Through postcolonial studies, indigenous perspectives are finally being heard, challenging various Western views of the world. However, these challenges are often made in the same moralizing voice as the original colonizations were justified. In keeping with the moralizing-resistant perspectives of Foucault, Benjamin and Derrida The Politics of Moralizing issues a warning about the risks of speaking, writing and thinking in a manner too confident about you own judgments. Can a clear line be drawn between dogmatism and simple certainty and indignation? This collection starts by questioning what has become a popular, even pervasive, cultural narrative told by both the left and the right-the story of the West's moral decline, degeneration or confusion. Beyond declaiming the perils of this approach, each essay goes on to experiment with strategies for warding off moralistic tendencies and effects within our own texts and actions. Contributors even explore the dynamics and dilemmas of moralizing by advocates of liberal causes, including patriotism, environmental protection and women's rights.
The Politics of Moralizing argues that taking the so-called moral high ground gives free license to self-aggrandizement, cruelty, vengeance and punitiveness and a generalized resistance to or abjection of diversity.
Through postcolonial studies, indigenous perspectives are finally being heard, challenging various Western views of the world. However, these challenges are often made in the same moralizing voice as the original colonizations were justified. In keeping with the moralizing-resistant perspectives of Foucault, Benjamin and Derrida The Politics of Moralizing issues a warning about the risks of speaking, writing and thinking in a manner too confident about you own judgments. Can a clear line be drawn between dogmatism and simple certainty and indignation? This collection starts by questioning what has become a popular, even pervasive, cultural narrative told by both the left and the right-the story of the West's moral decline, degeneration or confusion. Beyond declaiming the perils of this approach, each essay goes on to experiment with strategies for warding off moralistic tendencies and effects within our own texts and actions. Contributors even explore the dynamics and dilemmas of moralizing by advocates of liberal causes, including patriotism, environmental protection and women's rights.
The Politics of Moralizing argues that taking the so-called moral high ground gives free license to self-aggrandizement, cruelty, vengeance and punitiveness and a generalized resistance to or abjection of diversity.
Introduction, Jane Bennett and Michael J. Shapiro,The Moraline Drift, Jane Bennett,Generating a Virtuous Circle: Democratic Identity, Moralism, and the Languages of Political Responsibility, Alan Keenan,Political not Patriotic: Democracy, Civic space, and the American Memorial/Monument Complex, Steven Johnston,Autobiography and Cultivating the Arts of the Female Self, Ann Curthoys,The Tragedy of the Ethical Commons: Demoralizing Environmentalism, William Chaloupka,Out for a Walk, Helen Liggett,Just the facts, Please: Why Civil Society Does Not Need Moral Truths, Jill Locke,The challenge of Polytheism: Moses, Spinoza and Freud, John Docker,Affirming the Political: Tragic Affirmations vs. Gothic Displacements, Michael J. Shapiro,Contributors
Michael Shapiro is Professor of Political Science at the University of Hawaii. Jane Bennett is Professor of Political Science at Goucher College.
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