Introduction : systems of life, or bioeconomic politics / Richard A. Barney and Warren Montag -- Looking for (economic) growth in the eighteenth century / Christian Marouby -- An African diasporic critique of violence / James Edward Ford III -- Rousseau : vital instinct and pity / Pierre Macherey -- System and subject in Adam Smith's political economy : nature, vitalism, and bioeconomic life / Catherine Packham -- Vitalism's revolution : John Thelwall, life, and the economy of radical politics / Richard A. Barney -- Writing generation : revolutionary bodies and the poetics of political economy / Annika Mann -- William Blake and the time of ontogeny / Amanda Jo Goldstein -- Concerning hunger : empire aesthetics in the present moment / Mrinalini Chakravorty -- The hero takes a fall : gravity, comedy, and Darwin's entangled bank / Timothy C. Campbell