What does it mean to speak of politics on the edges of liberalism, and why should this matter for political thought? Let me begin to answer this by saying something about what these essays are not. Their aim is not to identify and criticize the underside of liberalism, if by this one understands the negative side effects it has had on, say, equality or solidarity. There is plenty of literature on this already. Nor are they another entry in the list of interventions that take issue with the claim that we live in a post-historical world where liberalism rules. There is a lot on this too, and keeping a scorecard on the ins and outs of the polemic about the end of history has become otiose. What these essays try to do instead is to look at a grey zone of phenomena where one is tempted to suspend the qualifier ‘liberal’ when describing politics, or at least where it is difficult to assert unambiguously that what happens within it is governed by a liberal code alone. It is also a zone where experimentation with political innovation questions the liberal consensus. The ‘edges’ of the title thus refer to phenomena that either push the envelope of liberalism or seek to go against and beyond it.

Do these edges authorize us to infer by implication that there is something like a normal region of liberal politics? The quick and incomplete answer is that there is one, but mainly at the level of the liberal imaginary. Its regulative idea is that political performances entail sovereign individuals casting their votes, political parties representing the people and competing for the right to shape the will of the state, and elected representatives deliberating on their behalf in legislative bodies in between elections.