William V. Spanos
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780823268153
- eISBN:
- 9780823272464
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823268153.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, American Politics
Redeemer Nation in the Interregnum interrogates the polyvalent role that American exceptionalism continues to play after 9/11. Whereas American exceptionalism is often construed as a discredited Cold ...
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Redeemer Nation in the Interregnum interrogates the polyvalent role that American exceptionalism continues to play after 9/11. Whereas American exceptionalism is often construed as a discredited Cold War–era belief structure, Spanos persuasively demonstrates how it operationalizes an apparatus of biopolitical capture that saturates the American body politic down to its capillaries. The exceptionalism that Redeemer Nation in the Interregnum renders starkly visible is not a corrigible ideological screen. It is a deeply structured ethos that functions simultaneously on ontological, moral, economic, racial, gendered, and political registers as the American Calling. Precisely by refusing to answer the American Calling, by rendering inoperative (in Agamben’s sense) its covenantal summons, Spanos enables us to imagine an alternative America. At once timely and personal, Spanos’s meditation acknowledges the priority of being. He emphasizes the dignity not simply of humanity but of all phenomena on the continuum of being, “the groundless ground of any political formation that would claim the name of democracy.”Less
Redeemer Nation in the Interregnum interrogates the polyvalent role that American exceptionalism continues to play after 9/11. Whereas American exceptionalism is often construed as a discredited Cold War–era belief structure, Spanos persuasively demonstrates how it operationalizes an apparatus of biopolitical capture that saturates the American body politic down to its capillaries. The exceptionalism that Redeemer Nation in the Interregnum renders starkly visible is not a corrigible ideological screen. It is a deeply structured ethos that functions simultaneously on ontological, moral, economic, racial, gendered, and political registers as the American Calling. Precisely by refusing to answer the American Calling, by rendering inoperative (in Agamben’s sense) its covenantal summons, Spanos enables us to imagine an alternative America. At once timely and personal, Spanos’s meditation acknowledges the priority of being. He emphasizes the dignity not simply of humanity but of all phenomena on the continuum of being, “the groundless ground of any political formation that would claim the name of democracy.”
Akiba J. Lerner
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780823267910
- eISBN:
- 9780823272433
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823267910.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, American Politics
This is a book about our need for redemptive narratives to ward off despair and the dangers these same narratives create by raising expectations that are seldom fulfilled. This book also explores the ...
More
This is a book about our need for redemptive narratives to ward off despair and the dangers these same narratives create by raising expectations that are seldom fulfilled. This book also explores the dialectical tension between the need and dangers of redemptive hope narratives by bringing together secular liberal democratic thought—as found within the work of late neo-pragmatic philosopher Richard Rorty—with religious liberal thinkers—such as Martin Buber and Ernst Bloch—for the purpose of exploring the contested intellectual history of redemptive hope narratives. This book begins by tracing the history of the tension between thinkers who have taken a theistic approach to hope by linking it to a transcendental signifier—usually God—versus those intellectuals who have striven to link hopes for redemption to our inter-subjective interactions with other human beings. Starting with Richard Rorty’s proposal for a postmetaphysical ideal of social hope, this book brings together modern Jewish thinkers—such as Martin Buber and Ernst Bloch—with debates over religion and liberalism in contemporary democratic culture. In the twenty-first century, secular liberal culture needs elements of religion to survive, and conversely religion cannot thrive without adopting insights from secular thought, particularly from thinkers like Rorty and Habermas. Bringing together these different thinkers and traditions allows us to better appreciate how maintaining rather than seeking to overcome the dialectical tensions between religious and liberal thought can actually provide a new redemptive narrative for the twenty-first century.Less
This is a book about our need for redemptive narratives to ward off despair and the dangers these same narratives create by raising expectations that are seldom fulfilled. This book also explores the dialectical tension between the need and dangers of redemptive hope narratives by bringing together secular liberal democratic thought—as found within the work of late neo-pragmatic philosopher Richard Rorty—with religious liberal thinkers—such as Martin Buber and Ernst Bloch—for the purpose of exploring the contested intellectual history of redemptive hope narratives. This book begins by tracing the history of the tension between thinkers who have taken a theistic approach to hope by linking it to a transcendental signifier—usually God—versus those intellectuals who have striven to link hopes for redemption to our inter-subjective interactions with other human beings. Starting with Richard Rorty’s proposal for a postmetaphysical ideal of social hope, this book brings together modern Jewish thinkers—such as Martin Buber and Ernst Bloch—with debates over religion and liberalism in contemporary democratic culture. In the twenty-first century, secular liberal culture needs elements of religion to survive, and conversely religion cannot thrive without adopting insights from secular thought, particularly from thinkers like Rorty and Habermas. Bringing together these different thinkers and traditions allows us to better appreciate how maintaining rather than seeking to overcome the dialectical tensions between religious and liberal thought can actually provide a new redemptive narrative for the twenty-first century.
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