In this book, Ricardo Laleff Ilieff presents a new ontological understanding of politics through the writings of Julia Kristeva's notion of "abjection" in dialogue with Sigmund Freud's concept of "Unheimlich" and Jacques Lacan's ontology "du reel".

Aimed at those who are interested in the politics-psychoanalytic 'praxis', Laleff Ilieff argues that the abject enables one to critically read conceptual developments that are central to contemporary thought. Examining the abject in sacrifice, war and the One as articulated by contemporary thinkers such as Walter Benjamin, Judith Butler, Carl Schmitt, Rene Girard, Pierre Clastres, Giorgio Agamben and Jacques Ranciere, Laleff Ilieff argues that abjection does not operate on the margins of the social but is what unveils the failure of all identity.

Powers of Abjection provides new questions and insights into the relation between psychoanalysis and politics and is an invaluable resource to students and scholars.