Cover image for Power, Neoliberalism, and the Reinvention of Politics: The Critical Theory of Wendy Brown Edited by Amy Allen and Eduardo Mendieta

Power, Neoliberalism, and the Reinvention of Politics

The Critical Theory of Wendy Brown

Edited by Amy Allen and Eduardo Mendieta

Buy

$29.95 | Paperback Edition
ISBN: 978-0-271-09334-5

204 pages
5.5" × 8.5"
2022

Penn State Series in Critical Theory

Power, Neoliberalism, and the Reinvention of Politics

The Critical Theory of Wendy Brown

Edited by Amy Allen and Eduardo Mendieta

Wendy Brown is one of the most prolific and influential political theorists of her generation. This collection of essays, designed for the undergraduate classroom, presents an introduction to and critical assessment of Brown’s substantial body of work, with a particular focus on her contributions to the tradition of critical theory.

 

  • Description
  • Bio
  • Table of Contents
  • Sample Chapters
  • Subjects
Wendy Brown is one of the most prolific and influential political theorists of her generation. This collection of essays, designed for the undergraduate classroom, presents an introduction to and critical assessment of Brown’s substantial body of work, with a particular focus on her contributions to the tradition of critical theory.

Coeditors Amy Allen and Eduardo Mendieta provide an overview of Brown’s work, situating her scholarship in relation to some of the major thinkers and methodologies of the Frankfurt School. Brown opens the discussion with a new essay expounding upon the meaning of freedom and the prospects for emancipation in our current political moment. Subsequent chapters address different aspects of Brown’s corpus, including her early feminist interpretation of the history of political theory, her influential critiques of identity politics and progressive philosophies of history, and her recent interrogation of the rise of neoliberalism and the resurgence of authoritarian politics. The volume concludes with Brown’s response to her critics, where she clarifies and expands upon the implications of her core ideas.

In addition to Brown and the editors, the contributors to this volume include Robin Celikates, Loren Goldman, Asad Haider, Robyn Marasco, and Johanna Oksala.

Amy Allen is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at The Pennsylvania State University.

Eduardo Mendieta is Professor of Philosophy and Latina/o Studies and affiliated faculty at the School of International Affairs and in the Bioethics Program at The Pennsylvania State University.

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1. Introduction

Amy Allen and Eduardo Mendieta

Chapter 2. What Is Left of Freedom?

Wendy Brown

Chapter 3. Gender, Politics, and the State: A Feminist Reading of Wendy Brown

Robyn Marasco

Chapter 4. Nonsynchronicity and the Exhaustion of Progress; or, Reading Wendy Brown in Ludwigshafen

Loren Goldman

Chapter 5. Voluntary Subordination: Neoliberal Freedom and Its Femina Domestica

Eduardo Mendieta

Chapter 6. Feminism Against Neoliberalism: Questioning the Political Wendy Brown

Johanna Oksala

Chapter 7. Four Concepts in Depoliticized Politics

Asad Haider

Chapter 8. De-, Hyper-, or Pseudopoliticization? Undoing and Remaking the Demos in the Age of Right-Wing Authoritarianism

Robin Celikates

Chapter 9. Thinking Together: Reply to Critics

Wendy Brown

List of Contributors

Index

Download a PDF sample chapter here: Introduction