Foreword; Bernard Flynn Acknowledgements Note to Contributors Introduction; Martín Plot PART I: CLAUDE LEFORT, A CLOSE READER: INTELLECTUAL INFLUENCES AND DIALOGUES 1. Claude Lefort: A Political Biography; Dick Howard 2. Lefort as Phenomenologist of the Political; Bernard Flynn 3. Lefort and Machiavelli; Newton Bignotto 4. Claude Lefort, Political Anthropology, and Symbolic Division; Samuel Moyn 5. Claude Lefort as Reader of Leo Strauss; Claudia Hilb PART II: INTERPRETING THE POLITICAL: EVENTS AND POLITICAL THOUGHT 6. Claude Lefort, the Practice and Thought of Disincorporation; Giles Bataillon 7. The Style Claude Lefort; Michael B. Smith 8. Lefort, the Philosopher of 1989; Andrew Arato 9. Rethinking the Politics of Human Rights and Democracy with and beyond Claude Lefort; Jean Cohen 10. Lefort and Tocqueville on the Possibility of Democratic Despotism; Steven Bilakovics PART III: SYMBOLIC MUTATIONS: LEFORT'S INFLUENCE IN CONTEMPORARY DEMOCRATIC THEORY 11. Thinking Democracy Beyond Regimes: 'Untangling Political Analysis from the Nation-State; Marc G. Doucet 12. Lefort and the Symbolic Dimension; Warren Breckman 13. Democracy Beyond the Political; Brian Singer 14. Lefort and the Fate of Radical Democracy; Jeremy Valentine 15. The Advent of the Aesthetico-Political; Martín Plot