The principal motif that runs throughout "The Virtual Point of Freedom" is a confrontation with the discourse of freedom, or, more specifically, the falsely transgressive ideal of a total emancipation that would know no constraints. Far from delineating a supposed subject of freedom that would allegedly overcome alienation once and for all, the seven chapters in Chiesa s book seek to unfold an innovative reading of the dialectical coincidence between dis-alienation and re-alienation in politics, aesthetics, and religion, using psychoanalysis as a privileged critical tool. Topics include Pier Paolo Pasolini s attack on the visual and biological degeneration of bodies brought about by pleasure-seeking liberal consumerism, Giorgio Agamben s and Slavoj i ek s conflicting negotiations with the Christian tradition of poverty and inappropriateness as potential redemption, and Alain Badiou s inability to develop a philosophical anthropology that could sustain a coherent politics of emancipation. The book concludes by sketching out the figure of the partisan, a subject who makes it possible to conceive of an intersection between provisional morality and radical politics."