James Martel teaches political theory in the department of political science at San Francisco State University in San Francisco, CA., USA. He is the author of four books: Love is a Sweet Chain: Desire, Autonomy and Friendship in Liberal Political Theory (Routledge, 2001); Subverting the Leviathan: Reading Thomas Hobbes as a Radical Democrat (Columbia, 2007); Textual Conspiracies: Walter Benjamin, Idolatry and Political Theory (Michigan, 2011); Divine Violence: Walter Benjamin and the Eschatology of Sovereignty (Routledge/GlassHouse, 2011). His work concentrates on the question of representation in its political, theological and linguistic senses.