Through stories, conversations, and essays, this book pursues interwoven critical and philosophical inquiries into the nature of the contemporary in the North Atlantic, asking how are we to live as intellectuals, individually and in community?
Social Thought From the Ruins: Quixote’s Dinner Party is the product of informal discussion and academic work done over the last two decades among an international group of social scientists. An extended critique of academic life today and the context of our own thinking, this book interrogates aspects of our modernity, with its pervasive sense of crisis and uncertainty, and the difficulty of thinking clearly about things like the state and power, data and violence. Reflecting that the United States, indeed the North Atlantic countries, seem to have entered autumn, David A. Westbrook asks what spring might be. Will the critical social sciences have anything to offer the exercise of power, or are we doomed to incessant and ineffectual critique? Can bureaucracy be made at least more accountable, if not democratic? Conversely, can we feel less alienated from the structures of power that rule us, or that fail to govern at all? Can we feel at home?
The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 license.
Table of Contents:
Introduction, Beginning: An Invitation to a Dinner Party, Part I Crises of Meaning, 1. Ruins, 2. Our Times Are Strange, 3. Making the Contemporary Legible, 4. Hope(less), 5. Notes from Underground, Part II Curiosity, 6. Curiosity Outside and Inside the University, 7. The (In)tractable Future, 8. Power I: A Critique of Received Narratives, 9. Power II: Model Wars, 10. Data and Conversation, Part III Powerful Subjects, 11. Why Do You Want to Talk to Us?, 12. Reflection, 13. Translation, 14. Legitimation, 15. Education, Part IV New Buildings from Old Stones, 16. Old Stones, 17. Teaching, 18. Getting There, 19. To “Theory” and Back, 20. A Seat at the Table, Part V Hopes, 21. Caritas in the People’s University, Part V Hopes 22. Humanizing Bureaucracy, 23. Café Intellectuals, 24. Philosophy in the Marketplace, Ending: Books of Dreams
About the Author :
David A. Westbrook is Louis A. Del Cotto Professor, University at Buffalo School of Law, State University of New York. His books include Navigators of the Contemporary: Why Ethnography Matters, Getting Through Security: Counterterrorism, Bureaucracy, and a Sense of the Modern (with Mark Maguire), and City of Gold: An Apology for Global Capitalism in a Time of Discontent.
Review :
“How can those of us with intellectual inclinations lead secure and fulfilling lives today? And if neither the University nor the world beyond it can sustain intellectual activity — aside from research for medicine and technology, that is — then what is the point in nurturing such aspirations anyway? These questions are explored with wit and imagination in a new book by David A. Westbrook, Social Thought From the Ruins.”
Wessie du Toit, in UnHerd
“As a theater maker, and curator of spaces and people, I found Westbrook's insights and theories about constructing and deconstructing institutions useful, in the highest sense of the word.”
Matthew Gasda, Playwright and Founder, Brooklyn Center for Theater Research
“This is Westbrook at his best: sparkling insights, surprising connections, dashes of humor, and thought-provoking reflections.”
Mary Ann Glendon, Harvard Law School, and former US Ambassador to the Holy See
“A deeply thoughtful, genre-blurring meditation on the collapse of meaning in our data-saturated age.”
Erik J. Larson, computer scientist and author of The Myth of AI
“Returning with passion to several key themes in his past writing, Bert Westbrook, navigator of the contemporary and quixotic dinner companion extraordinaire, evokes a structure of feeling that is acutely uncomfortable for those of us caught within bureaucratic universities, persecuted by their patron state.”
George E. Marcus, UC Irvine, co-author of Anthropology as Cultural Critique
“The reader will be at once thrilled and puzzled, charmed and stunned, inspired and challenged—and much more. This is a book written by a serious academic like non-other I know of. But what I do know is that his mastery of English and its literatures allows him to write as a poet. Poetry becomes what the poet means it to be—sometimes sad, often beautiful. It makes sense only after the reader ponders, goes back, thinks, and feels what its words captured and broadcast.”
Charles Lemert, from the Foreword
“This fascinating book ends by inviting readers to begin again. To do what? To be engaged in imaging a second spring, no less. Via a set of erudite, quirky, and controversial reflections on the erosion of meaning in key institutions, from the polity to the university, Westbrook invites readers to partake in conversations about freedom and security as well as knowledge and intellectuals. . . . I found myself deeply engaged and so will you. Perhaps we will even dare to begin again.}
Francisco O. Ramirez, Stanford University, Education
