Nihilopolitics as Meta-biopolitics? On Arthur Bradley's Unbearable Life: A Genealogy of Political Erasure

This article begins by introducing Bradley's master concept of unbearable life and its underpinning structure and logic of nihilopolitics through the ancient Roman figure of damnatio memoriae. It then gives an overview of how both unbearable life and nihilopolitics are reflected in and supported by Bradley's close readings of different political theological figures, stretching from Foucault (the unbearable), passing through Augustine (Cacus), Shakespeare (Macbeth), Robespierre (the already dead), Hobbes (the religious martyr) and Schmitt (the katechon), to Benjamin (the undead and the past to come). The article concludes by briefly outlining a possible dialogue between Bradley's master concepts of unbearable life and nihilopolitics and the psychoanalytic concepts of the superego and the death drive.