Description: Wendy Brown diagnoses a late-modern nihilism that trivializes values--including truth itself--and reduces politics to narcissism and power-mongering. Rereading Max Weber, who saw a similar predicament in his own time, Brown seeks to reground political action in responsibility and reorient classrooms to the critical thinking citizens need today.
Brief description: Wendy Brown is UPS Foundation Professor in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study and was for many years Class of 1936 First Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. Her books, which have been translated into more than twenty languages, include In the Ruins of Neoliberalism, States of Injury, Undoing the Demos, and Walled States, Waning Sovereignty.
Review Quotes: Distinguished political theorist Wendy Brown revisits Weber's lectures, struck by the resonance between our present moment and the plight of Weber's audience. Universities are menaced by political and economic forces, as corrupt but charismatic demagogues reshape the social sphere. Can Weber's stringent inspiration be a guide?--Kieran Setiya "Los Angeles Review of Books" (4/27/2023 12:00:00 AM)