States of Injury: Power and Freedom in Late Modernity

by Wendy Brown

Book Overview

Whether in characterizing Catharine MacKinnon's theory of gender as itself pornographic or in identifying liberalism as unable to make good on its promises, Wendy Brown pursues a central question: how does a sense of woundedness become the basis for a sense of identity? Brown argues that efforts to outlaw hate speech and pornography powerfully legitimize the state: such apparently well-intentioned attempts harm victims further by portraying them...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 069102989X
• ISBN13: 9780691029894
• Release Date: July 1995
• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.72 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Intellectually exciting

This book looks at how gender and the political theories of our time (liberalism, theories of the state, Foucault, etc.) intersect. I have only read three of the chapters so far, which are self-contained, and I enjoyed them very much. Brown's response to Catherine MacKinnon is especially well-argued and helpful: she draws out how Marxism influences MacKinnon's thought, and then shows how Mackinnon's thought demonstrates the extent to which freedom for women can be incompatible with freedom in general. The prose could be better.