chantal mouffe's "on the political" is a lucid, provocative, and insightful work that develops her distinctive interpretation of late modern politics. mouffe emphasizes the ineradicable problem of 'antagonism' and argues that the political is the ever-present possibility of violent conflict or 'antagonism', which must be transformed into 'agonism'—a plurality of ideological conflicts given legitimate forms of expression within a shared symbolic space. she critiques theorists of the 'risk society', such as ulrich beck and anthony giddens, arguing that their emphasis on consensus and a world 'beyond left and right' leads to an 'anti-political vision' that fails to account for the adversarial dimension of politics. mouffe also critiques the 'third way' consensus at the centre, arguing that it exacerbates societal antagonism by denying voters real choices between significantly different policies. she argues that the rise of right-wing populism in continental europe is a consequence of the blurring of frontiers between left and right and the lack of vibrant partisan debate. in chapter 5, she examines two prominent theories of globalization—cosmopolitanism and the global 'multitude'—and finds them wanting. she argues that these theories fail to acknowledge the imposition of a western conception of justice and human rights on a deeply pluralistic world. mouffe proposes an alternative that she finds unsatisfactory, advocating for a multi-polar world order constructed around autonomous regional blocks. while she is right to emphasize the importance of local, national, and regional sites of struggle against neoliberal globalization, she illegitimately moves from this insight to a wholesale abandonment of the idea of 'global' justice. the book is thought-provoking and will be widely read and debated. however, it raises more questions than it answers. for example, is it sufficient to iterate the continued importance of the left/right distinction as a means of facilitating constructive partisan conflict? or does this need to be accompanied by a more spirited defense of the emancipatory aims of the left? similarly, is the transformation of 'antagonism' into 'agonism' an end in itself? or is this really a strategic question, appropriate in some contexts but not in others? the book is a virtue in invoking these sorts of reflections. antonio negri's "books for burning" brings together a number of his controversial essays from the 1970s. the essays attempt to derive a strategy for social transformation from an analysis of economic changes in the transition to postmodern capitalism. they served as the theoretical underpinnings for autonomia, a Marxist current involved in the social upheavals in 1970s italy. the essays are uncompromisingly radical and offer an uncompromising political perspective enmeshed within an erudite and conceptually dense discourse of continental philosophy and theoretical marxism. one major strength of these essays is that they recognize and theorchantal mouffe's "on the political" is a lucid, provocative, and insightful work that develops her distinctive interpretation of late modern politics. mouffe emphasizes the ineradicable problem of 'antagonism' and argues that the political is the ever-present possibility of violent conflict or 'antagonism', which must be transformed into 'agonism'—a plurality of ideological conflicts given legitimate forms of expression within a shared symbolic space. she critiques theorists of the 'risk society', such as ulrich beck and anthony giddens, arguing that their emphasis on consensus and a world 'beyond left and right' leads to an 'anti-political vision' that fails to account for the adversarial dimension of politics. mouffe also critiques the 'third way' consensus at the centre, arguing that it exacerbates societal antagonism by denying voters real choices between significantly different policies. she argues that the rise of right-wing populism in continental europe is a consequence of the blurring of frontiers between left and right and the lack of vibrant partisan debate. in chapter 5, she examines two prominent theories of globalization—cosmopolitanism and the global 'multitude'—and finds them wanting. she argues that these theories fail to acknowledge the imposition of a western conception of justice and human rights on a deeply pluralistic world. mouffe proposes an alternative that she finds unsatisfactory, advocating for a multi-polar world order constructed around autonomous regional blocks. while she is right to emphasize the importance of local, national, and regional sites of struggle against neoliberal globalization, she illegitimately moves from this insight to a wholesale abandonment of the idea of 'global' justice. the book is thought-provoking and will be widely read and debated. however, it raises more questions than it answers. for example, is it sufficient to iterate the continued importance of the left/right distinction as a means of facilitating constructive partisan conflict? or does this need to be accompanied by a more spirited defense of the emancipatory aims of the left? similarly, is the transformation of 'antagonism' into 'agonism' an end in itself? or is this really a strategic question, appropriate in some contexts but not in others? the book is a virtue in invoking these sorts of reflections. antonio negri's "books for burning" brings together a number of his controversial essays from the 1970s. the essays attempt to derive a strategy for social transformation from an analysis of economic changes in the transition to postmodern capitalism. they served as the theoretical underpinnings for autonomia, a Marxist current involved in the social upheavals in 1970s italy. the essays are uncompromisingly radical and offer an uncompromising political perspective enmeshed within an erudite and conceptually dense discourse of continental philosophy and theoretical marxism. one major strength of these essays is that they recognize and theor