In its comparison of anarchist and poststructuralist thought From Bakunin to Lacan contends that the most pressing political problem we face today is the proliferation and intensification of power. Saul Newman targets the tendency of radical political theories and movements to reaffirm power and authority in different guises in their very attempt to overcome it. In his examination of thinkers such as Bakunin Lacan Stirner and Foucault Newman explores important epistemological ontological and political questions Is the essential human subject the point of departure from which power and authority can be opposed Or is the humanist subject itself a site of domination that must be unmasked As it deftly charts this debates paths of emergence in political thought the book illustrates how the question of essential identities defines and redefines the limits and possibilities of radical politics today.