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A review by garberdog
States of Injury: Power and Freedom in Late Modernity by Wendy Brown
4.0
Good, but clearly dated. Oddly, the best/most compelling essays were not those for which this book is most famous (eg "Wounded Attachments), which I found to be overly abstract and lacking contemporary relavance, but rather those where Brown most directly engages in explicitly feminist theorizing (eg "The Mirror of Pornography" and "Finding the Man in the State").
As an aside, it's interesting, having now read this book, to note how it circulates in current debates over trigger warnings, the neoliberal university, and related topics. Those who invoke it don't really seem to be engaging with the substance or or nuance of Brown's original arguments, but are instead invoking a quasi-libertarian view of politics, the state, and the subject.
As an aside, it's interesting, having now read this book, to note how it circulates in current debates over trigger warnings, the neoliberal university, and related topics. Those who invoke it don't really seem to be engaging with the substance or or nuance of Brown's original arguments, but are instead invoking a quasi-libertarian view of politics, the state, and the subject.