Crisis of Authority
Crisis of Authority
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Contemporary social and political theory has reached an impasse about a problem that had once seemed straightforward: how can individuals make ethical judgments about power and politics? Crisis of Authority analyzes the practices that bind authority, trust, and truthfulness in contemporary theory and politics. Drawing on newly available archival materials, Nancy Luxon locates two models for such practices in Sigmund Freud's writings on psychoanalytic technique and Michel Foucault's unpublished lectures on the ancient ethical practices of “fearless speech,” or parrhesia. Luxon argues that the dynamics provoked by the figures of psychoanalyst and truth-teller are central to this process. Her account offers a more supple understanding of the modern ethical subject and new insights into political authority and authorship.
- Offers a novel reading of Freud and Foucault alongside, rather than against, one another
- Recovers resources for ethical and political agency
- Draws on newly available archival materials
Product details
- Published: No date available
- Format: Adobe eBook Reader
- ISBN: 9781107440074
- Length: 0 pages
- Weight: 0kg
- Contains: 1 b/w illus.
- Availability: This ISBN is for an eBook version which is distributed on our behalf by a third party.
Table of Contents
- 1. Authority and its discontents
- 2. Risk and resistance
- 3. Conversations with the unknown
- 4. What is an author(ity)?
- 5. The authorial subject
- 6. Audiences and the proliferation of meaning
- 7. Breaking the frame, composing the event.
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