Adding insult to injury

Title: Adding insult to injury

Author: Nancy Fraser

ISBN: 9781859842232

Binding: Paper

Date: 2008

Publisher: Verso

Number of Pages: 360

Price: £16.99

Historically, leftwing accounts of injustice focussed primarily on economic harms, such as poverty, exploitation, and inequality. Recently, however, with the collapse of Communism and the rise of identity politics, attention has turned toward cultural harms, such as cultural imperialism, 'misrecognition,' and disrespect. New challenges for the left are raised: How to do justice to the legitimate claims of multiculturalism without abandoning the left's historic-and still indispensable-commitment to economic equality? How to broaden the understanding of injustice by adding (cultural) insult to (economic) injury? Adding Insult to Injury traces the debate sparked by Nancy Fraser's controversial effort to combine the social politics of equality and the cultural politics of difference, while probing the tensions between them. Introduced by Richard Rorty, the volume contains Fraser's influential essay 'From Redistribution to Recognition?'; critical responses by Judith Butler, Joseph Heath, Kevin Olson, Anne Phillips, and Iris Marion Young; and Fraser's rejoinders to them. The result is a wide-ranging and at times contentious exploration of alternative approaches to rebuilding the left.

Firing Back: Against the Tyranny of the Market

Title: Firing Back: Against the Tyranny of the Market
Author: Pierre Bourdieu
ISBN: 9781859846582
Binding: Paper
Date: 2003
Publisher: Verso
Number of Pages: 96
Price: £9.00

Globalization's threat to artists and intellectuals, and how they can rebut it. Pierre Bourdieu, described by The Nation as "worthy of the militant mantle of Sartre and Foucault," here continues the themes advanced so successfully in his previous book Acts of Resistance. Firing Back is an eloquent dissection of globalization's intellectual and cultural role throughout the world, and a discussion of the ways in which effective opposition to it can be mounted. Bourdieu examines Europe's potential as a counterweight to America's globalizing policy and discusses how intellectuals and those working in the cultural sphere can create meaningful alternatives. He also raises challenging questions about the depoliticization of the academic world, arguing that scholars can no longer maintain that their research is objective or value-free. In a preface written for this edition, Bourdieu directly addresses American readers about the role they can play in the burgeoning anti-globalization movement.

Redistribution or Recognition?: A Political-Philosophical Exchange

Title: Redistribution or Recognition?: A Political-Philosophical Exchange

Author: Nancy Fraser , Axel Honneth

ISBN: 978-1859844922

Binding: Paper

Date: 2003

Publisher: Verso

Number of Pages: 273

Price: £16.00

"Recognition" has become a keyword of our time, but its relation to economic "redistribution" remains unclear. This volume stages a debate between two philosophers, one North American, the other German, who hold different views of the relation of redistribution to recognition. Axel Honneth conceives recognition as the fundamental, over-arching moral category, potentially encompassing redistribution, while Nancy Fraser argues that the two categories are both fundamental and mutually irreducible. In alternating chapters the authors respond to each other's criticisms, and offer a lively dialogue on identity politics, capitalism and social justice. The volume is a dramatic riposte to those who proclaim the death of "grand theory".

In Defense of Anarchism

Title: In Defense of Anarchism
Author: Robert Paul Wolff
ISBN: 978-0-520-21573-3
Binding: Paper
Publisher: University of California Press
Number of Pages: 86
Price: $8.95

"To entitle a book In Defense of Anarchism simply requires chutzpah. To do it well requires some intelligence. Professor Wolff has both. Anarchy, being generally relegated to the ideological dust-bin or drafted as fodder for editorializing blasts, has long been in need of an intelligent reassessment. Wolff's brief book attempts this by taking the reader along a political via dolorosa which begins with his own innocent belief in 'traditional democratic doctrines.'"—Lawrence S. Stepelevich, The New Scholasticism

"A deep and provocative discussion of some of the most fundamental issues in political philosophy, written crisply, with candor, in a style that I find very winning. It is a most useful book, and a very good one."—Carl Cohen, author of Communism, Fascism, and Democracy"

A provocative and engrossing introduction to current questions of political legitimacy, consent, deliberative democracy, the basis of majority rule, workers collectives, etc., that have been taken up by contemporary political theorists."—Georgia Warnke, author of Justice and Interpretation

Empire

Title: Empire
Author: Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri
ISBN: 9780674006713
Binding: Paper
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Number of Pages:478
Price: $22.50

Imperialism as we knew it may be no more, but Empire is alive and well. It is, as Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri demonstrate in this bold work, the new political order of globalization. It is easy to recognize the contemporary economic, cultural, and legal transformations taking place across the globe but difficult to understand them. Hardt and Negri contend that they should be seen in line with our historical understanding of Empire as a universal order that accepts no boundaries or limits. Their book shows how this emerging Empire is fundamentally different from the imperialism of European dominance and capitalist expansion in previous eras. Rather, today's Empire draws on elements of U.S. constitutionalism, with its tradition of hybrid identities and expanding frontiers.

Empire identifies a radical shift in concepts that form the philosophical basis of modern politics, concepts such as sovereignty, nation, and people. Hardt and Negri link this philosophical transformation to cultural and economic changes in postmodern society--to new forms of racism, new conceptions of identity and difference, new networks of communication and control, and new paths of migration. They also show how the power of transnational corporations and the increasing predominance of postindustrial forms of labor and production help to define the new imperial global order.

More than analysis, Empire is also an unabashedly utopian work of political philosophy, a new Communist Manifesto. Looking beyond the regimes of exploitation and control that characterize today's world order, it seeks an alternative political paradigm--the basis for a truly democratic global society.

Red Sun: Travels in naxalite country

Title: Red Sun: Travels in naxalite country
Author:Sudeep Chakravarti
ISBN:9780143066538
Binding: paper back
Date: 2008
Publisher: penguin books
Number of Pages: 411
Price: INR 350

‘The Maoists are patriots, by their own admission . . . India’s Maoists do not want a separate country. They already have one. It’s just not the way they would like it—yet.’

In 1967, Naxalbari, a village in West Bengal, became the centre of a Mao-inspired militant peasant uprising guided by firebrand intellectuals. Today, Naxalism is no longer the Che Guevara-style revolution that it was. Spread across 15 of India’s 28 states, it is one of the world’s biggest, most sophisticated extreme-Left movements, and feeds off the misery and anger of the dispossessed. Since the late 1990s, hardly a week has passed without people dying in strikes and counter-strikes by the Maoists—interchangeably known as the Naxalites—and police and paramilitary forces.

In this brilliant and disturbing examination of the ‘Other India’, Sudeep Chakravarti combines political history, extensive interviews and individual case histories as he travels to the heart of Maoist zones in the country: Chhattisgarh (home to the controversial state-sponsored Salwa Judum programme to contain Naxalism), Jharkhand, West Bengal, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh (where a serving chief minister was nearly killed in a landmine explosion triggered by the Naxalites). He meets Maoist leaders and sympathizers, policemen, bureaucrats, politicians, security analysts, development workers, farmers and tribals—people, big and small, who comprise the actors and the audience in this war being fought in jungles and impoverished villages across India. What emerges is a sobering picture of a deeply divided society, and the dangers that lie ahead for India.

The Agamben Effect (South Atlantic Quarterly)

Title: The Agamben Effect (South Atlantic Quarterly)
Author: Alison Ross (Editor)
ISBN: 10: 0822366843 ISBN-13: 978-0822366843
Binding: Paper
Date: 2008
Publisher: Duke University Press
Number of Pages: 216 pages
Price: £ 10.99

Product DescriptionItalian philosopher Giorgio Agamben--whose work has influenced intellectuals in political theory, political philosophy, legal theory, literature, and art--stands among the foremost intellectual figures of the modern era. Engaging with a range of thinkers from Carl Schmitt and Martin Heidegger to Jacques Rancière and Alain Badiou, Agamben considers some of the most pressing issues in recent history and politics. His work explores the relationship between the sovereign state and the politically marginalized Homo Sacer--exiles, refugees, prisoners of war, and others whom the state actively excludes from political participation and full humanity. Further, his critique of the increasing deployment of a "state of exception"--the declaration of a state of emergency that legitimizes the sovereign state's suspension of law for the public good--as a dominant paradigm for governing has particular power in today's global political climate.

Infused with the spirit of Agamben's critical self-reflection, this special issue of SAQ examines his seminal works Homo Sacer (1995), The Open (2002), and State of Exception (2003). Some contributors use Agamben's work to examine the history of abortion law in the West, the history of slavery, and women's rights. Others analyze the connections between Agamben's work and that of his contemporaries, including Jacques Derrida, Slavoj Zizek, and Jean-Luc Nancy. Still other essays identify new points of interdisciplinary communication between some of Agamben's most provocative ideas and popular twentieth-century writing.

Contributors. Andrew Benjamin, Claire Colebrook, Jean-Philippe Deranty, Penelope Deutscher, Eleanor Kaufman, Adrian Mackenzie, Catherine Mills, Alison Ross, Lee Spinks, Ewa Płonowska Ziarek, Krzysztof Ziarek

Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject

Title: Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject
Author: Saba Mahmood
ISBN: 978-0-691-08695-8
Binding: Paper
Date: 2004
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Number of Pages: 264
Price: $23.95

Politics of Piety is a groundbreaking analysis of Islamist cultural politics through the ethnography of a thriving, grassroots women's piety movement in the mosques of Cairo, Egypt. Unlike those organized Islamist activities that seek to seize or transform the state, this is a moral reform movement whose orthodox practices are commonly viewed as inconsequential to Egypt's political landscape. Saba Mahmood's compelling exposition of these practices challenges this assumption by showing how the ethical and the political are indelibly linked within the context of such movements.

Not only is this book a sensitive ethnography of a critical but largely ignored dimension of the Islamic revival, it is also an unflinching critique of the secular-liberal principles by which some people hold such movements to account. The book addresses three central questions: How do movements of moral reform help us rethink the normative liberal account of politics? How does the adherence of women to the patriarchal norms at the core of such movements parochialize key assumptions within feminist theory about freedom, agency, authority, and the human subject? How does a consideration of debates about embodied religious rituals among Islamists and their secular critics help us understand the conceptual relationship between bodily form and political imaginaries? Politics of Piety is essential reading for anyone interested in issues at the nexus of ethics and politics, embodiment and gender, and liberalism and postcolonialism.

Homosexual Desire

Title: Homosexual Desire
Author: Guy Hocquenghem
ISBN: 978-0-8223-1384-7
Binding: Paper
Date: 2006

Publisher: Duke University Press
Number of Pages: 160
Price: £16.99

Originally published in 1972 in France, Guy Hocquenghem's Homosexual Desire has become a classic in gay theory. Translated into English for the first time in 1978 and out of print since the early 1980s, this new edition, with an introduction by Michael Moon, will make available this vital and still relevant work to contemporary audiences. Integrating psychoanalytic and Marxist theory, this book describes the social and psychic dynamics of what has come to be called homophobia and on how the "homosexual" as social being has come to be constituted in capitalist society.Significant as one of the earliest products of the international gay liberation movement, Hocquenghem's work was influenced by the extraordinary energies unleashed by the political upheavals of both the Paris "May Days" of 1968 and the gay and lesbian political rebellions that occurred in cities around the world in the wake of New York's Stonewall riots of June 1969.Drawing on the theoretical work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari and on the shattering effects of innumerable gay "comings-out," Hocquenghem critiqued the influential models of the psyche and sexual desire derived from Lacan and Freud. The author also addressed the relation of capitalism to sexualities, the dynamics of anal desire, and the political effects of gay group-identities.Two decades after its appearance, Homosexual Desire remains an exhilarating analysis of capitalist societies' pervasive fascination with, and violent fear of, same-sex desire and addresses issues that continue to be highly charged and productive ones for queer politics.

"Written over two decades ago, in the aftermath of May '68 and Stonewall, Hocquenghem's Homosexual Desire may well be the first example of what we now call queer theory. But its significance is more than historical: it remains an indispensable analysis of, and polemic against, institutionalized homophobia."--Douglas Crimp

"Homosexual Desire represents the best of left social theory of sexual politics, a tradition that has never had an adequate reception in the United States. Reprinting this book now is a step toward recovering that tradition, and could therefore open debates about the significance of sexuality."--Michael Warner

Guy Hocquenghem (1944-1988) taught philosophy at the University of Vincennes, Paris. He was the author of numerous novels, works of theory, and was a staff writer for the French publication Libération. He was a founding member of le Front Homosexuel d'Action Révolutionnaire (F.H.A.R.). Hocquenghem died of an AIDS-related illness in 1988.

Radical history review 100/ winter 2008 - Queer Futures

Title: Queer Futures (Radical History Review (Duke University Press)) (Paperback)
Contributors: Regina Kunzel, Dan Irving, Christina Hanhardt, Margot D.Weiss, Anna M.Agathangelou, Daniel Bassichis, Tamara L.Spira, Susan Stryker, Maxime Cervulle, Aaron Belkin, Patrick McCreery, Vincent Doyle, Nan AlamillaBoyd
ISBN: 978-0822366867
Binding: Paper
Date: 2008
Publisher: Duke University Press
Number of Pages: 257
Price: £ 10.99

In this special issue of Radical History Review, scholars and activists examine the rise of "homonormativity," a lesbian and gay politics that embraces neoliberal values under the guise of queer sexual liberation. Contributors look at the historical forces through which lesbian and gay rights organizations and community advocates align with social conservatives and endorse family-oriented formations associated with domestic partnership, adoption, military service, and gender-normative social roles.

Distinguished by its historical approach, "Queer Futures" examines homonormativity as a phenomenon that emerged in the United States after World War II and gained traction in the 1960s and 1970s. One essay compares Anita Bryant's antigay campaigns in the late 1970s with those of current same-sex marriage proponents to show how both focus on the abstract figure of the "endangered child." Another essay explores how the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation's organizational amnesia has shaped its often conservative agenda. Other essays include a Marxist reading of the transsexual body, an examination of reactionary politics at the core of the movement to repeal the U.S. military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy, and a history of how "safe streets" patrols in the 1970s and 1980s became opportunities for urban gentrification and community exploitation.

Why I Supported the Emergency: Essays and Profiles

Title: Why I Supported the Emergency: Essays and Profiles
Author: Khushwant Singh
ISBN: 9780670083244
Binding: Hardback
Date: 2009
Publisher: Penguin/ Viking
Number of Pages: 320
Price: 450/-

The Emergency has become a synonym for obscenity. Even men and women who were pillars of Emergency rule and misused their positions to harass innocent people against whom they had personal grudges try to distance themselves from their past in the hope that it will fade out of public memory forever. We must not allow them to get away with it,’ says Khushwant Singh, while fearlessly stating his own reasons for championing the Emergency. This bold and thought-provoking collection includes essays on Indira Gandhi’s government, the Nanavati Commission’s report on the 1984 riots and the riots themselves, as well as captivating pieces on the art of kissing and the importance of bathing. Alongside these are portraits of historical figures such as Bahadur Shah Zafar, General Dyer, Ghalib and Maharaja Ranjit Singh as well as candid profiles of the famous personalities he has known over the years, revealing intimate details about their lives and characters. From his reflections on Amrita Sher-Gil’s alleged promiscuity to the experience of watching a pornographic film with a stoic R.K. Narayan, this is Khushwant Singh at his controversial and iconoclastic best.

Selected and edited by Sheela Reddy, Why I Supported the Emergency: Essays and Profiles covers three quarters of a century. Straight from the heart, this is unadulterated Khushwant Singh.

Radical Reform: Islamic Ethics and Liberation

Title: Radical Reform: Islamic Ethics and Liberation
Author: Tariq Ramadan
ISBN ISBN13: 9780195331714, ISBN10: 0195331710
Binding: Hardback
Date: Oct 2008
Publisher: Oxford USA
Number of Pages: 384
Original price: $29.95

Our Price: INR 775/-

Tariq Ramadan has emerged as one of the foremost voices of reformist Islam in the West, notable for urging his fellow Muslims to participate fully in the civil life of the Western societies in which they live. In this new book, Ramadan addresses Muslim societies and communities everywhere with a bold call for radical reform. He challenges those who argue defensively that reform is a dangerous and foreign deviation, and a betrayal of the faith. Authentic reform, he says, has always been grounded in Islam's textual sources, spiritual objectives, and intellectual traditions. But the reformist movements that are based on renewed reading of textual sources while using traditional methodologies and categories have achieved only adaptive responses to the crisis facing a globalizing world. Such readings, Ramadan argues, have reached the limits of their usefulness. Ramadan calls for a radical reform that goes beyond adaptation to envision bold and creative solutions to transform the present and the future of our societies. This new approach interrogates the historically established sources, categories, higher objectives, tools, and methodologies of Islamic law and jurisprudence, and the authority this traditional geography of knowledge has granted to textual scholars. He proposes a new geography which redefines the sources and the spiritual and ethical objectives of the law creating room for the authority of scholars of the social and hard sciences. This will equip this transformative reform with the spiritual, ethical, social and scientific knowledge necessary to address contemporary challenges. Ramadan argues that radical reform demands not only the equal contributions of scholars of both the text and the context, but the critical engagement and creative imagination of the Muslim masses. This proposal for radical reform dramatically shifts the center of gravity of authority. It is bound to provoke controversy and spark debate among Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

Tariq Ramadan is a Research Fellow at St. Antony's College, Oxford University and the Lokahi Foundation (London). He is the author of Western Muslims and the Future of Islam; Islam, the West, and the Challenges of Modernity ; and To Be a European Muslim .

BETWEEN DEMOCRACY AND NATION: GENDER AND MILITARISATION IN KASHMIR

Title: Between Democracy and Nation: Gender and Militarisation in Kashmir

Author: Seema Kazi
ISBN: 978-81-88965-46-5
Binding: Hardback
Date: 2009
Publisher: Women Unlimited
Number of Pages: 222
Price: INR 375/-

This book focuses on the militarisation of a secessionist movement involving Kashmiri militants and Indian military forces in Jammu and Kashmir. In contrast to the conventional approaches that distinguish between inter- and intra-state military conflict, this analysis of India’s external and domestic crises of militarisation is located within a single analytic frame: it argues that both dimensions have common political origins.
Highlighting the intersection between the two the author argues that the heaviest and the most grevious price of using the military for domestic repression and for the defense of Kashmir is paid by Kashmir’s citizens and society. Drawing on women’s subjective experience of militarisation, she examines the relationsip between state military processes at the national level and social transformations at the local/societal level. By way of conclusion, she manitains that Kashmir's humanitarian tragedy — exemplified by its gender dimensions-underlines has failed either to ensure 'security for the state, or security and justice for Kashmiris.

The Myth of the Holy Cow

Title: The Myth of the Holy Cow
Author: D.N. Jha
ISBN: 9788189059163
Binding: Paper
Date: 2009
Publisher: Navayana
Number of Pages: 208
Price: INR 200/-

With additional material: B.R. Ambedkar on beef-eating and untouchability.

In this book, historian Dwijendra Narayan Jha argues that the ‘holiness’ of the cow is a myth and its flesh played an important part in the cuisine of ancient India. Citing Hindu, Buddhist and Jaina religious scriptures, he underlines the fact that beef-eating was not Islam’s ‘baneful bequeathal’ to India. Nor can abstention from it be a mark of ‘Hindu’ identity, notwithstanding the averments of Hindutva forces who have tried to foster the false consciousness of the ‘otherness’ on the followers of Islam.

This new Navayana edition features an excerpt from Dr B.R. Ambedkar’s 1948 work on the connections between untouchability and beef-eating. Ambedkar marshals evidence to argue that in the Vedic period, ‘for the Brahmin every day was a beef-steak day.’

“While cow veneration and vegetarianism may be the hallmarks of Hinduism today, Jha compiles copious evidence that this has hardly always been the case.” — New York Times

“Jha draws on an amazingly wide range of material … an enlightening endeavour, demonstrating a critical understanding of a popular misconception.” — Journal of Asian Studies

“Jha traces the history of the doctrine forbidding the eating of cows… soundly and thoroughly covering both the classic texts and cutting-edge scholarship, Indian and European.” — Times Literary Supplement

“This little gem of a book provides a wealth of evidence exposing myth creation and the way symbols are used politically to divide people.” — Socialist Review

WHISTLING IN THE DARK: Twenty-one Queer Interviews

Title: WHISTLING IN THE DARK: Twenty-one Queer Interviews
Author: R RAJ RAO, DIBYAJYOTI SARMA
ISBN: 9788178299211
Binding: Paper
Date: December 2008
Publisher: Sage India
Number of Pages: 300


Price: INR 375/-

Whistling in the Dark: Twenty-one Queer Interviews focuses on issues like sexuality, sexual identity, marriage, gay marriage, heteronormativity, gay utopia, gay activism, gay bashing, police atrocities and the laws vis-à-vis these. The interviewees represent a cross section of society ranging from university professors, gay rights activists and students, on the one hand, to working class men such as office boys, auto-rickshaw drivers and even undertrials who have served prison sentences, on the other.
The thought-provoking narratives in this book are the outcome of probing and incisive questions put to the respondents by the editors R. Raj Rao and Dibyajyoti Sarma. Appealing to a wide readership, the narratives go beyond the conventional and provide a rare insight into the private lives of the respondents. Besides being a must read for gay activists and organisations, the book will also be a useful resource for post-graduate students and academics working in the fields of sexuality studies, feminism and alternative literature.

FASCINATING HINDUTVA: Saffron Politics and Dalit Mobilisation

Title: FASCINATING HINDUTVA: Saffron Politics and Dalit Mobilisation
Author: BADRI NARAYAN
ISBN: 9788178299068
Binding: Paper
Date: December 2008
Publisher: SAGE India
Number of Pages: 216

Price: INR 295/-

In the present socio-political scenario of India, Dalits have emerged as a major force in the electoral arena and politically mobilising them has almost become a compulsion for all political parties.
Fascinating Hindutva: Saffron Politics and Dalit Mobilisation is a deconstruction of the fascinating tactics used by the Hindutva forces to politically mobilise Dalits. Based on original empirical data from extensive field work in UP and Bihar, the book documents how the Hindutva forces are adept at digging out the myths, memories and legends of Dalit castes that are popular at the local level and reinterpreting them in a Hinduised way. They project the heroes of these myths and popular folk narratives either as brave Indian warriors who protected the Hindu religion and culture from the Muslim invaders of the medieval period, or as reincarnations of Lord Rama, so as to link the myths of these Dalit castes with the unified Hindu meta-narrative. The author has also tried to deconstruct the making of the ‘popular’ in the North Indian rural society and investigate the communal elements induced in it.
Interestingly, the author argues that this reinterpretation of the past serves as a powerful cultural capital for the Dalit communities, who use it, on the one hand, to seek acceptance from the upper caste Hindus by glorifying their caste position and, on the other, to subvert the dominance of the upper castes.
The book will interest a wide readership including students, academicians and researchers in the fields of History, Political Science, Anthropology and South Asian Studies, as well as political activists.

Democracy- Charles Tilly

Title: Democracy
Author: Charles Tilly
ISBN: 978-0-521-70153-2
Binding: Paper

Date: 2008
Publisher: Cambridge
Number of Pages: 234
Price: $19.99

'In this compelling work, Charles Tilly brings his unrivaled historical knowledge to bear on fundamental questions of democracy. His argument focuses on long-run social processes, not only those that further democratization but also those that often rapidly undermine it. In restoring the centrality of history to scholarship on democratization, he sets a research agenda that will occupy scholars for some time to come.' Elisabeth Jean Wood, Yale University and the Santa Fe Institute 'Accessibly written, the volume will reward a broad readership.' Political Studies Review 'Tilly presents the book as the 'culmination and synthesis' (p. xii) of his democratisation work and its final pages contain a provocative challenge to those in the democratisation business. ... those interested in promoting democracy should focus on supporting the three process-based developments he identifies. Accessibly written, the volume will reward a broad readership." Political Studies Review

What is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics,

Title: What is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics,
Author: Adrienne Rich
ISBN 10: 0393312461ISBN-13: 978-0393312461
Binding: Paper
Date: 2003
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Number of Pages: 321
Price: $12.95

Precarious Life: The Power of Mourning and Violence

Title: Precarious Life: The Power of Mourning and Violence
Author: Judith Butler
ISBN 10: 1844675440ISBN-13: 978-1844675449
Binding: paperback
Date: 2006
Publisher: Verso
Number of Pages: 192 pages
Price: £9.99

Judith Butler is one of America's most daring and vibrant thinkers. In this profound appraisal of post-September 11th America, now with a new foreword, Judith Butler considers the conditions of heightened fear and aggression that followed the attack on the Twin Towers, and the US government's decision to attack Afghanistan and Iraq. She critiques this use of violence as a response to loss and grief, and argues that the vulnerability the West now feels offers a chance to imagine a world without violence, a world where the interdependency of peoples and nations becomes the basis for a global political community.

Through five impassioned and personal essays, Butler responds to the current US policies to wage perpetual war, and calls for a deeper understanding of how mourning and violence might instead inspire solidarity and a quest for global justice.

Fearless Speech- Michel Foucault

Title: Fearless Speech
Author: Michel Foucault
ISBN 10:1-58435-011-3 ISBN-13:978-1-58435-011-8
Binding: Paper
Date: 2001
Publisher: Semiotext(e) / Foreign Agents
Number of Pages: 183
Price: $12.95

I would like to distinguish between the 'history of ideas' and the 'history of thought.' The history of ideas involves the analysis of a notion from its birth, through its development, and in the setting of other ideas, which constitute its context. The history of thought is the analysis of the way an unproblematic field of experience becomes a problem, raises discussions and debate, incites new reactions, and induces crisis in the previously silent behaviors, practices, and institutions. It is the history of the way people become anxious, for example, about madness, about crime, about themselves, or about truth.

Comprised of six lectures delivered, in English, by Michel Foucault while teaching at Berkeley in the Fall of 1983, Fearless Speech was edited by Joseph Pearson and published in 2001. Reviewed by the author, it is the last book Foucault wrote before his death in 1984 and can be read as his last testament. Here, he positions the philosopher as the only person able to confront power with the truth, a stance that boldly sums up Foucault's project as a philosopher.

A Very nice blog on Foucault