States of Injury

by Wendy Brown (Author)

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ISBN-13: 978-0691029894

ISBN-10: 069102989X

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Whether in characterizing Catharine MacKinnon's theory of gender as itself pornographic or in identifying liberalism as unable to make good on its promises, Wendy Brown pursues a central question: how does a sense of woundedness become the basis for a sense of identity? Brown argues that efforts to outlaw hate speech and pornography powerfully legitimize the state: such apparently well-intentioned attempts harm victims further by portraying them as so helpless as to be in continuing need of governmental protection. "Whether one is dealing with the state, the Mafia, parents, pimps, police, or husbands," writes Brown, "the heavy price of institutionalized protection is always a measure of dependence and agreement to abide by the protector's rules." True democracy, she insists, requires sharing power, not regulation by it; freedom, not protection.

Refusing any facile identification with one political position or another, Brown applies her argument to a panoply of topics, from the basis of litigiousness in political life to the appearance on the academic Left of themes of revenge and a thwarted will to power. These and other provocations in contemporary political thought and political life provide an occasion for rethinking the value of several of the last two centuries' most compelling theoretical critiques of modern political life, including the positions of Nietzsche, Marx, Weber, and Foucault.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

Wendy Brown undertakes a critical analysis of late modern state power to reveal how identity politics translated into rights claims ... [This study] significantly advances our understanding of aspects of politics where particular identities and universal rights are currently in conflict. (American Political Science Review)

"A compelling and original book which provides critical and much needed insight into the workings of contemporary American politics. There isn't anyone else doing this kind of work in political theory."―Joan W. Scott, Institute for Advanced Study

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"A compelling and original book which provides critical and much needed insight into the workings of contemporary American politics. There isn't anyone else doing this kind of work in political theory."--Joan W. Scott, Institute for Advanced Study

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Product details

Paperback: 219 pages
Publisher: Princeton University Press (July 3, 1995)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 069102989X
ISBN-13: 978-0691029894
Product Dimensions: 6.1 x 0.5 x 9.2 inches
Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 3 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #774,090 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2374 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Philosophy > Political
- #4989 in Books > Textbooks > Humanities > Philosophy
- #9114 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > Political Science

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StreetlightReader

Freedom Beyond the State

May 25, 2017

Format: Paperback

No one does biting, lefty political critique quite like Wendy Brown. With an impeccable critical pedigree (i.e. Marx, Foucault, Weber, feminist political theory) and a dazzling analytic ability to match, these essays are simply some of the finest pieces of modern political theory around. Questioning, in particular, the way in which freedom has increasingly been framed in terms of both rights and the state (as in: "to be free is to have the right to X", or, "The role of the state is to guarantee my freedom by means of..."), Brown's table-turning operation works to ask if these very 'instruments of freedom' are not themselves constitutive of an 'unfreedom' all the more insidious on account of their freedom affirming rhetoric. Taking seriously the Foucaultian insight into the way in which regulatory apparatuses do not merely 'regulate' but equally produce the very subjects they bear upon, Brown explores the ways in which legalist conceptions of freedom also end up engendering the very 'wounded' subjects they are designed to protect.

Targeted in particular are liberal conceptions of the state, which, by treating it as a kind of neutral arbiter or protector of already-existing interests, ends up not only 'naturalizing' very particular constellations of societal power (in contrast to liberal pretensions to impartiality), but also 'depoliticizes' them too: that is, places them 'out of running' to be contested in a political way at all. It's this double move - the massive exercise of power on the one hand and it's depoliticization on the other - that is everywhere tracked by Brown in her marvellously cutting assessments of the thinkers and discourses here engaged with. Attendant too, to the gendered dimension of all political theorizing, there's a kind of magic in watching Brown more or less run through - as she does in one of the chapters here - almost every major liberal concept (equality, autonomy, liberty, etc) in order to expose them for the gender-saturated ideas that they are. In the wake of reading Brown, it'd simply be impossible to remain blind to the operations of either power and gender at work in political theory.

Thus while it's true that many of the essays here are 'critical' in the negative, 'undoing' sense of the term (Brown herself admits that her essays "develop no political or even theoretical program"), the very lenses through which Brown approaches her subjects are themselves instructive. Indeed, in the last analysis, it's the impulse to a kind of (radical?) democratic vision that properly drives the essays collected herein, each of which ultimately serves as a bulwark against political complacency - any (institutional) 'guarantee' of freedom is more than likely exactly the sort of thing that would undermine it. A final thing to note is Brown's unapologetically High-Theory infused style: in bringing the work of critical theory into political philosophy, Brown holds nothing back by way of either vocabulary and speed - her writing pops and zags with the roughness of both expediency and mastery, and while it's possible to find this daunting, to me - and to anyone who has ever wondered how 'Theory' can be made politically relevant - this is simply a work of electrifying reading.

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Timothy B. Hurst

Identity and Injury: Rights Based Discourses

January 21, 2006

Format: Paperback

In the first half of States of Injury, Wendy Brown's critique of traditional feminism and more broadly identity politics as a whole was based upon the principle that the "I am" clause used by many marginalized groups should be avoided because of its universalizing and finalizing nature. In its place, such groups should focus on the "What I want for us" clause, because of its potential fluidity and room for political action. In the second half of the book, Brown addresses, among other things, the question of what should be desired from a gendered postmodern perspective.

Brown's scathing critique of classical liberalism begins to take shape as she attacks the litigious nature of modern state politics, and more specifically, she builds her case against a rights-based discourse for feminism. Rights require cultural and historical context, and without those important brushstrokes, their picture cannot be painted because of their amorphous or perhaps even polymorphous nature. Brown insists that rights must not be confused with equality and that they "are more likely to become sites of the production of identity as injury than vehicles of emancipation" (Brown 1995, 134). Rights then should be avoided as a political goal, but they should not be avoided altogether. Rights may well serve as a means to an end, their usefulness should not be overlooked as a step in realizing larger goals, but once again, Brown has demonstrated that focusing on rights, like focusing on identity, is a finalizing process; a rights discourse ends the conversation. What happens once rights are granted? If a woman's rights are violated it is then up to the state to uphold those rights as they have been written into law. Protection is then institutionalized, creating a female dependence on state power. There is no discussion of transcending the existing patterns of male dominance within the masculinist state because women have been granted equality under law. The liberal philosophy of writing rights into law thus entrenches and subjugates women into the existing systems of traditional subordination, allowing no real way out of the cycle of dependency, protection and regulation. As much as I was hoping for Brown to articulate some sort of policy prescriptions, or a potential way out of this structure of dominance, I did not see it. Brown herself admits that the final essay develops more than answers the questions that she raises and "it does not build toward policy recommendations or a specified political program" (173). If rights must be seen as a means and not an end, what is the end? It seems that Brown's critical analysis is arguing for a radical transformation or complete transcension of the late modern political structures found in the liberal state. Is the best hope for feminism to be found in the private sphere, away from the state? What is the way out for Brown's structural-historical analysis of feminine subordination? Is her answer to be found in the last sentence of the book? Here she suggests that "feminists can both exploit and subvert, but only by deeply comprehending in order to strategically outmaneuver its contemporary masculinist ruses" (196). It is great to understand, and it may be the first step to political action, but comprehending is not action in itself.

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Intellectually exciting

July 1, 2000

Format: Paperback

This book looks at how gender and the political theories of our time (liberalism, theories of the state, Foucault, etc.) intersect. I have only read three of the chapters so far, which are self-contained, and I enjoyed them very much. Brown's response to Catherine MacKinnon is especially well-argued and helpful: she draws out how Marxism influences MacKinnon's thought, and then shows how Mackinnon's thought demonstrates the extent to which freedom for women can be incompatible with freedom in general. The prose could be better.

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