Abstract

In the last decades, the growing importance of supranational and extra-governmental bodies and regulations has led to a capillary fragmentation of national political spheres. Because of this, Western democracies appear more and more bloodless. While states are no longer places where public exchanges occur and social conflicts are settled, politics is saturated with struggles for individual rights. The reviviscence of self-centred interests, the emergence of a de-politicizing jargon of rights and the spread of "finanzcapitalism" seem to minimize all attempts at restoring traditional democratic procedures. In the face of this, Davina Cooper invites to leave aside epochal programs of comprehensive social transformation and to look at modes of re-politicization. These materialize in the conjunction of people, micro-institutions and produce a novel understanding of theory's role in social life. This review article discusses her idea that the innate fragmentation of the social world should be regarded not as a flaw but as an instrument to revitalize politics on a piecemeal basis with the aim of elaborating connections (both physical and narrative) that are able to offer alternative responses to today's political impasse in the Global North.