The Power of Tolerance: A DebateWe invoke the ideal of tolerance in response to conflict, but what does it mean to answer conflict with a call for tolerance? Is tolerance a way of resolving conflicts or a means of sustaining them? Does it transform conflicts into productive tensions, or does it perpetuate underlying power relations? To what extent does tolerance hide its involvement with power and act as a form of depoliticization? Wendy Brown and Rainer Forst debate the uses and misuses of tolerance, an exchange that highlights the fundamental differences in their critical practice despite a number of political similarities. Both scholars address the normative premises, limits, and political implications of various conceptions of tolerance. Brown offers a genealogical critique of contemporary discourses on tolerance in Western liberal societies, focusing on their inherent ties to colonialism and imperialism, and Forst reconstructs an intellectual history of tolerance that attempts to redeem its political virtue in democratic societies. Brown and Forst work from different perspectives and traditions, yet they each remain wary of the subjection and abnegation embodied in toleration discourses, among other issues. The result is a dialogue rich in critical and conceptual reflections on power, justice, discourse, rationality, and identity. |
Contents
Editorial Note
| 7 |
A Debate Between Wendy Brown and Rainer Forst | 9 |
Tensions in Tolerance by Luca Di Blasi and Christoph F E Holzhey
| 71 |
Notes on the Contributors
| 103 |
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accept Age of Identity agree analysis ance anTke engel argue audience laughs Axel Honneth Boris Groys Brown and Forst Brown and Rainer Christoph F. E. Holzhey conception of tolerance Critical Theory critique of tolerance Cultural Inquiry debate democratic justice depoliticization discourse of tolerance equality erance ethical example form of toleration gay marriage gestalt switch going headscarf hegemonic Herbert Marcuse homosexual Ibid intolerance issue Jacques Rancière Kant liberal Luca Di Blasi Manichaeism mean Monarchomachs moral multistable figures norms notion of tolerance objection component okay one’s paradox permission conception political discourse positive Power of Tolerance power relations practice of tolerance Princeton ques question rainer forsT rational reasons Regulating Aversion rejection Repressive Tolerance respect conception Robert Paul Wolff same-sex marriage secularism sense social society speak of tolerance tension term things tion tolerance discourse Toleranz Toleration in Conflict understanding of tolerance University Press wenDy Brown Wendy’s wonder