The latest issue of Perspectives on Politics has an extensive ‘debate’ section on the relevance of neurobiology to political analysis, centred on a piece from John Hebbing. Respondents include some usual suspects – George Marcus, and William Connolly, for example. My favourite response is from Linda Zerilli, and not only because she quotes me! Zerilli is the author of one of my favourite ever pieces of ‘Theory’, a wonderful ‘Cavellian’ reading of the limits of post-structuralist feminist deconstructions of foundations (it’s re-printed in her book Feminism and the Abyss of Freedom). In her contribution to this debate about neuroscience, she pinpoints the degree to which debates about the relevance of neuro-stuff and affect-stuff revolve around troubled ideas about practices of judgment, a theme of her work more broadly (see here). Zerilli’s argument about neuroscience and affect theory is part of a broader current project developing a democratic theory of judgment.