Prelude. 1775  1

1. Steps toward an Ecology of Late Capitalism  20

first interlude: Melancholia and Us  43

2. Hayek, Neoliberalism, and Freedom  52

second interlude: Modes of Self-Organization  81

3. Shock Therapy, Dramatization, and Practical Wisdom  98

third interlude: Fullness and Vitality  140

4. Process Philosophy and Planetary Politics  149

postlude: Role Experimentation and Democratic Activism  179

Acknowledgments  197

Notes  201

Bibliography  225

Index  233

"In this book, William E. Connolly enlists his unique perspective and voracious knowledge to examine neoliberalism's contribution to the fragility of things. And he incites us into activisms large and small. Connolly understands the need to show critically the fragility of things and to reveal the insistent ideologies that make life today more fragile than it needs to be. He also understands the need to counter those ideologies with something more than critique. I learned from reading The Fragility of Things. It pulled me into its vernacular: its language, its impulses, its questions are compelling. It was a pleasure to read: instructive, accessible, imaginative, and inspiring."—Bonnie Honig, author of Antigone, Interrupted

"The Fragility of Things represents an important turn in the thinking of William E. Connolly, a theorist whose work has a significant readership across the humanities and social sciences around the world. It introduces into the democratic and pluralistic ethos he has long advocated a new element: an informed sense of the 'fragility of things,' an awareness that human affairs are undertaken in a world of interacting systems of self-organization that place no special value on human flourishing or even survival. Connolly argues that an appreciation of the fragility of things must be incorporated into efforts to advance egalitarian, pluralist, and democratic values."—Paul Patton, author of Deleuzian Concepts: Philosophy, Colonization, Politics

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