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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