Description
Book SynopsisExamining the operation of tolerance in contexts as different as the War on Terror, campaigns for gay rights, and the Los Angeles Museum of Tolerance, this book traces the operation of tolerance in contemporary struggles over identity, citizenship, and civilization.
Trade Review"The triumph of toleration as the central liberal value, and the attendant inability of liberals to see the dark side of their favorite virtue, is the subject of Wendy Brown's insightful and illuminating new book... I find the analysis trenchant and the critique persuasive."--Stanley Fish, Chronicle of Higher Education "This is a remarkable book ... made attractive by its passion, the lucidity of its negative critique, and its intelligence."--John Hall, Social Forces "Wendy Brown has produced a richly textured and timely analysis of some of the darker elements lurking beneath the tolerance discourse of western liberalism."--Vincent Geoghegan, American Review of Politics "[This is a] bold, erudite, and timely study."--Ely Aharonson, Criminal Law and Philosophy "Regulating Aversion is a forceful and, in many places, convincing attempt to account for the contemporary relevance and meanings of tolerance within liberalism in the West, and in the United States in particular."--Emily Grabham, Feminist Legal Studies "The strength of Brown's book is her trenchant deconstructions of the universalizing pretenses of tolerance specifically and liberal discourse more generally. Brown's intervention successfully jars tolerance loose from the hallowed transhistorical ground on which it usually rests."--C. Michael Hurst, Cultural Critique
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Chapter 1: Tolerance as a Discourse of Depoliticization 1 Chapter 2: Tolerance as a Discourse of Power 25 Chapter 3: Tolerance as Supplement The "Jewish Question" and the "Woman Question" 48 Chapter 4: Tolerance as Governmentality Faltering Universalism, State Legitimacy, and State Violence 78 Chapter 5: Tolerance as Museum Object The Simon Wiesenthal Center Museum of Tolerance 107 Chapter 6: Subjects of Tolerance Why We Are Civilized and They Are the Barbarians 149 Chapter 7: Tolerance as/in Civilizational Discourse 176 Notes 207 Index 259