상세정보

언제부터 우리는 다양한 사회 문제들의 원인을, 불평등과 부정의가 아닌 “불관용”에서 찾게 된 것일까? 언제부터 우리는 사회 문제의 해결을 위해 사회적 변화나 평등이 아닌 개인과 권력의 관용을 호소하는 것에 익숙해진 것일까? 웬디 브라운의 <관용:다문화 제국의 새로운 통치전략>은 이러한 질문에 대한 상세한 답변이라고 할 수 있다.

오늘날 가장 주목받는 정치이론가 중 한 명인 저자는, 우리 시대의 윤리적 이상이자 선으로 칭송받는 관용의 어두운 면을 들춰내고, 최근 20여 년 간 전 세계적으로 부흥한 관용 담론이 생산하는 탈정치적 효과에 대해 상세히 파헤친다.

"This is a brilliant book. Wendy Brown has made the reader understand 'tolerance' in a new and more provocative way. Alerting us to its genealogy, she demonstrates the ambiguity of any politics that seeks to found itself on this much-touted liberal virtue. Regulating Aversion is a remarkable--and remarkably rigorous--contribution to the considerable literature on tolerance and the limits of the tolerable. Anyone wanting to think seriously about multiculturalism, cosmopolitanism, and democratic pluralism in our time must read it."--Talal Asad, CUNY Graduate Center"Wendy Brown's Regulating Aversion is clear, rigorous, and unusually bold in an academic atmosphere that is now far from sympathetic to its kind of radical critique. Brown has done a wonderful job of orchestrating her argument, and it has been articulated with wit. The book is a worthy successor to her best and most politically astute contributions. This is an important work."--Paul Gilroy, London School of Economics"In this fascinating and provocative book, Brown brings into sharp analytical focus a perplexing phenomenon: in political discourse since the late twentieth century, both the objects and content of tolerance have shifted. The sweep of Brown's analysis is impressive: she deftly weaves together critiques of contemporary politics with thoughtful explorations of the history of liberal thought on tolerance."--Melissa Williams, University of Toronto

Tolerance is generally regarded as an unqualified achievement of the modern West. Emerging in early modern Europe to defuse violent religious conflict and reduce persecution, tolerance today is hailed as a key to decreasing conflict across a wide range of other dividing lines-- cultural, racial, ethnic, and sexual. But, as political theorist Wendy Brown argues in Regulating Aversion, tolerance also has dark and troubling undercurrents.


Dislike, disapproval, and regulation lurk at the heart of tolerance. To tolerate is not to affirm but to conditionally allow what is unwanted or deviant. And, although presented as an alternative to violence, tolerance can play a part in justifying violence--dramatically so in the war in Iraq and the War on Terror. Wielded, especially since 9/11, as a way of distinguishing a civilized West from a barbaric Islam, tolerance is paradoxically underwriting Western imperialism.


Brown's analysis of the history and contemporary life of tolerance reveals it in a startlingly unfamiliar guise. Heavy with norms and consolidating the dominance of the powerful, tolerance sustains the abjection of the tolerated and equates the intolerant with the barbaric. Examining the operation of tolerance in contexts as different as the War on Terror, campaigns for gay rights, and the Los Angeles Museum of Tolerance, Brown traces the operation of tolerance in contemporary struggles over identity, citizenship, and civilization.

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