Being concerned with representation, this book is about an idea, a concept, a word. It is primarily a conceptual analysis, not a historical study of the way in which representative government has evolved, nor yet an empirical investigation of the behavior of contemporary representatives or the expectations voters have about them.
One of the most brilliant political theorists of the century, Hannah Arendt developed a metaphor of "the social" as an alien space monster gobbling up human freedom. In THE ATTACK OF THE BLOB, political scientist Hanna Pitkin traces Arendt's notion of "the social" and raises disturbing and compelling questions about what freedom means today.
Hanna Pitkin argues that Wittgenstein's later philosophy offers a revolutionary new conception of language, and hence a new and deeper understanding of ourselves and the world of human institutions and action.