The authors conducted this interview with Luce Irigaray in her home in Paris in May, 1994.

The authors conducted this interview with Luce Irigaray in her home in Paris in May, 1994.

Este artículo presenta el descubrimiento del sistema de neuronas espejo, que muestran que los mecanismo neuronales revelan que los humanos estamos «cableados” para la empatía, con lo que la moralidad tendría así sus raíces en la biología. Se argumenta que esta base científica tenderá a influir la opinión pública contribuyendo a disolver nuestras creencias actuales que nos llevan a la destrucción recíproca. La pregunta pendiente, se señala, es por qué no actúa la empatía a nivel social, formulándose propuestas de respuesta (...) desde la influencia cultural sobre lo biológico. (shrink)

The most critical factor explaining the disjuncture between empathy’s revolutionary potential and today’s empathically-impaired society is the interaction between the brain and our dominant political culture. The evolutionary process has given rise to a hard-wired neural system in the primal brain and particularly in the human brain. This book argues that the crucial missing piece in this conversation is the failure to identify and explain the dynamic relationship between an empathy gap and the hegemonic influence of neoliberal capitalism, through the (...) analysis of the college classroom, the neoliberal state, media, film and photo images, marketing of products, militarization, mass culture and government policy. This book will contribute to an empirically grounded dissent from capitalism’s narrative about human nature. Empathy is putting oneself in another’s emotional and cognitive shoes and then acting in a deliberate, appropriate manner. Perhaps counter-intuitively, it requires self-empathy because we’re all products of an empathy-anesthetizing culture. The approach in this book affirms a scientific basis for acting with empathy, and it addresses how this can help inform us to our current political culture and process, and make its of interest to students and scholars in political science, psychology, and other social sciences. ​ ​. (shrink)

In the probing interviews in this vibrant new book, eminent scholars struggle with some of the most crucial issues facing contemporary intellectuals. Poststructuralist philosopher Judith Butler discusses the “pain” of rigorous intellectual work, saying that it is “necessarily extremely hard labor,” as she examines the intersection of discourse and political action. Award-winning filmmaker, philosopher, and social theorist David Theo Goldberg reviews his life’s work, especially on issues of racism. Literary critic and feminist philosopher Avital Ronell sets out to disrupt the (...) standard logic of signification, to force readers into fresh ways of perceiving a subject at hand. Postcolonial theorist Homi Bhabha discusses how critical literacy is intimately connected to the question of democratic representation, and he elaborates on how cultural difference can lead to a politics of discrimination. And neo-Marxist cultural critic Slavoj Žižek takes readers on an exhilarating journey through a wide range of critical subjects. (shrink)