Planetary Politics: Arendt, Anarchy and the Climate Crisis

Critical political theory has been transformed since the declaration of the Anthropocene in the early 2000s. However, a substantive account of a planetary politics, which begins by understanding politics as planetary – as opposed to politics applied to the planet – is yet to be developed. Planetary Politics: Arendt, Anarchy and the Climate Crisis offers precisely such an account of political theory. Rereading the key works of Hannah Arendt, it suggests that Arendt was a theorist of the planet and that claims of hers, such as the fact that ‘plurality is the law of the earth,’ have been radically overlooked. Recovering these moments in Arendt’s writing, this book makes the case for a planetary anarchism and the restaging of revolutionary politics.