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Critique of Violence is a highly original and lucid investigation of the heated controversy between poststructuralism and critical theory. Leading theorist Beatrice Hanssen uses Walter Benjamin's essay 'Critique of Violence' as a guide to analyse the contentious debate, shifting the emphasis from struggle to dialogue between the two parties. Regarding the questions of critique and violence as the major meeting points between both traditions, Hanssen positions herself between the two in an effort to investigate what critical theory and poststructuralism have to offer each other. In the course o

Intro -- Contents -- Acknowledgements -- Abbreviations -- Illustrations -- 1 Introduction: Physiognomy of a Flâneur: Walter Benjamin's Peregrinations through Paris in Search of a New Imaginary -- 2 Et Cetera? The Historian as Chiffonnier -- 3 The Flâneur, the Sandwichman and the Whore: The Politics of Loitering -- 4 Passage Work -- 5 Ruin and Rubble in the Arcades -- 6 Geheimmittel: Advertising and Dialectical Images in Benjamin's Arcades Project -- 7 A Matter of Distance: Benjamin's One-Way Street through The Arcades -- 8 'The Colportage Phenomenon of Space' and the Place of Montage in The Arcades Project -- 9 Walter Benjamin's Dream of 'Happiness' -- 10 The Dream-Reality of the Ruin -- 11 The Enticing and Threatening Face of Prehistory: Walter Benjamin and the Utopia of Glass -- 12 'Glass before Its Time, Premature Iron': Architecture, Temporality and Dream in Benjamin's Arcades Project -- 13 Remains to be Seen -- Notes -- Contributors -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- R -- S -- T -- V -- W -- Z.

An exploration of the relationship of Critical Theory to poststructuralism focuses on the work of Jurgen Habermas & Michel Foucault. Consideration is given to presuppositions of normative validity underlying Habermas's theory of communicative action & the antifoundationalism of poststructuralism. While Habermas argued for retention of the Enlightenment legacy of reason, poststructuralist thinkers rejected the principles of universalism & consensus formation. The evolution of Habermas's vindication of political modernity is traced & his attempt to base his theory of society on a communicative conception of rationality is explored, along with Foucault's turn to an "ethical aesthetics" as a possible solution to problematic aspects of modernity. A description of Habermas's analysis of political & aesthetic modernity is followed by an examination of Foucault's response, & his attempt to form a "new critical ethos that might help actualize the inherent reserve of the Enlightenment." While avoiding a universalist normative philosophy, Foucault recognized a possible rapprochement between early Critical Theory by merging his "quasi-Kantian critique aimed at rehabilitating the lost reserve of the Enlightenment with an aesthetic ethics of self-cultivation.". J. Lindroth

Los límites de la representación feminista: el lenguaje de la violencia de Elfriede Jelinek

1. What we talk about when we talk about ethics / Lawrence Buell -- 2. Ethical ambivalence / Judith Butler -- 3. The ethical practice of modernity : the example of reading / John Guillory -- 4. Using people : Kant with Winnicott / Barbara Johnson -- 5. The best intentions : newborn technologies and bioethical borderlines / Perri Klass -- 6. Which ethics for democracy? / Chantal Mouffe -- 7. Recognitions without ethics? / Nancy Fraser -- 8. Ethics of the other / Beatrice Hanssen -- 9. On cultural choice / Homi K. Bhabha -- 10. Attitude, its rhetoric / Doris Sommer -- 11. Cosmopolitan ethics : the home and the world / Rebecca L. Walkowitz.