Increasing the Real Life in Ourselves

Some Reflections on Norman Mailer’s “Politics of State”

Authors

  • Lee Spinks University of Edinburgh Author

Keywords:

1969 New York mayoral campaign, New York City statehood, decentralization and neighborhoods, Friedrich Nietzsche, Gilles Deleuze, politics and power

Abstract

A “neighborhood,” Mailer repeatedly emphasizes, is not a concept; it is an embodied and material form of life organized around the internal differentiation of forces. For Mailer neighborhoods inscribe the competition of forces within the marrow of everyday experience; the existential challenge for each of us is to separate active from reactive force by developing a style of life that embodies and projects a positive vision of what we would most wish to become.

Author Biography

  • Lee Spinks, University of Edinburgh

    Lee Spinks is Associate Professor of English Literature at the University of Edinburgh. He is the author of Friedrich Nietzsche (Routledge,2003), James Joyce: A Critical Guide (Edinburgh University Press, 2009) and Michael Ondaatje (Manchester UP, 2009). He is currently completing a book on Norman Mailer for Manchester UP.

Downloads

Published

2015-09-30

Issue

Vol. 9 No. 1 (2015): Maestro

Section

Articles

How to Cite

Spinks, Lee. “Increasing the Real Life in Ourselves: Some Reflections on Norman Mailer’s ‘Politics of State’”. The Mailer Review, vol. 9, no. 1, Sept. 2015, pp. 157–176, https://mailerreview.org/journal/article/view/520.