Through his book, Davide Panagia attempts to keep the terms of political thought open, to ensure that concerns with speaking and reading do not monopolise the study of politics. He defines politics as a ‘relation of attachment or detachment between heterological elements: it is a part-taking in the activities of representation that renders perceptible what had previously been insensible’ (p.3). His book sets out to examine various ways in which the external world impacts lives through sensation, reconfigures perceptual competencies, and causes us to alter our associational lives. Along the way, it surveys what Kant, Deleuze, Rancière other theorists have had to say on the topic of sensation; it explores the history and the civic significance of the Italian piazza; and in a chapter on the paintings of Caravaggio and Bacon, as well as the film The Ring, it discusses the contemporary viewing citizen subject, which Panagia distinguishes from the modern reading subject. Continuing this strategy to make room at the table for all kinds of sensation, Panagia also considers the Slow Food movement and its ethos of convivium, before concluding with responses to the infamous Abu Ghraib photographs, and what they demonstrate about the ethics and politics of appearance.