Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

An Ethics of Dissensus: Postmodernity, Feminism, and the Politics of Radical Democracy

An Ethics of Dissensus: Postmodernity, Feminism, and the Politics of Radical Democracy BOOK REVIEWS/269 In the second chapter, the author relies upon the work of Patricia Williams and Luce Irigaray to describe further the interplay between freedom and obligation. This feminist theory is a necessary complement to previous postmodern philosophy since, arguably, Foucault’s work proclaims the absolute value of resistance without sufficiently theorizing responsibility, while Levinas’s work decribes in an abstract manner the absolute value of obligation without showing how it may play out in concrete political contexts. Ziarek consequently thinks through how Levinas’s ethics of obligation towards the absolute Other can translate into a more pragmatic “performative politics of race and rights” that takes into account the significance of emotions, desires, and other aspects of our embodiment to the practice of democracy. The following two chapters use Lyotard’s concept of the différend to address the problem of irreconcilable differences within and among political communities. According to Lyotard, the différend occurs when social norms cannot be negotiated because of the absence of agreed-upon values and laws. In such disputes, “one side’s legitimacy does not imply the other’s lack of legitimacy” (The Differend, xi). At the same time, the différend describes a situation where the victim is deprived of the ability http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Comparative Literature Duke University Press

An Ethics of Dissensus: Postmodernity, Feminism, and the Politics of Radical Democracy

Comparative Literature , Volume 54 (3) – Jan 1, 2002

Loading next page...
 
/lp/duke-university-press/an-ethics-of-dissensus-postmodernity-feminism-and-the-politics-of-VDOyldugUt

References

References for this paper are not available at this time. We will be adding them shortly, thank you for your patience.

Publisher
Duke University Press
Copyright
Copyright 2002 by University of Oregon
ISSN
0010-4124
eISSN
1945-8517
DOI
10.1215/-54-3-268
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS/269 In the second chapter, the author relies upon the work of Patricia Williams and Luce Irigaray to describe further the interplay between freedom and obligation. This feminist theory is a necessary complement to previous postmodern philosophy since, arguably, Foucault’s work proclaims the absolute value of resistance without sufficiently theorizing responsibility, while Levinas’s work decribes in an abstract manner the absolute value of obligation without showing how it may play out in concrete political contexts. Ziarek consequently thinks through how Levinas’s ethics of obligation towards the absolute Other can translate into a more pragmatic “performative politics of race and rights” that takes into account the significance of emotions, desires, and other aspects of our embodiment to the practice of democracy. The following two chapters use Lyotard’s concept of the différend to address the problem of irreconcilable differences within and among political communities. According to Lyotard, the différend occurs when social norms cannot be negotiated because of the absence of agreed-upon values and laws. In such disputes, “one side’s legitimacy does not imply the other’s lack of legitimacy” (The Differend, xi). At the same time, the différend describes a situation where the victim is deprived of the ability

Journal

Comparative LiteratureDuke University Press

Published: Jan 1, 2002

There are no references for this article.