This new edition of Drucilla Cornell's highly acclaimed book includes a substantial new introduction by the author, which situates the book within current ...

First published in 1995. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Deconstruction both by its friends and enemies has come to be associated with a set of cliches that completely misunderstands its ethical aspiration. It is particularly within the field of law that we can see the ethical force of deconstruction, and also illuminate its concrete and practical importance. In The Philosophy of the Limit Drucilla Cornell examines the relationship of deconstruction to questions of ethics, justice and legal interpretation. She argues that renaming deconstruction "the philosophy of the limit" will allow (...) us to be more precise about what deconstruction actually is philosophically and hence to articulate more clearly its significance for law. Cornell explores the ethical and juridical significance of the so-called postmodern rebellion against metaphysics. A shared ethical rebellion links philosophers as different as Theodor Adorno, Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan, and Emmanuel Levinas. Together they present a new ethical configuration, new in its difference from both the critical social theory of J$u$urgen Habermas and the analytic jurisprudence of Nagel and Rawls. A key aspect of this newness is the centrality given to the relationship between questions of ethics and sexual difference. Cornell argues that the appeal of Lacan's analysis to feminists is that it helps to explain the profound hold the gender hierarchy has over Western culture, including its theories of political transformation. Under a Lacanian analysis the law of gender identity will be replicated in the laws of an existing legal system. This means that we cannot hope to sustain legal reforms unless the gender hierarchy is challenged. Cornell examines Derrida's position on the significance of the gender hierarchy in philosophy and explores its ethical and political importance. Derrida's intervention against legal positivism has important implications for the legal reforms necessary to protect marginalized groups. His emphasis on the limit, she argues, is crucial to thosewhose well-being and very lives may depend on legal transformation, women and homosexuals, for example. In an important contribution to legal philosophy, Cornell explores the affinities of Derrida's writings with recent liberal analytic jurisprudence. She also explores the differences. Comparing Rawls's and Derrida's accounts of justice, she argues that Derrida gives greater attention to the necessary utopian moment in his insistence on maintaining the divide between law, established norms, and justice. Cornell's focus on the importance of the limit and the centrality of the gender hierarchy allows her to offer a view of jurisprudence different from both critical social theory and analytic jurisprudence. As we watch the long-fought-for civil rights of women systematically overturned, we have reason to think about how the connections she makes shed light on an underlying truth of our social, political, and legal reality. (shrink)

Cornell takes readers on a highly original exploration of what it would mean for women politically, legally, and culturally, if they took the ideal of freedom seriously--if, in her words, they learn to recognize that "hearts starve as well as bodies". Challenging, passionate, and powerfully argued, Cornell's book is certain to have a major impact on the course of feminist thought.

First published in 1995. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First published in 1995. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This essay is a critical review of two recent collections, Feminism and Foucault: Reflections on Resistance, edited by Irene Diamond and Lee Quinby and Feminism as Critique: On the Politics of Gender, edited by Seyla Benhabib and Drucilla Cornell. While the collections differ in their manner of addressing the critical sources that have inspired them-the former relying upon a single theorist, the latter attempting to move through some of the philosophical history that constitutes our present theoretical terrain-both attempt to think (...) through and thus revisualize some of the categories of difference which we have inherited. Though the best essays from these collections are celebrated for demonstrating how "feminism as critique" can work to move us toward a clearer and more inclusive feminist theory, questions are raised about what the inattention to race in these volumes suggests about our own role in the construction of power and knowledge, and the erasures that help to secure them both. (shrink)

In a unique rethinking of political transformation, Drucilla Cornell argues for the crucial role of psychoanalysis in social theory in voicing connection between our constitution as gendered subjects and social and political change.

In a unique rethinking of political transformation, Drucilla Cornell argues for the crucial role of psychoanalysis in social theory in voicing connection between our constitution as gendered subjects and social and political change.

This new edition of Drucilla Cornell's highly acclaimed book includes a substantial new introduction by the author, which situates the book within current feminist debates. In Beyond Accommodation, Drucilla Cornell offers a highly original vision of what feminist theory can give contemporary women. She challenges essentialist and naturalist accounts of feminine sexuality, arguing that any attempt to affirm woman's value and difference by either emphasizing her maternal role or repudiating the feminine only entraps women, once again, in a container that (...) curtails feminine sexual difference, legitimates the masculine fantasy of woman, and reinstates, rather than dismantles, the gender hierarchy. (shrink)

The purpose of this volume is to rethink the questions posed by Derrida's writings and his unique philosophical positioning, without reference to the catch phrases that have supposedly summed up deconstruction.

The essays in this volume present versions of feminism that are explicitly liberal, or versions of liberalism that are explicitly feminist. By bringing together some of the most respected and well-known scholars in mainstream political philosophy today, Amy R. Baehr challenges the reader to reconsider the dominant view that liberalism and feminism are 'incompatible.'.

This collection of essays seeks to expand the parameters of the debate on pornography. In an effort to move away from the divisive frameworks of which side are you on? and who counts as women worthy to be listened to? in feminist debates on pornography, this volume seeks to understand what pornography means to those who consume it, fight against it, work within it, and to those engaged in changing its meaning. By opening up a space for divergent points of (...) view to address the complexityof sexual material, this volume seeks to forge solidarity amongst a diverse array of constituencies, including academics, activists, and sex workers from diverse socio-political contexts. Through seeking to address the relationship between imperialism, the exotic, and the pornographic, the collection moves away from Eurocentric perspectives on pornography, by including the perspectives of women involved in struggles for national liberation in the South. This volume explores a wide range of issues, such as, how the meaning of pornography is shaped by changing historical and political realities; the role law should play, if any, in the sex industry; whether union organizing can change the working conditions in the sex industry; kinds of representational politics available for redefining pornography; and how sexually explicity literature, videos, art, and music can serve the purpose of sexual freedom. Contributors to the volume include Diana Russell, Catharine MacKinnon, Andrea Dworkin, Wendy Brown, Becki Ross, Mallek Alloula, M. Jacqui Alexander, Victoria Ortiz, bell hooks, Rey Chow, Judith Butler, Candida Royalle, Zoraida Ramirez Rodriguez, amongst others. (shrink)

Creolizing Rosa Luxemburg brings together a global community of writers to revisit key aspects of Luxemburg’s thought, from the accumulation of capital, to the mass strike, to her debate with Vladimir Lenin on the meaning of socialism, and her searing critiques of colonialism as inherent to capitalist accumulation.

In dialogue with afro-caribbean philosophy, this book seeks in Cassirer's philosophy of symbolic forms a new vocabulary for approaching central intellectual and ...

New York University, USA In theoritical and political writings, multiculturalism is most frequently understood in the language of recognition. Multiculturalist initiatives responds to the demands of minority cultures for political and cultural recognition so long denied them with devastating effects. In this article, we argue that the politics of recognition may have implicit dangers. In so far as it is articulated as a demand placed upon a dominant group and integrally tied to the substantiation of pre-given or fixed identity, it (...) can easily mask or even reiterate cultural hierarchization associated with Eurocentrism. We argue that it is necessary to understand recognition in terms of equal dignity; at the core of our argument is the insistence that all of us must have our potential to shape our identifications recognized by the state, such that we - and not the state - are the source of the meaning that they have to us, as individuals and as members of groups. Key Words: multiculturalism • racism • recognition • U.S. politics and culture. (shrink)

First published in 1993. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Moral Images of Freedom resurrects the Kantian project of affirmative political philosophy and traces its oft-forgotten influences found in thinkers like Martin Heidegger, Ernst Cassirer, Frantz Fanon, and Walter Benjamin. As a whole the book attempts to respond to nihilistic claims about the empty purpose of critical theory in a world so utterly captured by violence in all of its worst forms: economic, social, political, and cultural. Instead, this book draws together a sweeping thread of hope in the varied symbolic (...) forms of freedom persistent throughout the work of a broader range of critical theorists and addresses the burning challenge for such work to respond seriously to the need for a decolonization of critical theory itself and a sustained commitment to the possible future of socialism. (shrink)

In theoritical and political writings, multiculturalism is most frequently understood in the language of recognition. Multiculturalist initiatives responds to the demands of minority cultures for political and cultural recognition so long denied them with devastating effects. In this article, we argue that the politics of recognition may have implicit dangers. In so far as it is articulated as a demand placed upon a dominant group and integrally tied to the substantiation of pre-given or fixed identity, it can easily mask or (...) even reiterate cultural hierarchization associated with Eurocentrism. We argue that it is necessary to understand recognition in terms of equal dignity; at the core of our argument is the insistence that all of us must have our potential to shape our identifications recognized by the state, such that we – and not the state – are the source of the meaning that they have to us, as individuals and as members of groups. (shrink)

One of the distinguishing features of Drucilla Cornell's work is its emphasis on the significance of ideals. The essays collected here examine how the ideals of freedom and equality associated with the democratic revolutions of the West have survived the challenges of twentieth century critiques. Cornell argues that, far from threatening these ideals, feminism, race theory, and other new theories have deepened their meaning and so allowed them to survive.

Strangers to Nature brings together many of the leading scholars who are working to redefine and expand the discourse on animal ethics. This volume will engage both scholars and lay-people by revealing the breadth of theorizing about the human/non-human animal relationship that is currently taking place.

: This article argues that U.S. aggression against Afghanistan must be challenged through our support of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) and their political program. It does so not only by considering competing judgments about what constitutes women's rights, but also through an appeal to the Kantian ideal of humanity and its relation to how we can re-think both terrorism and the treatment of those accused of terrorist activity.

The first collection of essays directed towards jurisprudence with a Hegelian theme. The editors are committed to the idea that Hegel is the future source of great energy and insight within the legal academy.

In recent years, feminist and queer theory have effectively disavowed both “the human” and revolutionary politics. In the face of massive geopolitical crisis, posthumanists have called for us to reconsider fundamentally the superiority and centrality of mankind and “the human,” and question how Man can presume to change the world by revolutionary action, particularly when Marx’s dreams seem to have been swept into the dustbin of history. This provocative book reaffirms what is most basic in feminism – the attack on (...) the “universality” and sovereignty of Man – but contends that the only way this can mean anything other than pessimistic rhetoric is to embrace human agency and the struggle against colonialism and capitalism. In a series of “creolized” readings – Foucault with Ali Shari’ati, Lacan with Fanon, and Spinoza with Sylvia Wynter – the authors demonstrate what is at stake in the ongoing debate between humanism and posthumanism, putting this debate in the context of contemporary global crises and the possibilities of revolution. In its defense of “political spirituality,” this book pushes for a new trajectory in response to the gross inequalities of today, one that offers us a very different view of revolution and its present-day potential. (shrink)

: In this essay, Cornell first invokes the concept of 'imaginary domain' to challenge the legal legitimacy of heterosexism in any form. She then claims that the imposition of heterosexism on the imaginary is a trauma whose severity can be grasped only with the help of psychoanalysis. Second, she argues that we cannot understand or undermine the power of heterosexist ideas without an alternative ethic of love. In beginning to think about a love that would necessarily pit itself against heterosexism, (...) Cornell draws on Jacques Derrida's metaphor of the lovance. (shrink)

Living and dying in Iraq -- Worlds apart -- Variegated visions of humanity -- Developing human capabilities -- Civilization, progress, and beyond -- Reconsidering nationalism -- Other family stories.

In this essay, Cornell first invokes the concept of ‘imaginary domain’ to challenge the legal legitimacy of heterosexism in any form. She then claims that the imposition of heterosexism on the imaginary is a trauma whose severity can be grasped only with the help of psychoanalysis. Second, she argues that we cannot understand or undermine the power of heterosexist ideas without an alternative ethic of love. In beginning to think about a love that would necessarily pit itself against heterosexism, Cornell (...) draws on Jacques Derrida's metaphor of the lovance. (shrink)

The sixteen essays in Gender Struggles address a wide range of issues in gender struggles, from the more familiar ones that, for the last thirty years, have been the mainstay of feminist scholarship, such as motherhood, beauty, and sexual violence, to new topics inspired by post-industrialization and multiculturalism, such as the welfare state, cyberspace, hate speech, and queer politics, and finally to topics that traditionally have not been seen as appropriate subjects for philosophizing, such as adoption, care work, and the (...) home. (shrink)

Neo-liberalism often reduces pluralism to a social fact based on the collapse of the big ideals that once claimed to stand in for the ideal of humanity. Tolerance of inevitable value diversity is all that can be offered by the rationalized modern western state. This understanding of pluralism is completely inadequate in the post colony. Ernst Cassirer offers a philosophical understanding of symbolic plurality that allows us to respect divergent symbolic forms, including myth and religion. This understanding of pluralism opens (...) the space for respect for the customary law and the great indigenous ideals such as uBuntu which has often been denigrated as mythical and thus outdated or, worse yet, not law at all. This denigration is inseparable from colonial violence, and demands a process of transculturation as integral to this struggle to transform the new South Africa into a society that lives up to the Constitution’s call for the respect of all of its citizens. This respect can only be done if there are serious economic reforms and a challenge to the hegemonic neo-liberal capitalism. (shrink)

In light of the rising anti-racist and decolonial struggles breaking out in the world, this essay seeks to displace the theoretical dichotomy between ‘violence’ and ‘non-violence’. We begin by revisiting Arendt and Fanon to argue that within the conditions of colonial-racial capitalism, ‘non-violence’ is merely a theoretical abstraction. Building on Fanon, who understands decolonial struggle as setting the ‘atmospheric violence’ of colonization into motion toward a new humanity, we develop our own vocabulary of revolutionary anti-violence that replaces a static dichotomy (...) with a spectrum of spontaneous insurrectional activity, non-retaliatory anti-violence, self-defense, and offensive armed struggle. From these, we reinterpret various struggles and distinguish them from terrorism. By centralizing anti-violence as an ethical ideal and political struggle, we aim to overcome the unproductive pitting of ‘good’ (non-violent) movements from ‘bad’ (violent or terrorist) ones and offer a political theory of violence more appropriate to our times. (shrink)

[Variegated visions of humanity: The ambiguous legacy. of “The Law of Peoples”].

Influential political theorist Drucilla Cornell challenges readers to rethink the class struggle and the battle against racialized capitalism, and to reconceptualize the ideas of revolution, liberation and rebellion themselves, by focusing on the great revolutionary theorist CLR James.