Towards an Improper Politics

Book excerpt: This book systematically introduces the idea of an improper politics. Introducing a conceptual vocabulary, it engages with the politics of the proper, propriety and property from a post-foundational perspective. Mark Devenney argues that this triad is central to understanding the maintenance of global inequality, both economic and political. He characterises democratic politics as improper, challenging the proper bounds of reason, accepted behaviours, and the policing of proper order. The conceptualisation of democracy as an improper practice of equality accords a dignity to forms of politics often deemed marginal.