Suchergebnisse

This book presents a theory of the politics of irony and tests this theory through readings of political theory texts and through an analysis of the politics of the contemporary anti-nuclear movement, and argues that political writing must be ironic.

Despite an abundance of violence occurring in political contexts, no liberal political theorist since Thomas Hobbes has talked directly and coherently about death. John E. Seery does. He contends that liberalism desperately needs a theoretical framework in which to discuss pressing matters of human mortality. Among the contemporary political issues that cry out for theoretical articulation, Seery suggests, are abortion politics, ethnic cleansing, suicide assistance, national reparations, environmental degradation, and capital punishment. Seery offers a new conception of social contract theory as a framework for confronting death issues. He urges us to look to an older tradition of descent into an underworld, wherein classic theorists consulted poetically with the dead and acquired from them political insight and direction

Reviews the works of political theorists Judith Butler & the antifoundationalists Stanley Fish & Richard Rorty to demonstrate the misappropriation of building metaphors of foundations & the fallacious application of such metaphors to false analogies of the metaphsyical rather than the political. The 'Edenic' & 'constructivist' traditions are reviewed & discussed, indicating that the above authors are constructivists working within an edenic framework. The constructivist theorist Christine de Pizan is analyzed, demonstrating how her work The Book of the City of Ladies rewrites a misogynistic literary tradition to construct a regendered world. The constructivist theorist Hannah Arendt is also reviewed, illustrating how the American founders conception of the new nation was rooted in the Hebraic & Virgilian foundation tradition. It is concluded that political theories need to devote less energy to critique & more to creation. T. Noland