The editors of this volume ask what has become of this vocation, and they are sometimes ambivalent about whether they are referring to Wolin's epic image or to the character and condition of political theory as a professional university activity. Whatever their assumptions about the relationship between the two, their principal focus is on the latter. Although the editors state that the concerns “animating” the volume are “the character and status of contemporary political theory, its place in the academy and its role in public life,”(p. x) these matters are not explored very fully, either analytically or empirically, and the essays have difficulty staying on message.

With respect to the issue of the relationship between political theory and political science, the editors characterize their approach as “primarily theoretical and metatheoretical.” (p. xxv) They claim that political theory should be relevant, but they point to the value of detachment and “question the assumption that political theory should avoid straying from direct engagement with current events.” (p. xv) They stress the existence of “vocations” of political theory as well as the pluralistic and changing character of the field, which they believe warrants yet another assessment of its current state. This pluralism is attributed in part to the nature of the field but particularly to the contemporary diversity and flux within the domain of politics and to the proliferation of the political. Although the editors warily celebrate how eclecticism has enlivened political theory and contributed to its flourishing, they worry about dissolution of identity and about “our ability to speak of a vocation at all” (p. xiii–xiv). As with most credos of pluralism, there is an attempt to indicate some sense of unity and continuity, but they claim little more than an unspecified “family resemblance” among the many modes of theorizing.

The lead essay is by Wolin and focuses on this loss of identity. It also notes that the conference from which this volume derived was devoted to future political theorists and to the future of political theory and was a response to the “perennial uncertainty and controversy about political theory's relationship to political and social science, to philosophy, to history, as well as its relationship, if any, to the `real' political world.” The essay, which Wolin labels an “invocation” or “a response to a certain kind of loss,” is not optimistic. (p. 5) He claims there is a danger that the vocation is about either “to lapse into dilettantism” or “to harden into professionalism” (p. 618). He viewed his original essay as partly a response to a political “crisis” and to a condition of undertheoretization and conformism, whereas we now face a situation marked by “overtheoretization.”

According to Wolin, in a world in which “both theory and politics are ubiquitous and indeterminate” and “freed of the constraints of an overarching political,” we have a “politics of multiplicity” and a concomitant “proliferation of theory” and diverse identities for “disjointed theorists” (pp. 9,11). As a consequence, political theory makes reference to real-world controversies, but “its engagement is with the conditions, or the politics, of the theoretical that it seeks to settle rather than with the political that is being contested…. It is postpolitical” (p. 15). Although the situation seems to be a classic case of overproduction and underconsumption, Wolin attributes these problems, as he has in earlier essays, less to the faults and failings of theorists than to the chaos and speed of modern life, to a “society without a paradigm,” to a “utopian” era that paradoxically depends on the “perpetuation of dystopia” for the many. Can an invocation of the vocation of political theory aid us? Wolin suggests, “besides being fatuous, that call may be too late in the day.” In the space and time between his two essays, “the academic intellectual has undergone a dizzying series of intellectual permutations.” Varieties of political theory have “replicated the pace of technological change” and become a segment of the “brainy classes,” who ultimately perpetuate and benefit from the present and undemocratic condition of society (p. 21).

Wolin's image of the vocation was the theme on which the conference pivoted, but the other twelve essays—half by establishment scholars and half by ABDs and recent Ph.Ds—seldom directly engage his account. There is much discussion of theory, but it is often very abstract and reflects the very diversity of issues and perspectives that the editors and Wolin consider problematical.

Wendy Brown discusses Derrida and Benjamin while addressing the relationship between political thinking and forms of historical consciousness. J. Peter Euben, picking up on the more general dimension of Wolin's essay, speaks about the relationship between political theory and the sense of loss. Thomas Dumm explores the significance of loss in a more private or ordinary sense. David Mandell considers the relevance of the study of the history of political theory for thinking about contemporary issues. Linda Zerilli criticizes, from a Wittgensteinian perspective, the craving of feminist thought for generality and its neglect of the ordinary. Mark Brown examines the often contradictory ways in which political theorists have viewed natural science. Lon Troyer urges an ethos of political theory based less on any particular approach than on an attitude of provocation. Shane Gunster argues that political theory must aim at achieving the status of Gramscian “organic intellectuals.” Samantha Frost discusses Hobbes as a vehicle for engaging contemporary issues regarding the embodied subject. Jill Locke attempts to bring political theory to bear on the public policy issue of using chain gangs. William Connolly seeks to extract democratic insight from the work of Nietzsche.

These are all lucid and credible essays, but the volume as a whole demonstrates that political theorists live lives of persistent and sometimes desperate cognitive dissonance as they seek to relate to both political science and politics and to come to grips with the disparity between their actual professional position and extravagant images of their vocation.