In dialogue with afro-caribbean philosophy, this book seeks in Cassirer's philosophy of symbolic forms a new vocabulary for approaching central intellectual and political issues of our time. For Cassirer, what makes humans unique is that we are symbolizing creatures destined to come into a world through varied symbolic
forms; we pluralistically work with and develop these forms as we struggle to come to terms with who we are and our place in the universe.
This approach can be used as a powerful challenge to hegemonic modes of study that mistakenly place the Western world at the center of intellectual and political life. Indeed, the authors argue that the symbolic dimension of Cassirer's thinking of possibility can be linked to a symbolic dimension in revolution via the ideas of Frantz Fanon, who argued that revolution must be a thoroughgoing cultural process, in which what is at stake is nothing less than how we symbolize a new humanity and bring into being a new set of social institutions worthy of that new humanity.

About the Author
Drucilla Cornell (Author)
Drucilla Cornell was Professor Emerita of Political Science, Comparative Literature, and Women's and Gender Studies at Rutgers University; Professor Extraordinaire at the University of Pretoria, South Africa; and a visiting professor at Birkbeck College, University of London. With a background in philosophy, law, and grassroots mobilization, she played a central role in the organization of the memorable conferences on deconstruction and justice at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in 1989, 1990, and 1993. She was the author of The Philosophy of the Limit (1992), Feminism and Pornography (2000), and Law and Revolution in South Africa: uBuntu, Dignity, and the Struggle for Constitutional Transformation (2014). She has also coedited several books: Feminism as Critique: On the Politics of Gender (1987), with Seyla Benhabib; and Hegel and Legal Theory (1991) and Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice (1992), with David Gray Carlson and Michel Rosenfeld. She was part of a philosophical exchange with Seyla Benhabib, Judith Butler, and Nancy Fraser entitled Feminist Contentions (1995). In addition to her academic work, she wrote four produced plays.
Kenneth Michael Panfilio (Author)
Kenneth Michael Panfilio is Assistant Professor at Illinois State University in the Department of Politics and Government. Both authors are co-editors of the book series Just Ideas: Transformative Ideals of Justice in Ethical and Political Thought.


Reviews
"An exciting and path-breaking work of philosophy ... the authors have not only broken new ground but have also opened up new discursive spaces into which many are likely to follow." -- -Paget Henry Brown University "This is one of the rarest books. It belongs to the new genre of radical philosophical archeology: it resurrects the work of Ernst Cassirer, one of the great German idealists, and puts it to the task of developing a contemporary critical theory which confronts imperialism and neo-colonialism. Against dominant banal historicism, complacent positivism and the humanist apologia of capitalism, 'Symbolic Forms for a New Humanity' constructs a new type of ethical humanism: revived German idealism, black existentialism and radical constitutionalism come together to show how the symbolic and mythic foundations of reality open the possibility of the impossible. Dignity and equality are both impossible and barred in neo-liberal capitalism, yet they create the conditions of all possibility. As Cornell and Panfilio compellingly argue, the impossible has already started happening in the South African struggles against racialised capitalism, in the transformative constitution of the rainbow nation and in the most ancient and contemporary principles of uBuntu. At this point of retreat of the left, Cornell and Panfilio open new directions for critical thinking and offer a call to radical action." -- -Costas Douzinas Birkbeck, University of London



Book Information
ISBN 9780823232512
Author Drucilla Cornell
Format Paperback
Page Count 224
Imprint Fordham University Press
Publisher Fordham University Press