Revolution and Restoration

The Politics of Anachronism

Massimiliano Tomba

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Paperback

Forthcoming
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English

Fordham University Press
30 September 2025

Historiography; Social theory; Political science & theory

Series: Idiom: Inventing Writing Theory

At a time when terms like restoration, religion, authority, obligations, and natural law - once the rallying cries of the most emancipatory movements - are increasingly coopted by conservative forces, Revolution and Restoration offers a thought-provoking account of how ""outdated"" concepts can ignite radical energy and collective action. Through both historical and contemporary examples, the book elaborates the concrete possibilities for reimagining politics and society that emerge out of the clash between incompatible legal and economic structures.

At its core, Tomba’s book confronts the very foundations of the modern state and its three pillars: property, democracy, and citizenship. These pillars, long celebrated in the Western canon, are nevertheless mechanisms of exclusion: property is the denial of communal access, representative democracy the marginalization of the demos from decision-making, and citizenship the exclusion of the foreigner. Revolution and Restoration critiques these pillars to show how new concepts and political possibilities that emerge from political and social conflicts hold the potential to transcend and remake democracies in crisis.

Revolution and Restoration: The Politics of Anachronism

is available from the Knowledge Unlatched on an open-access basis.

By: Massimiliano Tomba
Imprint: Fordham University Press
Country of Publication: United States [Currently unable to ship to USA: see Shipping Info]
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm,
Weight: 240g
ISBN: 9781531512491
ISBN 10: 1531512496
Series: Idiom: Inventing Writing Theory
Pages: 160
Publication Date: 30 September 2025
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Preface vii Introduction: The Work of Anachronism and the Configuration of New Concepts 1 1. Revolution and Restoration 22 2. Private and Social Property 42 To Hold Land Differently: Another Way of Owning 58 3. Democracy and the Democratic Excess 73 4. Citizenship and Sanctuary 95 Afterword 117 Acknowledgments 123 Notes 125 Index 155

Massimiliano Tomba is Professor in the Department of History of Consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is the author of Insurgent Universality: An Alternative Legacy of Modernity (Oxford, 2019, pbk 2021, co-winner, David and Elaine Spitz Prize), Attraverso la piccolo porta: Quattro studi su Walter Benjamin (Mimesis, 2017), Marx’s Temporalities (Brill, 2012, Haymarket, 2013), La vera politica: Kant e Benjamin (Quodlibet, 2006), and Krise und Kritik bei Bruno Bauer. Kategorien des Politischen im nachhegelschen Denken (Peter Lang, 2005).

Reviews for Revolution and Restoration: The Politics of Anachronism

""Revolution and Restoration is a work of stunning sophistication and subtlety. It makes methodological, conceptual, and philosophical contributions of the first order that are richly illustrated by empirical cases. The book will be read by philosophers, political theorists, historians, and anthropologists and broadly by intellectuals."" - Uday Mehta, CUNY Graduate Center