Books like States of injury by Wendy Brown

A seminal 16th‑century Italian treatise, The Prince offers practical guidance for rulers, arguing that ends can justify morally dubious means to secure power and glory.

A concise defense of utilitarianism by John Stuart Mill, presented with contextual introductions and supplementary appendices that trace its historical origins and critical reception.

In *Du contrat social*, Rousseau argues that sovereign power belongs solely to the people and rejects the divine right of monarchs, laying the groundwork for modern political thought.

Michel Foucault’s seminal work traces the evolution of punishment and surveillance, revealing how modern societies exercise power through disciplinary institutions such as prisons, schools, and hospitals.

As a form of power, subjection is paradoxical. To be dominated by a power external to oneself is a familiar and agonizing form power takes. To find, however, that what "one" is, one's very formation as a subject, is dependent upon that very power is quite another. If, following Foucault, we understand power as forming the subject as well, it provides the very condition of its existence and the trajectory of its desire. Power is not simply what we depend on for our existence but that which forms reflexivity as well. Drawing upon Hegel, Nietzsche, Freud, Foucault, and Althusser, this challenging and lucid work offers a theory of subject formation that illuminates as ambivalent the psychic effects of social power. Although most readers of Foucault eschew psychoanalytic theory, and most thinkers of the psyche eschew Foucault, the author seeks to theorize this ambivalent relation between the social and the psychic as one of the most dynamic and difficult effects of power. This work combines social theory, philosophy, and psychoanalysis in novel ways, offering a more sustained analysis of the theory of subject formation implicit in such other works of the author as Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex" and Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity.

"Self-harm is a much more common occurrence than we might think. It is not something we may care to think about and it is easy not to spot the signs, even the obvious ones. Yet once the thoughts invade our thinking, they are compelling. It may be you. Or someone you know and love might well be suffering in silence. This book explores the issues in a detailed and practical way, so that both sufferers from self-harm and their nearest and dearest can begin to deal with this terrible compulsion. How do we feel? What do we do when we realise that someone is self-harming? How can we move past our own powerful feelings, to change a mindset that has become focused upon self-destruction? We may not want to address this problem, and there are no easy answers. But if we do, we will be able to help ourselves or someone we love back to a fuller, healthier and happier life." --Publisher description.