Description
Book SynopsisThis innovative and theoretically sophisticated book investigates how aesthetic judgment forms the groundwork for understanding political identities. It posits aesthetics as central to conceptions of politics that are based on how people understand the relationship between themselves and larger communities. Ferguson focuses not only on how different theoretical conceptions of political judgment relate to one another, but also on their historical development and potential meaning for contemporary scholarship across the humanities and social sciences. Drawing on recent contributions to philosophy, economics, cultural studies, feminism, psychology, and anthropology, The Politics of Judgment demonstrates how modern political identities depend upon and are formed by aesthetic judgment. Political theorists, social scientists, philosophers and cultural critics will find this book especially useful, though general readers will also be attracted by the author''s keen insight into contemporary p
Trade ReviewFor Ferguson, the modern philosophical field of aesthetics can offer political science some valuable and sorely needed lessons. . . . He is clearly on to something big. * American Political Science Review *
Table of ContentsPart 1 Foundation of Political Aesthetics Chapter 2 Claims of Reason, Claims of Thought Chapter 3 The Aesthetics of Dynamite Chapter 4 The World as It Finds Me Part 5 How Poles Get Made: Racial, Performative, and Aesthetic Identities Chapter 6 Racial Orders Chapter 7 Performing the Self Chapter 8 Enigmas of Identity: The Mashpee Chapter 9 Aesthetic Judgment in the Constitution of Group Selves Part 10 Mapping and Unmapping the World: Foreign Policy as Aesthetic Practice Chapter 11 Cartographic Resonances Chapter 12 Building New Ideographs Chapter 13 The Politics of the Multicultural Chapter 14 Social Aesthetics Chapter 15 Aesthetics as Foreign Policy Part 16 Aesthetic Markers: Sex and the Single Subject Chapter 17 Gender and Judgment Chapter 18 Feminism and Wittgenstein Chapter 19 Judgment, Subjects, epistemology Part 20 Contemporary Political Aesthetics Chapter 21 Aesthetic Confederation Chapter 22 Aesthetic Domination Chapter 23 Aesthetic Self-Constitution Chapter 24 Aesthetic Communities Part 25 Conclusion: How to Do Things with Judgments
