Across a spectrum of academic disciplines, the topic of globalization is at the forefront of contemporary efforts to understand a dynamically changing world society. How might critical social theory respond creatively to the challenge of thinking and theorizing globalization in its full complexity? Globalizing Critical Theory collects essays by scholars at the forefront of Critical Theory as they confront this timely topic. This book offers readers a chance to see contemporary Critical Theory in its full range-from political analyses of a global public sphere, critical race theory, and the politics of memory, to aesthetics and media studies. It includes crucial new essays by JYrgen on the transformations of the global order in the wake of the American invasion of Iraq, and major interventions by Nancy Fraser, Peter Hohendahl, Andreas Huyssen, James Bohman, and others. Globalizing Critical Theory provides a fascinating exploration of how Critical Theory is confronting the question of globalization-and how globalization is transforming Critical Theory.

In the words of Catharine MacKinnon, 'a woman is not yet a name for a way of being human.' In other words, women are still excluded, as authors and agents, from identifying what it is to be human and what therefore violates the dignity and integrity of humans. Recognition, Responsibility, and Rights is written in response to that failure. This collection of essays by prominent feminist thinkers advances the positive feminist project of remapping the moral landscape by developing theory that acknowledges the diversity of women. This book is the first volume in a new series of edited collections showcasing the best new work in feminist theory that has emerged from the group Feminist Ethics and Social Theory (FEAST). FEAST advances the goal of a feminist ethico-politics by creating an organization and a body of work in which feminist ethicists and feminist social theorists join forces to produce a politically effective feminist ethics. In this first volume, essayists address that goal by analyzing gender with respect to three key ethical concepts: recognition, responsibility, and rights.

From the most prominent thinkers in Latin American philosophy, literature, politics, and social science comes a challenge to conventional theories of globalization. The contributors to this volume imagine a discourse in which revolution is defined not as a temporalized march of progress or takeover of state power, but as a movement for local control that upholds standards of material conditions for human dignity. Essays on identity, equality, and ethics propose models of transcultural and intercultural relations that replace center/periphery or world-systems approaches; they impel us to focus on building dialogic relationships rather than on accommodating universalized paradigms. Ultimately suggesting a reconstruction of the world in terms of the interests of one of the peripheral regions of the world, Latin American Perspectives on Globalization argues with cogency and urgency that no one within contemporary globalization debates can afford to ignore the Latin American philosophical tradition.

In this original work, the Mexican political philosopher, Maria Pia Lara, develops a new approach to public sphere theory and a novel understanding of the history of the feminist struggle. When dominated groups create publicly--oriented social movements, she argues, they seek to frame their demands in compelling narrative forms. Through these new tales, they can become, for the first time, active subjects in their own stories. Developing this theoretical model, Lara offers new interpretations of Habermas and Arendt as well as of feminist debates about their work. Critically relating Wellmera s and Ricoeura s aesthetic ideas to public sphere theory, she also confronts the limitations of the Foucaultian tradition that informs so much post--structuralist feminism today. In making her argument, Lara examines a very wide range of womena s narratives, from autobiographies of eighteenth--century salonnieres and of contemporary women activists to the novels of Jane Austen and the portrayal of women in television and film. Taking stock of contemporary feminist writings in social science, history, literature, jurisprudence and philosophy, she suggests that they can be viewed not only as empirical accounts of injustices but as cultural narratives that have transformed womena s particular identities even as they have expanded universal moral claims in a revolutionary way.

In this original work, the Mexican political philosopher, Maria Pia Lara, develops a new approach to public sphere theory and a novel understanding of the history of the feminist struggle. When dominated groups create publicly--oriented social movements, she argues, they seek to frame their demands in compelling narrative forms. Through these new tales, they can become, for the first time, active subjects in their own stories. Developing this theoretical model, Lara offers new interpretations of Habermas and Arendt as well as of feminist debates about their work. Critically relating Wellmera s and Ricoeura s aesthetic ideas to public sphere theory, she also confronts the limitations of the Foucaultian tradition that informs so much post--structuralist feminism today. In making her argument, Lara examines a very wide range of womena s narratives, from autobiographies of eighteenth--century salonnieres and of contemporary women activists to the novels of Jane Austen and the portrayal of women in television and film. Taking stock of contemporary feminist writings in social science, history, literature, jurisprudence and philosophy, she suggests that they can be viewed not only as empirical accounts of injustices but as cultural narratives that have transformed womena s particular identities even as they have expanded universal moral claims in a revolutionary way.

Until recently, philosophers have discussed evil primarily in theodicial contexts in pondering why a perfect God does not abolish evil. Evil, Political Violence, and Forgiveness: Essays in Honor of Claudia Card reflects a burgeoning interest among philosophers in a broader array of ethical and political questions concerning evils. Written in tribute to Claudia Card whose distinguished academic career has culminated in the development of a new theory of evil this collection of new essays explores the concept of evil, the multifaceted harms of brutal political violence, and the appropriateness of forgiveness as an ethical response to evils. Evil, Political Violence, and Forgiveness brings together an international cohort of distinguished philosophers who mediate with Card upon an array of twentieth-century atrocities and on the nature of evil actions, persons, and institutions. Contributors explore questions such as "What distinguishes evil from lesser wrongdoing?" "Is culpable wrongdoing a necessary component of evil?" "How are we to understand atrocious political violence?" "What are the best moral and political responses to atrocities?" "Are there moral obligations to forgive contrite perpetrators of evils?" and "Can anyone claim moral innocence amid a climate of evildoing?"

In Beyond the Public Sphere: Film and the Feminist Imaginary, the renowned philosopher and critical theorist Maria Pia Lara challenges the notion that the bourgeois public sphere is the most important informal institution between social and political actors and the state.Drawing on a wide range of films-including The Milk of Sorrow, Ixcanul, Wadja, The Stone of Patience, Marnie, A Streetcar Named Desire, and Talk to Her-Lara dissects cinematic images of women's struggles and their oppression. She builds on this analysis, developing a concept of the feminist social imaginary as a broader and more complex space that provides a way of thinking through the possibilities for emancipatory social transformation in response to forms of domination perpetuated by patriarchal capitalism.

"In an environment in which philosophy increasingly shies away from the big questions, this volume takes them on in a conscientious, analytical, and enlightening way. For Lara, the problem is not just that human beings suffer but that other human beings intentionally want to make them suffer, and to suffer in such extreme ways that the explanations offered by natural and social science seem as insufficient as those offered by older theodicies. The volume makes for engrossing reading; it sheds new light on an age-old issue."--Georgia Warnke, author of "Legitimate Differences

"An important work because it inaugurates a distinctive secular approach to the problem of evil, which has generally been the province of theology and the philosophy of religion."--David M. Rasmussen, editor of "The Handbook of Critical Theory