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Whistleblowers
From interviews and support groups for whistleblowers, Alford (government, U. of Maryland) learned that such support is sorely needed because society does not truly value ethical resisters. From a broad perspective encompassing Holocaust rescuer motives and a view of organizations as pitted against moral individualists, he discusses themes in whistleblowers' narratives, their ethics and implications for ethical theory, a political theory of sacrifice, and problems of confidentiality. c. Book News Inc.
What Evil Means to Us
In interviewing working people, prisoners, and college students, the author discovered "a profound, inchoate feeling of dread so overwhelming that they tried to inflict it on others to be rid of it themselves. ... Our society suffers from a paucity of shared narratives and the creative imagination they inspire."--Jacket.
International Law and Sexual Violence in Armed Conflicts
Sexual violence is a particular brand of evil that women have endured—more than men—during armed conflicts, through the ages. It is a menace that has continued to challenge the conscience of humanity—especially in our times. At the international level, basic laws aimed at preventing it are not in short supply. What is needed is a more conscious determination to enforce existing laws. This book explores ways of doing just that; thereby shoring up international legal protection of women from sexual violence in armed conflicts.
Group Psychology and Political Theory
In this innovative book, C. Fred Alford argues that the group - not the individual - is the most fundamental reality in society and that political theory has overlooked the insights of group psychology and leadership. Basing his argument on his experience with the Tavistock model of group learning (named for the institute in England where this method of group study originated), Alford asserts that small, unstructured, leaderless groups are the closest thing to the state of nature that political theorists write about. According to Alford, none of the familiar traditions in political theory - including modern state-of-nature theory, liberalism, communitarianism, postmodernism, and feminist the...
Discourse, Desire, and Fantasy in Jurgen Habermas' Critical Theory
This book argues that Jürgen Habermas’ critical theory can be productively developed by incorporating a wider understanding of fantasy and imagination as part of its conception of communicative rationality and communicative pathologies. Given that meaning is generated both linguistically and performatively, MacKendrick argues that desire and fantasy must be taken into consideration as constitutive aspects of intersubjective relations. His aim is to show that Habermasian social theory might plausibly renew its increasingly severed ties with the early critical theory of the Frankfurt School by taking account of these features of practice life, thus simultaneously rekindling the relevance of the nearly forgotten emancipatory intent in his earlier work and rejuvenating an emphasis on the contemporary critique of reason. This innovative new study will be of interest to those focusing on the early writings of Habermas, the writings of the Frankfurt School, and the relation between critical theory, hermeneutics, and psychoanalysis.
Psychoanalytic Versions of the Human Condition
What is psychoanalysis? Whereas there was once a time when proponents of "mainstream psychoanalysis" could point to the preeminence of Freud's drive theory and the version of the human condition associated with it–man as seeking pleasure in an erotically tinged universe–contemporary psychoanalysis is a fractured and contentious discipline in which competing theories share little more than the basic concepts of unconscious mental processes, repression, and transference. Taking the complexities, ambiguities, and contradictions engendered by psychoanalysis over the past several decades as an encouraging point of departure rather than as evidence of the dissolution of the "psychoanalytic tra...
Evil and Human Agency
Evil is a poorly understood phenomenon. In this provocative 2005 book, Professor Vetlesen argues that to do evil is to intentionally inflict pain on another human being, against his or her will, and causing serious and foreseeable harm. Vetlesen investigates why and in what sort of circumstances such a desire arises, and how it is channeled, or exploited, into collective evildoing. He argues that such evildoing, pitting whole groups against each other, springs from a combination of character, situation, and social structure. By combining a philosophical approach inspired by Hannah Arendt, a psychological approach inspired by C. Fred Alford and a sociological approach inspired by Zygmunt Bauman, and bringing these to bear on the Holocaust and ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia, Vetlesen shows how closely perpetrators, victims, and bystanders interact, and how aspects of human agency are recognized, denied, and projected by different agents.
After the Holocaust
Introduction -- Job, transitional space, and the ruthless use of the object -- Holocaust testimonies : after the silence of Job -- Sisyphus, Levi, and Job at Auschwitz -- Conclusion : beyond the silence of Job
God Now
In these short, accessible essays, Alford writes about the personal “Why I Pray,” as well as the political “Simone Weil and Donald Trump.” He makes some difficult theologians, such as Karl Barth and Søren Kierkegaard, accessible, while not hesitating to criticize them. Alford argues the genius of Christianity is in God making himself vulnerable so as to know what it is to be human; otherwise, God stands at a terrible distance from humanity. From this perspective, Christianity is about the teachings of Christ, and God’s willingness to suffer. The resurrection, so central to most Christians, becomes less important. Myriad religious thinkers are considered, including Albert Camus, Th...
Trauma, Culture, and PTSD
This book examines the social contexts in which trauma is created by those who study it, whether considering the way in which trauma afflicts groups, cultures, and nations, or the way in which trauma is transmitted down the generations. As Alford argues, ours has been called an age of trauma. Yet, neither trauma nor post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are scientific concepts. Trauma has been around forever, even if it was not called that. PTSD is the creation of a group of Vietnam veterans and psychiatrists, designed to help explain the veterans' suffering. This does not detract from the value of PTSD, but sets its historical and social context. The author also confronts the attempt to study trauma scientifically, exploring the use of technologies such as magnetic resonance imagining (MRI). Alford concludes that the scientific study of trauma often reflects a willed ignorance of traumatic experience. In the end, trauma is about suffering.
