large-scale curatorial initiative that was copartnered since 2008 with Aaron Levy (Slought, Philadelphia), Martin Rauchbauer (Deutsche Haus, New York University), and Rosi Braidotti (Centre for the Humanities, Utrecht University). I would like to express my gratitude to all the contributors who were involved in different phases of this public project, who have all taught me the true meaning of creative collaboration. This book is dedicated to these “friends of peace.”

I would also like to pay homage to the cities and the people of Amsterdam and Utrecht for providing the background, context, and, ironically, the birthplace and final destination of both projects.

I thank Neil West, Scott Mueller, Sheila McMahon, Erin Warholm-Wohlenhaus, Anne Wrenn, and Bresser-Chapple for all details of production and design. Finally, I express my sincere appreciation and gratitude to my editor at the University of Minnesota Press, Douglas Armato, who suffered through numerous conceptual versions of this project with both patience and perspective, until what first appeared as a “crazy etymological exercise” gradually resembled a new vocabulary of political concepts and terms, even if they still belong to a foreign language. As Jorge Luis Borges once said of the “good reader,” these days a “good editor” is an even more rare and exotic bird and thus should be prized above all the other birds of knowledge in an author’s personal aviary.