Radicalism after Communism? In the United States of America, where even liberalism is under deep suspicion? And what can a privileged white male have to say about it, after the civil rights and women's movements? In this book, Duncan Kennedy argues that an American radicalism is both possible a...

Ausführliche Beschreibung

Bibliographische Detailangaben

1. Verfasser:	Kennedy, Duncan (VerfasserIn)
Format:	Buch
Sprache:	English
Veröffentlicht:	Cambridge, Mass u.a. Harvard Univ. Press 1993
Schlagworte:	Gesellschaft Recht Group identity > United States Law > Social aspects > United States Sex role > United States Sociological jurisprudence Rechtspolitik Gruppenidentität USA United States > Social conditions > 1980- Aufsatzsammlung
Zusammenfassung:	Radicalism after Communism? In the United States of America, where even liberalism is under deep suspicion? And what can a privileged white male have to say about it, after the civil rights and women's movements? In this book, Duncan Kennedy argues that an American radicalism is both possible and desirable. One base for radical politics is the big institutional workplace, where multicultural coalitions around issues like affirmative action can upset frozen hierarchies. But another is popular culture - whence his emphasis on phenomena like sexy dressing. Law provides the background for all kinds of group struggles, Kennedy argues, and law is never neutral. This theme of Critical Legal Studies (Kennedy is one of its founders) runs throughout the book. He shows how legal rules tilt the playing field, making it look as though oppressively unequal outcomes are just what everyone deserved. Cultural identity is one of Kennedy's main concerns He provides a new "postcolonial" reading of American national character as well as responses to black liberation theory and radical feminism. Kennedy asserts that cultural identity is contingent and fluid, at the same time that it is inescapable, and that within it individuals operate as free agents. The system exercises less control over life than we may think; small-scale resistance is always at least a possibility worth trying. In a key chapter Kennedy considers sexy dressing and sexual violence. He argues that the sexual abuse done by some men to some women is a way for all men to keep all women down. If pleasure and danger are used to keep women subordinate, must we renounce the erotic if we are to overcome domination? Kennedy argues that practices like sexy dressing have multiple meanings - some fitting into the false script according to which women invite abuse, but others foreshadowing the eroticization of female autonomy Throughout, Kennedy keeps popular culture and local institutional practice in play with an array of American and European theory. His aim is to wed the rebelliousness, irony, and irrationalism of cultural modernism and postmodernism to the earnestness of political correctness. The result is a refreshing alternative both to the stalemate of mainstream politics and to the self-isolation of the radical fringe
Beschreibung:	XI, 258 S.
ISBN:	0674802942