Auf ein Miniaturbild klicken, um zu Google Books zu gelangen.
Lädt ... Against purity: living ethically in compromised timesvon Alexis
Werk-InformationenAgainst Purity: Living Ethically in Compromised Times von Alexis Shotwell
Keine Lädt ...
Melde dich bei LibraryThing an um herauszufinden, ob du dieses Buch mögen würdest. Keine aktuelle Diskussion zu diesem Buch. Can nature be defiled by humans? Rachel Carson and her followers have provided massive dossiers that it can. This book argues, however, that seeing nature as "pure" can be used by the dominant, oppressive social forces to strike against diversity. Come again? Well, for example, take scientific evidence that environmental toxins can turn frogs into homosexuals (no joke). This and other such data could encourage evangelicals to call Mother Nature as a star witness in their lawsuits against gender and sexual-preference diversity! Can we find a way to balance the empirical claims of environmentalism against our ideals of social/sexual diversity? Perhaps not without tortured arguments, as this book appears to illustrate. ( ) The desire for purity - especially philosophical/ethical/political purity, is something I've found myself often pondering since the presidential campaign on 2016. So when I saw this book at the library, I knew I had to check it out immediately. This book, while not exactly what I was expecting, contained many "this is exactly what I needed to be reading right now" synchronicity moments. Rather than spending much time pontificating over purity in abstract, this book uses purity as a lens to examine a series of specific cases: moving from past (a truth and reconciliation commission on Indian Residential schools in Canada, and ACT UP campaign to change the CDC's definition of AIDS) to present (the way many activists frame the harm of endocrine disruptors on frogs, dietary ethical issues), to future (disability and gender transformation, activism as speculative fiction). While I found all these specific cases interesting, there were definitely times that I wish Shotwell would have expanded more on some of the themes she used in examining them - the idea of "healthism" in particular. But, I mean, seriously? That chapter on activism as speculative fiction? How could that not be more perfect for me to read right now? Interesting, deeply challenging, definitely thought provoking. Highly recommended. Zeige 2 von 2 keine Rezensionen | Rezension hinzufügen
The world is in a terrible mess. It is toxic, irradiated, and full of injustice. Aiming to stand aside from the mess can produce a seemingly satisfying self-righteousness in the scant moments we achieve it, but since it is ultimately impossible, individual purity will always disappoint. Might it be better to understand complexity and, indeed, our own complicity in much of what we think of as bad, as fundamental to our lives? Against Purity argues that the only answer--if we are to have any hope of tackling the past, present, and future of colonialism, disease, pollution, and climate change--is a resounding yes. Proposing a powerful new conception of social movements as custodians for the past and incubators for liberated futures, Against Purity undertakes an analysis that draws on theories of race, disability, gender, and animal ethics as a foundation for an innovative approach to the politics and ethics of responding to systemic problems. Being against purity means that there is no primordial state we can recover, no Eden we have desecrated, no pretoxic body we might uncover through enough chia seeds and kombucha. There is no preracial state we could access, no erasing histories of slavery, forced labor, colonialism, genocide, and their concomitant responsibilities and requirements. There is no food we can eat, clothes we can buy, or energy we can use without deepening our ties to complex webbings of suffering. So, what happens if we start from there? Alexis Shotwell shows the importance of critical memory practices to addressing the full implications of living on colonized l∧ how activism led to the official reclassification of AIDS; why we might worry about studying amphibians when we try to fight industrial contamination; and that we are all affected by nuclear reactor meltdowns. The slate has never been clean, she reminds us, and we can't wipe off the surface to start fresh--there's no fresh to start. But, Shotwell argues, hope found in a kind of distributed ethics, in collective activist work, and in speculative fiction writing for gender and disability liberation that opens new futures. Keine Bibliotheksbeschreibungen gefunden. |
Aktuelle DiskussionenKeine
Google Books — Lädt ... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)170Philosophy and Psychology Ethics Ethics -- SubdivisionsKlassifikation der Library of Congress [LCC] (USA)BewertungDurchschnitt:
Bist das du?Werde ein LibraryThing-Autor. |