Against purity : living ethically in compromised times / Alexis Shotwell.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Shotwell, Alexis, 1974- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Purity (Ethics).

Purity (Philosophy).

Conduct of life.

Civilization, Modern--21st century.

Civilization, Modern.

Physical Description:

236 pages ; 22 cm

Place of Publication:

Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, [2016]

Summary:

The world is in a terrible mess. It is toxic, irradiated, and full of injustice. Standing aside from the mess can produce a seemingly satisfying self-righteousness in the scant moments we achieve it, but individual purity will always disappoint-since: it is ultimately impossible. Might it be better to understand complexity, and our own complicity in much of what we think of as bad, as fundamental to our lives? Against Purity argues that the only answer - if we are to tackle the past, present, and future of colonialism, disease, pollution, and climate change - is a resounding yes. Proposing a powerful conception of social movements as custodians for the past and incubators for liberated futures, Alexis Shotwell draws on theories of race, disability, gender, and animal ethics in an innovative approach to the politics and ethics of responding to systemic problems. The slate has never been clean, she reminds us, and we can't wipe off the surface to start afresh. But hope for new futures is found in distributed ethics, collective activist work, and speculative fiction writing for gender and disability liberation. Book jacket.

Contents:

Complexity and complicity: an introduction to constitutive impurity

Remembering for the future: reckoning with an unjust past

"Women don't get AIDS, they just die from it": memory, classification, and the campaign to change the definition of AIDS

Shimmering presences: frog, toad, and toxic interdependencies

Consuming suffering: eating, energy, and embodied ethics

Practicing freedom: disability and gender transformation

Worlds to come: imagining speculative disability futures

The point, however, is to change it.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Online version: Shotwell, Alexis, 1974- author. Against purity

ISBN:

9780816698622

0816698627

9780816698646

0816698643

OCLC:

951157646