I would like to acknowledge colleagues and friends whose comments on specific chapters played an important role in helping me develop the overall argument: Howard Caygill, Karen MacCormack, Heidrun Friese, Helen Hills, Paul Hills, Terry Smith, and Elena Stikou. In particular, I would like to thank Dimitris Vardoulakis who not only read the work, but our ensuing discussions played an essential part in its overall formulation. I presented most of these chapters as lectures and seminars in the Centre for Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths College, University of London. Goldsmiths College was the indispensible setting that enabled the book to be written. I would like to thank John Hutnyk and Scott Lash for the kind invitation to be a Visiting Professor in the Centre. I also wish to thank Lydia Glick and Juliet Trethenick for their help in the preparation of the manuscript. Martin McQuillan, editor of the series The Frontiers of Theory, and Jackie Jones at Edinburgh University Press have both been unstinting in their support of my work. A number of these chapters have been published before. However, they have been extensively rewritten and the vocabulary of this project has been incorporated within them.