Identity politics dominates the organisation of liberation movements today. This is the case whether fighting over one's birthright to a nation, such as in the Palestinian/Israeli conflict; lobbying for civil rights, such as in gay and lesbian campaigns for marriage; or struggling for citizenry recognition as currently experienced by asylum seekers. In this book Carolyn D'Cruz investigates the nexus between what David Birch describes as ’the seemingly impossible of high theory and the seemingly accessible possibilities of popular discourse’, as encountered in liberation movements based on identity. D'Cruz reworks the logic of such movements through the unique combination of Derridean deconstruction, Foucauldian discourse and Levinasian ethics. Moving both within and between the domains of philosophy, politics and ’postmodern culture’ this book offers both a clear explication of complex philosophical issues and an understanding of how they relate to the political practicalities of everyday life.

"Offers a historical-cultural context for the ethos of service in libraries and critically examines this professional value as it intersects with gender, sexuality, race and ethnicity, class, and (dis)ability"--Provided by publisher.

This incisive text provides a concise and reliable guide to the debate on modernity and postmodernity. In particular the work of Lyotard, Beck, Bauman, Baudrillard, Giddens, Jameson and Derrida is critically reviewed.

Using a Derridean deconstruction approach, this book examines the course by which the history of modernity and colonialism has constructed an idea of Ireland, produced more often as a citation than an actuality.

How did Bosnia, once a polity of intersecting and overlapping identities, come to be understood as an intractable ethnic problem? David Campbell pursues this question -- and its implications for the politics of community, democracy, justice, and multiculturalism -- through readings of media and academic representations of the conflict in Bosnia. National Deconstruction is a rethinking of the meaning of "ethnic/nationalist" violence and a critique of the impoverished discourse of identity politics that crippled the international response to the Bosnian crisis. Rather than assuming the preexistence of an entity called Bosnia, Campbell considers the complex array of historical, statistical, cartographic, and other practices through which the definitions of Bosnia have come to be. These practices traverse a continuum of political spaces, from the bodies of individuals and the corporate body of the former Yugoslavia to the international bodies of the world community. Among the book's many original disclosures, arrived at through a critical reading of international diplomacy, is the shared identity politics of the peacemakers and paramilitaries. Equally significant is Campbell's conclusion that the international response to the Bosnian war was hamstrung by the poverty of Western thought on the politics of heterogeneous communities. Indeed, he contends that Europe and the United States intervened in Bosnia not to save the ideal of multiculturalism abroad but rather to shore up the nationalist imaginary so as to contain the ideal of multiculturalism at home. By bringing to the fore the concern with ethics, politics, and responsibility contained in more traditional accounts of the Bosnianwar, this book is a major statement on the inherently ethical and political assumptions of deconstructive thought -- and the reworkings of the politics of community it enables.

'No democracy without deconstruction': Deconstruction and Democracy evaluates and substantiates Derrida's provocative claim, assessing the importance of this influential and controversial contemporary philosopher's work for political thought. Derrida addressed political questions more and more explicitly in his writing, yet there is still confusion over the politics of deconstruction. Alex Thomson argues for a fresh understanding of Derrida's work, which acknowledges both the political dimension of deconstruction and its potential contribution to our thinking about politics. The book provides cogent analysis and exegesis of Derrida's political writings; explores the implications for political theory and practice of Derrida's work; and brings Derrida's work into dialogue with other major strands of contemporary political thought. Deconstruction and Democracy is the clearest and most detailed engagement available with the politics of deconstruction, and is a major contribution to scholarship on the later works of Jacques Derrida, most notably his Politics of Friendship.

The book contributes to the critical evaluation of deconstruction by focusing on the problematic of writing, self and other in the thought of the influential and controversial thinker Jacques Derrida. It examines how these concepts relate to one another in order to analyse systematically the influence that the concept of alterity had in deconstructing a certain idea of subjectivity in Western metaphysics.