Sunday, August 28, 2005
Nussbaum v. Butler
About 5 years ago, Martha Nussbaum published an article critiquing Judith Butler that has served to convince many an analytic philosopher that they were doing just fine by not paying Butler any attention. Our very own John McGowan has published one post and then another discussing Nussbaum's critique. McGowan's posts are deliberate and insightful, and on balance, he comes off as defending Butler against the most tendentious parts of Nussbaum's critique, while saying he's substantively on Nussbaum's side. More importantly, he says a good bit about the relationship between personal perfectionism and collective political action. Read the posts if you have any interest in theory and politics, even if you haven't read Butler or Nussbaum (the Nussbaum article is short enough, easy enough and of enough sociological interest to make reading it worthwhile, imho).
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1 comment:
That was a good discussion. I think John McGowan has the right idea when it comes to a more reasonable, critical approach to Butler's ... uh ... unhelpful politics. Thanks for sharing this.
On another note, have you taken any classes taught by John McGowan?
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