Resisting Ethics

Resisting Ethics is a new contribution to an ongoing debate on how the world can be improved. Starting with the notion that resistance and ethics are theoretically and practically intertwined, Schaffer develops a new socially oriented ethics based on the

  • PDF / 1,560,801 Bytes
  • 337 Pages / 334.488 x 558.425 pts Page_size
  • 36 Downloads / 190 Views

DOWNLOAD

REPORT


This page intentionally left blank

Resisting Ethics

Scott Schaffer

RESISTING ETHICS

© Scott Schaffer 2004 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2004 978-1-4039-6443-4 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. First published 2004 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN™ 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 and Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, England RG21 6XS Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-52808-0 ISBN 978-1-4039-8015-1 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9781403980151 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Schaffer, Scott. Resisting ethics / Scott Schaffer. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Social ethics. I. Title.

HM665.S35 2004 303.3’72—dc22

2003060146

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: March 2004 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For those who struggle where I cannot, And for the future.

This page intentionally left blank

Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments

ix

1. Complicity, Ethics, and Resistance

1

2. As Fragile as Glass: Balancing the Individual and the Social

13

3. Methods, Not Recipes: Rethinking Ethics In (and Through) Resistance

67

4. Turning Ourselves on Our Heads: Hegemony and the Colonized Habitus

101

5. Dirty Hands and Making the Human: Fanon, the Algerian Revolution and an Ethics of Freedom

129

6. “For Everyone, Everything”: Social Ethics, Consent, and the Zapatistas

203

7. Toward a Resisting Social Ethics

243

Notes Works Cited Index

273 289 299

This page intentionally left blank

Preface and Acknowledgments

This project, even though I didn’t know it, began on a dare over a decade ago, when someone told me that no one wrote political or social theory on Jean-Paul Sartre anymore. So I didn’t—until 1997, when the real work began on this book. Perhaps a few words are in order as to what this book is not; I leave it to the rest of the work to say what it is. This book resides firmly in the realm of sociology, not philosophy, despite its concerns with ethics and existentialism (something that most sociological theorists gave up on in the 1970s). Part of this is due to my training in the interdisciplinary Graduate Programme in Social and Political Thought, York University, Toronto; part of it is due to my commitment to crossing disciplinary boundaries in the search of integrating forms of knowledge for the betterment of our social lives. The approach I have taken here, though, is designed to represent a conversation between philosophy, sociology, a