Description
This is a brilliant book. Wendy Brown has made the reader understand 'tolerance' in a new and more provocative way. Alerting us to its genealogy, she demonstrates the ambiguity of any politics that seeks to found itself on this much-touted liberal virtue. Regulating Aversion is a remarkable--and remarkably rigorous--contribution to the considerable literature on tolerance and the limits of the tolerable. Anyone wanting to think seriously about multiculturalism, cosmopolitanism, and democratic pluralism in our time must read it. -- Talal Asad, CUNY Graduate Center Wendy Brown's Regulating Aversion is clear, rigorous, and unusually bold in an academic atmosphere that is now far from sympathetic to its kind of radical critique. Brown has done a wonderful job of orchestrating her argument, and it has been articulated with wit. The book is a worthy successor to her best and most politically astute contributions. This is an important work. -- Paul Gilroy, London School of Economics In this fascinating and provocative book, Brown brings into sharp analytical focus a perplexing phenomenon: in political discourse since the late twentieth century, both the objects and content of tolerance have shifted. The sweep of Brown's analysis is impressive: she deftly weaves together critiques of contemporary politics with thoughtful explorations of the history of liberal thought on tolerance. -- Melissa Williams, University of Toronto
About the Author
Wendy Brown is professor of political science at the University of California, Berkeley, where she is also a member of the Critical Theory Faculty. Her books include "Edgework: Essays on Knowledge and Politics, Politics Out of History", and "States of Injury: Power and Freedom in Late Modernity" (all Princeton).
Reviews
"The triumph of toleration as the central liberal value, and the attendant inability of liberals to see the dark side of their favorite virtue, is the subject of Wendy Brown's insightful and illuminating new book... I find the analysis trenchant and the critique persuasive."--Stanley Fish, Chronicle of Higher Education "This is a remarkable book ... made attractive by its passion, the lucidity of its negative critique, and its intelligence."--John Hall, Social Forces "Wendy Brown has produced a richly textured and timely analysis of some of the darker elements lurking beneath the tolerance discourse of western liberalism."--Vincent Geoghegan, American Review of Politics "[This is a] bold, erudite, and timely study."--Ely Aharonson, Criminal Law and Philosophy "Regulating Aversion is a forceful and, in many places, convincing attempt to account for the contemporary relevance and meanings of tolerance within liberalism in the West, and in the United States in particular."--Emily Grabham, Feminist Legal Studies "The strength of Brown's book is her trenchant deconstructions of the universalizing pretenses of tolerance specifically and liberal discourse more generally. Brown's intervention successfully jars tolerance loose from the hallowed transhistorical ground on which it usually rests."--C. Michael Hurst, Cultural Critique
Book Information
ISBN 9780691136219
Author Wendy Brown
Format Paperback
Page Count 288
Imprint Princeton University Press
Publisher Princeton University Press
Weight(grams) 397g