Standing With the Public: The Humanities and Democratic Practice [Paperback]

James F. Veninga (Editor), Noelle McAfee (Editor)

Product Details

• Paperback: 214 pages
• Publisher: Kettering Foundation (September 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0923993053
• ISBN-13: 978-0923993054
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.3 ounces
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,022,487 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Noelle McAfee is an associate professor of philosophy at Emory University, the associate editor of the Kettering Review, and the co-chair of the Public Philosophy Network. Her work is at the intersection of subjectivity and public life, the ways in which human well-being depends upon people's abilities and opportunities to help shape their common world -- which she takes to be central to democracy. Accordingly, in her view, to be told that one does not matter, that what one cares about will never be heeded, is to be effectively stripped of the title of citizen. This, she thinks, is the epitome of political evil.

McAfee draws widely from various traditions in philosophy and from experiments in self-government around the world. Her latest book, Democracy and the Political Unconscious (Columbia University Press, 2008), charts a course for democratic practice in a world sorely needing transformation. It explores the potential of deliberative dialogue and other public testimonies to work through the traumas of oppression, terror, and brutality that keep political communities from developing spaces and practices through which all can help shape their common world.

Before joining the faculty at Emory, she was based at the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University. ICAR is one of the most innovative programs in the world in understanding how political communities recover from conflict and brutality and move toward developing more democratic societies.

Since 1990 she has been an editor of the Kettering Review, a journal of political thought published by the Kettering Foundation. She has also been a principle investigator on a project for the Kettering Foundation on media and democracy.