Thinking Past Terror

Islamism and Critical Theory on the Left

Browse Return to Previous Page       Related Subjects All Subjects Critical Theory/Marxism Cultural Studies Political Science/Sociology

by Susan Buck-Morss

Verso

Due/Published July 2003, 160 pages, cloth

ISBN 1859845851

Buck-Morss argues that a global public needs to think past the twin insanities of terrorism and counter-terrorism in order to dismantle regressive intellectual barriers. Surveying the widespread literature on the relationship of Islam to modernity, she reveals that there is surprising overlap where scholars commonly and simplistically see antithesis. Thinking Past Terror situates this engagement with the study of Islam among critical contemporary discourses—feminism, post-colonialism and the critique of determinism.

Reminding us that domination and consensus are maintained not by the lack of opposing ideas but by the disorganization of dissent, Thinking Past Terror presents the empowering idea of a global counter-culture as a very real possibility. If the language of a global, radically cosmopolitan Left is not presumed but its attainment struggled for, if the Leftist project is itself this struggle, then democracy defines its very core.