Affect, contingency, a leaderless movement, collateral damage, how a theater of mental machinations enters into the acts of the political but wouldn't necessarily be accounted for - all these things that are in a sense unaccountable, that disturb the classical political categories - that's what I mean by the unexceptional. Those categories don't fit easily within the classical language of political theory or even political science.

Literary scholar Emily Apter examines the dimension of unexceptional politics that lies beyond the grasp of classical political theory or contemporary political science - a landscape of 'below the radar' elements within daily life that exert invisible, unmeasurable influence upwards into politics and outwards across society.

Emily is author of Unexceptional Politics: On Obstruction, Impasse, and the Impolitic from Verso.