At a time when the political Left have watched the apparent decline of socialism, and with it the cynical rejection of political hope, the question of how to rethink political transformation has become a pressing question. In "Transformations", Drucilla Cornell offers a conception of recollective imagination which allows us to preserve and re-articulate the tradition of critical social theory. Cornell argues that psychoanalysis must play a role in social theory because we need to understand the connection between our constitution, as gendered subjects, and social, political and legal transformation. Cornell argues that we cannot escape confronting the question of how the subject is constituted if we are to provide a new conception of transformative possibility and radical change. According to Cornell, feminism demands conception of the subject as crucial to any radical politics and even to legal reform. As a result, traditional conceptions of the public private divide must be challenged. Cornell points out, for example, that we cannot even understand racism and the connection between race and gender, let alone politically fight against racism, unless we develop a view of the work of culture that allows us to grapple with such issues. This work combines the insights of recent feminist and critical theory with the concerns for social change.

Transformations: Recollective Imagination and Sexual Difference

Literature & Fiction

Drucilla Cornell

History & Criticism

Routledge

Symbolic Forms for a New Humanity: Cultural and Racial Reconfigurations of Critical Theory (Just Ideas)

In dialogue with afro-caribbean philosophy, this book seeks in Cassirer’s philosophy of symbolic forms a new vocabulary for approaching central intellectual and political issues of our time. For Cassirer, what makes humans unique is that we are symbolizing creatures destined to come into a world through varied symbolic forms; we pluralistically work with and develop these forms as we struggle to come to terms with who we are and our place in the universe. This approach can be used as a powerful challenge to hegemonic modes of study that mistakenly place the Western world at the center of intellectual and political life. Indeed, the authors argue that the symbolic dimension of Cassirer’s thinking of possibility can be linked to a symbolic dimension in revolution via the ideas of Frantz Fanon, who argued that revolution must be a thoroughgoing cultural process, in which what is at stake is nothing less than how we symbolize a new humanity and bring into being a new set of social institutions worthy of that new humanity.

Politics & Social Sciences

Kenneth Michael Panfilio

Philosophy

Fordham University Press

The Philosophy of the Limit

Taylor&Francis

The Imaginary Domain

The Imaginary Domain: Abortion, Pornography and Sexual Harrassment

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Books by Drucilla Cornell