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Resisting Ethics is a new contribution to an ongoing debate on how the world can be improved. Starting with the notion that resistance and ethics are theoretically and practically intertwined, Scott Schaffer develops a new socially oriented ethics based on the practical experience of resistance and ethics. Borrowing from and extending the ideas of Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, and Bourdieu, and using case studies of the Algerian Revolution and the Zapatista rebellion, Schaffer argues that existentialism can give us new insights into how we can and should act ethically in the world. Resisting Ethics is a wide-ranging work and represents a new kind of intervention into issues of social justice and resistance.
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Resisting Ethics This page intentionally left blank Resisting Ethics Scott Schaffer RESISTING ETHICS © Scott Schaffer 2004 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. First published 2004 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN™ 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 and Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, England RG21 6XS Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 1–4039–6443–2 hardback Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Schaffer, Scott. Resisting ethics / Scott Schaffer. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1–4039–6443–2 1. Social ethics. I. Title. HM665.S35 2004 303.3’72—dc22 2003060146 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: March 2004 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America. For those who struggle where I cannot, And for the future. This page intentionally left blank Table of Contents Preface and Acknowledgments ix 1. Complicity, Ethics, and Resistance 1 2. As Fragile as Glass: Balancing the Individual and the Social 13 3. Methods, Not Recipes: Rethinking Ethics In (and Through) Resistance 67 4. Turning Ourselves on Our Heads: Hegemony and the Colonized Habitus 101 5. Dirty Hands and Making the Human: Fanon, the Algerian Revolution and an Ethics of Freedom 129 6. “For Everyone, Everything”: Social Ethics, Consent, and the Zapatistas 203 7. Toward a Resisting Social Ethics 243 Notes Works Cited Index 273 289 299 This page intentionally left blank Preface and Acknowledgments This project, even though I didn’t know it, began on a dare over a decade ago, when someone told me that no one wrote political or social theory on Jean-Paul Sartre anymore. So I didn’t—until 1997, when the real work began on this book. Perhaps a few words are in order as to what this book is not; I leave it to the rest of the work to say what it is. This book resides firmly in the realm of sociology, not philosophy, despite its concerns with ethics and existentialism (something that most sociological theorists gave up on in the 1970s). Part of this is due to my training in the interdisciplinary Graduate Programme in Social and Political Thought, York University, Toronto; part of it is due to my commitment to crossing disciplinary boundaries in the search of integrating forms of knowledge for the betterment of our social lives. The approach I have take