A politically-attuned textual journey through civic life, exploring the way artistic genres supply the critical thinking needed to encourage a more egalitarian and convivial life world.
A politically-attuned textual journey through civic life, exploring the way artistic genres supply the critical thinking needed to encourage a more egalitarian and convivial life world.
Focused both thematically and methodologically on diverse aspects of civic life, this book elucidates the mentalities and forces involved in the way individuals and collectives negotiate ways of being in common. The chapters feature critical interventions into the civic lives of grief, of things, of Blackness, and of trans identity.
With an emphasis on the historiographic contributions of literature, film, objects and embodied memories of events, Shapiro's textual analyses treat the way artistic genres supply the critical thinking needed to encourage a more egalitarian and convivial life world.
Michael Shapiro has long been one of the most significant thinkers of the relation between theory, the international, and politics. Through nuanced readings of film and literature concerning trauma and grief, belonging and exclusion, he reflects on his maxim that "ethical reflection becomes possible when negotiation with difference rather than security is the project" A book that speaks powerfully to our contemporary moment.--Stuart Elden, University of Warwick
This is a stunning book which proposes a new aesthetico-political theory of civic life. It offers a brilliantly written and hugely imaginative re-posing of the classic political questions of community, belonging, rights and responsibilities. An outstandingly original book by a leading scholar in his field.--Arthur Bradley, Lancaster University
Michael J. Shapiro is Emeritus Professor at The University of Hawai'i, Manoa.
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