In these two books, William E. Connolly continues to pursue, in creative and provocative ways, theoretical concerns about politics that he has been developing for at least the last 15 years. As is well known, Connolly’s post-Nietzschean position has attempted to radically rethink the nature of pluralism and democracy by articulating the way in which bodies, culture, and politics are intimately imbricated in complex relays and practices. In so doing, he has captured unique features of our political landscape (e.g., the way in which religious creeds and economic interests become infused in potent commitments to particular state forms, economic dynamics, and modes of existential resentment), while also envisioning micro- and macropolitical practices that cultivate an engaged sense of agonistic respect for divergent positions and practices, different religious creeds and political commitments, all in the name of an ideal of deep pluralism.

In many respects, both works under review continue to develop these earlier pursuits, analyses, provocations, and advocacies. Yet Connolly’s theory has now reached a certain serene tenacity, heightened theoretical articulation, and insistent political militancy that clearly shows the timely importance of his current position for evaluating the political conundrums associated with a world of “capitalist” becoming. Specifically, these new works deftly articulate a political ontology that takes seriously the open and pluripotential cosmos in which human politics is embedded, and, importantly, they also critically interrogate the barriers posed by capitalist economic life to a truly flourishing egalitarian and democratic ethos that is demanded by a commitment to deep forms of pluralism.

A World of Becoming represents an interesting conceptual pause in Connolly’s usual trenchant analyses of particular political practices, moving more toward a multifaceted reflection on the deep ontological assumptions that have been guiding his reflections in previous works. Drawing upon a variety of works in neuroscience, philosophy, and political theory, Connolly argues for a new vision of the natural/social/cultural world in which neither is there an assumption of clearly defined boundaries that separate the “human estate” from the “nonhuman estate,” nor is it a world in which humans inevitably have mastery and control over such interactions. Instead, he paints an ontological picture in which the world is crisscrossed by divergent, yet at times converging, force fields that produce a variety of subjective and objective practices, but always in a state of potential transformation given the aleatory overdetermination of human actions by a multitude of social, cultural, political, economic, and natural factors. For sure, as Connolly is quick to point out, this is not a world in constant flux, given that there are periods of intensive and extensive congealment within particular human/nature “resonance machines.” But, importantly, it is a world that can be open to the unexpected, the new, always verdant in interesting possibilities. At the same time, for the author at least, its open character raises the stakes of how we conceive of our vocation as political theorists.

For Connolly, this figuration of a world of becoming demands that we rethink some entrenched assumptions associated with certain, still dominant, forms of contemporary political theory: First, one must break free from the deeply embedded anthropocentric drive to make hard-and-fast distinctions between the human and nonhuman, given that all facets of this world have degrees of agency and autopoetic potentials. Second, a world of becoming is inevitably one that is open to new, and potentially unexpected, transformations and configurations, all of which question the very notion of “efficient causation” or “organic holism” that has been proffered within particular traditions of political theory (instead, Connolly argues for “emergent causality . . . in which new forces can trigger novel patterns of self-organization in a thing, species, system, or being” [p. 44]). And, thus, third, it removes from the theoretical table both a reliance on transcendent grounds for political theory and action (promoting, in its place, a radical immanent position on emerging and transformative events) and a Promethean sense of human mastery and agency.

Of course, one wonders how such an onto-figuration can even allow for the possibility of a vocation for theory that is more than just glimpsing potentials within the political world for greater degrees of egalitarianism and democracy. It is in relation to this issue that Connolly outlines a rather provocative position, particularly for those traditions (like critical theory) that take seriously the importance of theory in engendering human transformation. In a world of becoming, the theorist must seek a mode of cultivated modesty concerning one’s abilities to affect change through one’s theoretical positions, seeing one’s role as primarily to prise open experiential potentials through creative micropractices that are engaged both with new modes of thought and with new experimentations within and between one’s multifarious subject positions and roles within institutions and social practices.

In The Fragility of Things, Connolly brings these ontological assumptions to bear on a variety of political economic issues that have incredible importance in contemporary social and political life. In a sense, this work continues the important direction he announced in Capitalism and Christianity, American Style (2008), looking forcefully at the imbrication of political forms, religious discourses, and economic practices associated with neoliberal capitalism. If in A World of Becoming Connolly characterizes the ontological plane via a notion of open systems and pluripotential force fields, he now squarely politicizes this territory by emphasizing the flip side of such a figuration, namely, the very “fragility” to which this attests, that is, the “gaps and dislocations between the demands neoliberalism makes upon several human activities and nonhuman fields and the capacities of both to meet them. These pressures set off boomerang processes as the demands intensify” (p. 10). Of particular import, of course, are the growing dislocations associated with the continuing destruction of ecological systems, rampant resource depletion, and the increasingly apparent consequences of global climate change. What, then, is the unique nature of neoliberalism as Connolly sees it, particularly as it is practiced in the U.S. context and promoted by United States–dominated world organizations like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank? Given a world of becoming, what are the appropriate forms of political action that attend to the “intercoded scales” of “a world that is very fragile” (p. 6) while also resolutely promoting a “more militant democratic politics” (p. 10)?

From one perspective, Connolly articulates a characterization of neoliberalism that is similar to that of other commentators and theorists in the growing literature on this political economic discourse. Thus, for Connolly, neoliberalism encodes within everyday life a potent discursive commitment to the self-organizing rationality of capitalist markets, conceptions of individual freedom (associated with, among other things, consumption patterns and economic behavior), and a supposed weak state. Yet, as he notes perceptively, the reality of neoliberal regimes of capitalism is one in which the state increasingly engages in the draconian production of the conditions of capitalism itself, those “disciplines needed to adjust behavior to market imperatives” (p. 54). In this context, the neoliberal state engages in “strong” measures devoted to the (re)production of the necessary conditions of capitalism, while at the same time it emasculates and weakens any state policies that may be helpful in alleviating the very inegalitarian and antidemocratic consequences of capitalist market forces. Thus, the neoliberal mantra of “getting the state off the back of individuals” at once hides the real practices of the neoliberal state and justifies the very withdrawal of state policies that may help eradicate poverty, promote income redistribution and universal health care, or help temper the most egregious ecological externalities associated with capitalist processes of accumulation.

What Connolly also adds to our picture of neoliberalism is how it enfolds within the subjective identities of a variety of groups within U.S. society, particularly white males within both the working and middle classes who yearn for certainty in an increasingly unstable and inhospitable economic world. In response to the media’s celebration of the success and efficacy of (male) corporate elites and the seeming “advances” of women and minorities, among other factors, white males seek hypermasculine identifications in an ideology whose very materialization increases the very precarity they strive to avoid, a materialization that thus offers fresh fodder for such attachments. Of course, as Connolly has argued elsewhere (particularly, Capitalism and Christianity, American Style), one must also take into consideration the resonance of evangelical Christianity in this process of compensatory self-constitution. All in all, the author’s contribution to our understanding of the nature of neoliberalism can be seen in his attentiveness to the dynamic interdependence of religious, political, cultural, and economic practices in its genealogy and, given such an intricate interplay of determining factors, neoliberalism’s continual resilience in the hearts and minds of American citizens.

Connolly’s proposals for new forms of democratic action attempt to take seriously the role of neoliberal capitalism as a defining culprit in the destitution of an ethos of a truly deep pluralism. If one assumes the “intercoded scales” of open systems that define a world of becoming—and thus their aleatory self-organization and continual fragility—one’s political militancy must perform on a number of different levels. On the micropolitical level, one must (re)fashion new arts of self that contest existential resentment, promote consumption practices that reinforce environmental and distributional justice, and continually rethink one’s own practices in reinforcing the “evangelical-capitalist resonance machine.” On the more macropolitical level, Connolly argues for the creative engagement with social and political movements such that one takes seriously the importance of working on transforming state policies, establishing productive alliances with global actors struggling for similar aims, and working on international regimes to reinforce global democratic and egalitarian goals. What is key, at least for the author, is that we always keep our political sights on “a set of interim possibilities worthy of pursuit on several fronts, even if the apparent political odds are stacked against them” (p. 42). Given the nature of a world of becoming—where seemingly small political practices can have dynamic resonances in unknown ways, and there are no guarantees given the aleatory interaction of diverse systems and processes—a democratic Left politics becomes at once more optimistic about the possibilities for transformation and more tempered in its overarching goals.

As may seem apparent from this brief overview, Connolly’s analysis of our current political world is rich in its figuration and provocative in its theoretical and political implications, and he continues to engage in a productive way with some of the most important issues associated with our contemporary context. Yet if we were to compare his treatment to those of other important critics of neoliberalism (e.g., David Harvey, John Holloway, Michael Hardt, and Antonio Negri), one interesting conceptual reticence on his part comes to the forefront: While other critics are clear that the imperatives of capitalism forcefully undergird the current problems we confront, Connolly shies away from a fully developed critique of capitalism itself, and in the process does not clearly articulate how, even in the interim, one may need to engage in a variety of anticapitalist practices as part of one’s overall democratic Left political strategy. This is somewhat strange given that we are, after all, dealing with neoliberal capitalism. But whatever one’s qualms about Connolly’s hesitation in this respect, his work continues to perform an important rethinking of the political world around us that takes seriously a radical vision for a more democratic and just future.