This article explores exclusionary practices of contemporary politics and alternative forms of resistance. It starts off explaining how Giorgio Agamben's theory can be understood in the context of resistance. In so doing, it turns to the arguments put forward by Edkins and Pin-Fat. In their article `Through the Wire', they identify two forms of resistance. Drawing on Agamben's thought: refusal and the assumption of bare life. This article argues that these two forms are not sufficient for thinking resistance. This is so because of a gap in Agamben's thought and the way Edkins and Pin-Fat read him. In order to explore resistance in a more fruitful way, the article critiques Edkins and Pin-Fat's conclusions on the understanding bare life as a form of resistance; it amends Agamben's account by explaining the move from bare life to whatever being, and ultimately, the article finds whatever being as a fruitful way of understanding resistance on the example of Tiananmen. At the end I conclude that the Tiananmen protest successfully challenged the sovereign power from the position of in-between.

Modern political reality is increasingly permeated with testimonies and representations of social and personal anxieties. Most often these narratives are accompanied with a desire to identify and implement a 'cure' that will either heal or eradicate the source of discomfort. In the political everyday such a 'cure' is disguised as a policy or a new law. Thus it comes as a little surprise that the term anxiety is increasingly used by politicians, policy-makers, legal and medical experts as well as scholars to explain an allegedly new social phenomenon. Relying on psychoanalysis and critical theory the contributions in this special issue tackle modern anxieties in the realms of politics and law, and in particular look into how anxiety is manifested in relation to resistance, immigration, nationalism and austerity measures. This introduction firstly, unpacks the idea of anxiety conceptually and offers different ways in which anxiety can be read politically, legally as well as theoretically; and secondly introduces the arguments put forward in individual contributions.Keywords Anxiety Á Psychoanalysis Á Jacques Lacan Á Socio-political order Á Modernity Á Identity Modern political reality is increasingly permeated with testimonies and representations of social and personal anxieties. Most often these narratives are accompanied This special issue originates in the discussions we had at a workshop organised in the Politics department at the University of Manchester in 2015 by Andreja Zevnik and Aoileann Ni Mhurchu. Since then we had on-going discussions on the role of anxiety in the modern socio-political sphere, which also drew in new contributors. The presented issue is a testimony to the discussions we have had.

The article discusses postracial society as social fantasy. It opens with a discussion of the lived experience of Americans and their attitude towards racism and social and political inequality. Drawing on the studies of public attitude, the article points towards a persisting racism the postracial society aimed to overcome and to the effect recent Black activism had on dismantling the fantasy. The article shows how on the one hand, racism is grounded in the unconscious and in the way a subject becomes politicized, while on the other hand, racism already permeates political categories such as rights or citizenship, concluding that a Black subject cannot exist politically as a Black subject. There is always something that a Black subject has in the excess and that mis‐fits with White political categories. The article turns to Lacan's psychoanalysis and his ideas of identification to address the relationship between the subject and the form of authority. Further, the article draws on the postcolonial psychoanalytically inspired ideas of Franz Fanon and W. E. B. Du Bois to frame the relationship between the White master and the Black subject and to present the impossibility the Black subject faces when met with the implicitly racially biased White political categories.

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The political unconscious “speaks”; it displays itself in the symptoms of the political world, in the speech of policy, of decisions, of laws, of images, icons, and gestures, and in protest, resistance, and ordinary violences, and, insofar as it speaks, psychoanalysis can say something about it. In this article, we consider how psychoanalysis can speak to some of the symptoms of the political world as they emerge as a form of the political unconscious. We employ Lacanian psychoanalytic theory to elaborate the unconscious and discuss how some of the symptoms of this unconscious has emerged in the form of Brexit, Trump, and the rise of the right in Europe and the Antipodes. We then elaborate on the contributions to this special issue as well as mentioning how these contributions speak to these latest events.