Thinking Outside the Canon: Political Theory as Textual Odyssey [Paperback]

Thinking Outside the Canontraces author Michael J. Shapiro's intellectual journey as a preeminent political theorist who adapts multidisciplinary practices to develop a more diverse, text-attuned model. Shapiro works to theorize textuality and historiography, drawing on a variety of disciplinary idioms to develop an approach to political theory that moves beyond the traditional canon, incorporating texts that span across genres and geographies. Ranging from Caribbean fiction to Ukraine war fictional ethnographies, and covering an array of spaces from the state to the individual room,Thinking Outside the Canonrepresents how the field of Political Theory has grown and shifted through the author's own textual odyssey.Thinking Outside the Canontraces author Michael J. Shapiro's intellectual journey as a political theorist who has adapted multidisciplinary practices and unconventional texts across his career to develop a more diverse model of doing theory. Theorizing textuality and historiography, Shapiro draws on a variety of disciplinary idioms and texts that span across genres and geographies, ranging from Caribbean fiction to Ukraine war fictional ethnographies. As well, he covers an array of scales and spaces, from the state to the individual room. As such,Thinking Outside the Canonreflects how the field of political theory has grown and shifted through the author's own textual odyssey.After recovering the early portion of his own political theory odyssey, Shapiro traces his departures from the canon. He recounts how, through this departure, he refashioned his scholarship via a series of textual engagements and composed the basis of an instructional inquiry focused on textuality and historiography. Finally, Shapiro relates howThinking Outside the Canonfunctions as his own learning text, as both a theorist and writer and as a student, looking towards the future of the political theory canon and its usefulness.PrefacePolitil£Ì