Description
After the 9/11 attacks, Buck-Morss (political philosophy and social theory, Cornell U.) realized that as a US citizen she was involved, whether she wanted to be or not, in an eternal war on civilians in part of the world she knew nothing about. So, she redirected the year sabbatical she had just begun to reading about the various political discourses that are expressed in the shared language of Islam, which she describes as Islamism. Here she presents five essays and an interview she prepared for various academic occasions from her research. Annotation (c) Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
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Renowned critical theorist Susan Buck-Morss argues convincingly that a global public needs to think past the twin insanities of terrorism and counter-terrorism in order to dismantle regressive intellectual barriers. Surveying the widespread literature on the relationship of Islam to modernity, she reveals that there is surprising overlap where scholars commonly and simplistically see antithesis. Thinking Past Terror situates this engagement with the study of Islam among critical contemporary discoursesfeminism, post-colonialism and the critique of determinism. Reminding us powerfully that domination and consensus are maintained not by the lack of opposing ideas but by the disorganization of dissent, Thinking Past Terror presents the empowering idea of a global counter-culture as a very real possibility. If the language of a global, radically cosmopolitan Left is not presumed but its attainment struggled for, if the Leftist project is itself this struggle, then democracy defines its very core.
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