Bookshelf
| can't find it |

| browse books |
books
 

| book details |

Facing the Other: Ethical Disruption and the American Mind

By (author) Linda Bolton





This book is currently unavailable. Enquire to check if we can source a used copy


| book description |

Bolton is admirably focused, centering broader ventures around precise turning points in the documents and incidents she has selected.... The book crosses generic boundaries... in the spirit of an other who transcends any single history or discipline."""" -- Religion and Literature Linda Bolton uses six extraordinarily resonant moments in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American history to highlight the ethical challenge that the treatment of Native and African persons presented to the new republic's ideal of freedom. Most daringly, she examines the efficacy of the Declaration of Independence as a revolutionary text and explores the provocative question """"What happens when freedom eclipses justice, when freedom breeds injustice?"""" Guided by the intellectual influence of philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, Bolton asserts that the traditional subject-centered -- or """"I"""" -- concept of freedom is dependent on the transcendent presence of the """"Other,"""" and thus freedom becomes a privilege subordinate to justice. There can be no authentic freedom as long as others, whether Native American or African, are reduced from full human beings to concepts and thus properties of control or power. An eloquent and thoughtful rereading of the U.S. touchstones of democracy, this book argues forcefully for an ethical understanding of American literary history. """"Facing the Other is not a cultural history; its focus is the relevance of an ethical analytic to all of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American literature.... Using Emmanuel Levinas to guide her discussions, Bolton argues that the way in which Americans valorize freedom as an ideal leads us to ignore our responsibilities for doing justice."""" -- American Literature

| product details |



Normally shipped | Enquiries only
Publisher | Louisiana State University Press
Published date | 30 Mar 2010
Language |
Format | Paperback / softback
Pages | 224
Dimensions | 226 x 149 x 17mm (L x W x H)
Weight | 333g
ISBN | 978-0-8071-3646-1
Readership Age |
BISAC | political science / general


| other options |


| your trolley |

To view the items in your trolley please sign in.

| sign in |

| specials |

The Memory Collectors: A Novel

Dete Meserve
Paperback / softback
320 pages


Enquiries only


Survive the AI Apocalypse: A guide for solutionists

Bronwen Williams
Paperback / softback
232 pages
was: R 340.95
now: R 306.95
Forthcoming

Let's stare the future down and, instead of fearing AI, become solutionists.

The Coming Wave: AI, Power and Our Future

Mustafa Suleyman
Paperback / softback
352 pages
was: R 295.95
now: R 265.95
Stock is usually dispatched in 6-12 days from date of order


The Colonialist: The Vision of Cecil Rhodes

William Kelleher Storey
Paperback / softback
528 pages
was: R 425.95
now: R 382.95
Usually dispatched in 6-12 days

This first comprehensive biography of Cecil Rhodes in a generation illuminates Rhodes’s vision for the expansion of imperialism in southern Africa, connecting politics and industry to internal development, and examines how this fueled a lasting, white-dominated colonial society.