Jeanne Morefield

Unsettling the World (eBook, PDF)

Edward Said and Political Theory

• Format: PDF

Produktbeschreibung

Unsettling the World is the first book-length treatment of Edward Said's influential cultural criticism from the perspective of a political theorist. Arguing that the generative power of Said's thought extends well beyond Orientalism, the book explores Said's writings on the experience of exile, the practice of "contrapuntal" criticism, and the illuminating potential of worldly humanism. Said's critical vision, Morefield argues, provides a fresh perspective on debates in political theory about subjectivity, global justice, identity, and the history of political thought. Most importantly, she maintains, Said's approach offers theorists a model of how to bring the insights developed through historical analyses of imperialism and anti-colonialism to bear on critiques of contemporary global crises and the politics of American foreign policy.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Bloomsbury eBooks US
• Seitenzahl: 1
• Erscheinungstermin: 29. April 2022
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9798881853655
• Artikelnr.: 74398365

Autorenporträt

Jeanne Morefield is associate professor of Political Theory and fellow at New College, University of Oxford. She is also a non-residential fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, Washington DC. She is author of Empires without Imperialism: Anglo American Decline and the Politics of Deflection (Oxford UP, 2014) and Covenants without Swords: Idealist Liberalism and the Spirit of Empire (Princeton UP, 2005).

Inhaltsangabe

Chapter One, "Writing at a Distance: Exile, Loss, and Critique." This
chapter explores the sometimes-unnerving contradictions of Said's exilic
disposition, from his reflections on his own life in exile to his
discordant prose style, focusing on the productive criticism that he
believes flow from this unsettling disclosure. It focuses on Said's 1982
essay, "Secular Criticism" and explores his approach to analyzing filiative
and affiliative modes of ideological connection. The chapter concludes by
turning from Said's theoretical writing about exile to his exilic writing
in 1984's After the Last Sky which offers a powerful glimpse into the
attached and detached mode of seeing at work in Said's exilic orientation.
It also provides a fuller sense of how this orientation twins a critique of
power, nationhood, and exclusion with a deep sympathy for the ties that
bind love to home, love to loss, and love to loss of home.
Chapter Two, "A Cluster of Flowing Currents: Theory Unresolved and
Groundless." This chapter foc