yves winter

Machiavelli and the Orders of Violence

“Winter’s path-breaking study probes how violence actually works in politics. With Machiavelli as our guide, Winter shows us, strikingly, how little this political work has to do with the direct threat of physical coercion” – Karuna Mantena, Columbia University

“This book not only makes an essential contribution to the Machiavelli scholarship, but also offers a decisive intervention into contemporary theories of political violence” – Jason Frank, Cornell University

“One of the most perspicacious contemporary investigations into the nature of political violence; an outstanding contribution to the recent wave of republican, populist and democratic readings of Machiavelli” – John McCormick, University of Chicago

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Recent News and Publications

  • Machiavelli and the Orders of Violence

    Machiavelli and the Orders of Violence

    My book, Machiavelli and the Orders of Violence, is out! It is available in hardback, paperback, and as an ebook from Cambridge University Press.

  • gouvernementalität und sicherheit – now in open access

      Our co-edited volume on governmentality and security, Gouvernementalität und Sicherheit (Transcript Verlag, 2008) is now available in open-access.

  • the siege of gaza

    My article The Siege of Gaza: Spatial Violence, Humanitarian Strategies, and the Biopolitics of Punishment [behind paywall] is now available from Constellations.

  • the radical machiavelli

    September 23, 2015: Just out! The Radical Machiavelli: Politics, Philosophy, and Language, edited by Fillipo del Lucchese, Fabio Frosini, and Vittorio Morfino. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2015. So very pleased to be part of this volume, which grew out of a fabulous conference in London, two years ago. Here’s an excerpt from the blurb: “Rather than…

  • shipwrecked sovereignty

    June 1, 2015: Shipwrecked Sovereignty! Joshua Chambers-Letson and I have a co-authored article in the current issue of Political Theory. The piece is about a legal and political controversy concerning a Napoleonic shipwreck that was recently salvaged off the Iberian peninsula by a private corporation. On board of  the Spanish warship was the most valuable…

  • violence on the desert island… now in print

    October 15, 2014: My article Debating Violence on a Desert Island: Engels, Dühring and Robinson Crusoe [behind paywall] is now officially out in Contemporary Political Theory.  Here is the abstract: Ever since the publication in 1719 of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, the novel’s eponymous protagonist has had a pervasive presence in the modern social and cultural imaginary, giving…