Edgework: Critical Essays on Knowledge and Politics

by Wendy Brown

Edgework brings together seven of Wendy Brown's most provocative recent essays in political and cultural theory. They range from explorations of politics post-9/11 to critical reflections on the academic norms governing feminist studies and political theory. Edgework is also concerned with the intellectual and political value of critique itself. It renders contemporary the ancient jurisprudential meaning of critique as krisis, in which a tear in the fabric of justice becomes the occasion of a public sifting or thoughtfulness, the development of criteria for judgment, and the inauguration of political renewal or restoration. Each essay probes a contemporary problem--the charge of being unpatriotic for dissenting from U.S. foreign policy, the erosion of liberal democracy by neoliberal political rationality, feminism's loss of a revolutionary horizon--and seeks to grasp the intellectual impasse the problem signals as well as the political incitement it may harbor.

Genres: Philosophy, Politics, Nonfiction, Feminism, Theory

176 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Wendy L. Brown is an American political theorist. She is Class of 1963 First Professor of Political Science and a core faculty member in The Program for Critical Theory at the University of California, Berkeley.

Reviews

[Sofia Cimballa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Book I learned the most from this year. Even though all the essays are 20ish years old. More fun to read than I anticipated. Favorite essay is "Freedom's Silences"

[Janice]

Good reflection.

[Alexander · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a left political theorist steeped in the world of post-structuralism and high theory more generally, there are few who might be able to claim the mantle of working ‘at the edge’ more so than Wendy Brown. It's little surprise then, that this collection marks something of a sustained inquiry into just that state, a set of reflections not just from the edge, but of that edge itself. Shot through with a pathos of self-reflection, the essays here largely take up, in one way or another, the value(s) of critical and political theory: why practice critical theory today? What kind of future does, or should, political theory have? Should ‘woman’s studies’ remain a field of study? And what of feminism? It’s questions of this kind that animate the inquiries within, questions not always asked in the tumult of political critique, but here placed front and centre with no less the feel of urgency and necessity.

Indeed, for anyone who’s ever been asked the question: ‘but what the point of all that stuff you do?!’ (and I’m thinking of us Theory-addled obsessives here), Brown’s book serves as not only a handbook of reply, but as a caution against answering too hastily too. Against those who would demand that theory act as a mirror to the world, reflecting it according to the metric of truth, its real function, for Brown, lies in just the opposite: “theory depicts a world that does not quite exist, a world that is not quite the one we inhabit… [it] conjures relations and meanings that illuminate the real or that help us recognize the real, but ... in grammars and formulations other than those of the real.” As such, “theory is never ‘accurate’ or ‘wrong’; it is only more or less illuminating, more or less provocative, more or less an incitement to thought, imagination, desire, possibilities for renewal.”

Amplifying just these ‘incitements’ and their implications across its pages, Edgework ranges across Socratic philosophy, Foucualdian discourse analysis, and political diagnosis (see especially the essay on "Neoliberalism and the End of Liberal Democracy” - the seed of what was to became Brown’s recently published ‘Undoing the Demos’), in order to provide an experience of critical theory that hits almost all the right spots. While some of the writing here bats a little too squarely at issues ‘internal' to the academe to be of general interest, Brown writes with a sparkle of both clarity and spirit that make even her most ‘provincial’ discussions seem to take on stakes far beyond their sweep. A lovely, brave book for all those who, in the words of Arendt, want to ‘think what we are doing’.

[Sara-Maria · Rating 4 out of 5]

wendy brown is super astute. here is the quote that brought me to this collection:

"The death of a promise is like no other because a promise is incorporeal;there is no body to claim, to bid farewell, to bury (which is why the Left argues incessantly over what the body is). In mourning a dead promise, a promise that no longer is one, we mourn ‘the disappeared’; this is a perpetual and ungratified mourning that reaches in vain for closure. The very object that we mourn—the opening of a different future, the ideal illuminating that future—has vanished. So we cannot even see or say what we mourn, gather at the site of its disappearance, weep over its remains, hold its lively embodiment in our memory as we must if the mourning is to come to an end. This is a mourning that inevitably becomes melancholia—as the loved and lost promise becomes nameless and unfathomable in a present that cancels and even mocks it, its disappearance is secured by this loss of a name and so also is our inconsolability. Melancholia too because if
we experience the promise as not simply dead but betrayed, we are divided against our love for it--love betrayed but not given up is love that literally does not know where to house itself" (104).

[Fritzie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just love her discussion of what is theory, why is it hard to be a theorist, and how the real value and beauty of theory is the fact that it depicts a world that does not exist, which allows us to imagine and hope for something better than the world we do have or to give voice to this desire that hopefully will become reality. I find her discussion of theory very consoling. I am a huge fan of her works. She is absolutely brilliant!

[Lyndon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brown works the discourse of critique with precision and acumen. Topics both political and intellectual are opened up for analysis and treated to a host of thoughtful probings that bring forth fruit in the often surprising manner of eliciting deeper appreciation for the topic under scrutiny. Whether the topic is the place of 'time' in critique, or the question of women studies program in the academy, Brown schools the reader in the place of constructive focus for the common good.

[Katie Edmonds · Rating 5 out of 5]

essential.

[Ryan Hickey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brown is one of the clearest leftist thinkers of today. Her work on political theory, feminist theory, Foucault, and identity are accessible and ever-intriguing. One of her best works, in my opinion.

[graceofgod · Rating 4 out of 5]

Her essay on silence is absolutely marvelous.