Customer Reviews

Violence, Identity, and Self-Determination

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This is a superb volume that concerns (quite obviously) the relationship between violence and identity. Considering the centrality of issues regarding violence and society -not to mention identity politics, religious affiliations and the right to autonomy (only a few of the issues discussed here) today, a contribution by a group of important scholars and philosophers is very welcome. But this volume excedes most expectations. While its affiliations are for the most part deconstructive (cf. Hamacher, Derrida, Weber), its methods of analysis are diverse and pertinent -in other words, not limited to a 'strictly textual' analysis lacking connections to a 'real' world.

The rigour of most essays ranges between good and excellent -except for Ali Behdad's erotism/colonialism and Caruth's (whose argument is rehearsed all over the place). Especially notable on an intellectual level are the de Vries' essay, which follows the Derridian attention to sacrifice (see the latter's "Eating Well" as well as the book dissected by de Vries, 'The Gift of Death'), and Hamacher's argument on multiculturalism. Gourgouris is also very smart -you might want to contrast the Enlightenment's political loci evoked in his essay to Agamben's explosion of the concentration camp's theme. Note also that his piece concerns explicitly and extensively the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen. Samuel Weber's essay centers on Freud's writings during the First World War - though perhaps his best work on Freud is in his book The Legend of Freud.

Further attention: issues of religion and the theological turn in philosophy; the relationship between state, law and violence; messianism and the individual subject.

I first read this book a couple of years ago and i continue ot go back to it -and not simply for reasons of scholarship. It is an essential reference point for anyone interested in contemporary non-analytic philosophy and on a rigorous approach to the political-judiciary realm. Beware of the often complicated writing -but don't allow it to disparage you from reading it and reading it closely. For this is a good, an essential volume.