Frontmatter -- Contents -- Introduction. Systems of Life, or Bioeconomic Politics -- one. Looking for (Economic) Growth in the Eigh teenth Century -- two. An African Diasporic Critique of Violence -- three. Rousseau: Vital Instinct and Pity -- four. System and Subject in Adam Smith's Po liti cal Economy: Nature, Vitalism, and Bioeconomic Life -- five. Vitalism's Revolution: John Thelwall, Life, and the Economy of Radical Politics -- six. Writing Generation: Revolutionary Bodies and the Poetics of Politi cal Economy -- seven. William Blake and the Time of Ontogeny -- eight. Concerning Hunger: Empire Aesthetics in the Pres ent Moment -- nine. The Hero Takes a Fall: Gravity, Comedy, and Darwin's Entangled Bank -- Acknowledgments -- Contributors -- Index