Main description:

This book explores the precarious nature of life, and the ways in which power, binary ways of thinking and Othering create personal, social and political difficulties. By exploring an array of different concerns -including loss and grief, our relationship to other animals, race and sexuality - contributors explore how attention to our own subjective experience and relational ways of thinking can help manage these difficulties. The many contributing authors go well beyond formulaic academic discourse. They adopt a far more personal and reflective approach to their topic areas. As a result, some chapters are emotional, others political, and some professional. Throughout, readers are offered examples of how useful a reflective stance can be, to understanding some of the more meaningful things in life, or as a corrective to our power based, normative, instructive discourses.

Contents:

Introduction Martin Milton
Part I: What Place Authority?Martin Milton
Rolling in the Muck, Dancing with the Law: A Story of 'Addiction' and the Remaking of a Self JP Marshall
Breaking the RulesAlison Greenwood
Disturbing the Peace: Madame X vs Westminster CouncilMartin Milton
Part II: The Spread of ReductionismMartin Milton
"Objective"-ication: Problems with Treating Judgement as Fact?Helen Damon
Animals: Aren't They Great?Dale Judd
Balancing on Quicksand: Making Sense of What 'The Personal is Political' Means.Miltos Hadjiosif
Part III: Judgement, Discrimination and StigmaMartin Milton
Drama of Phantom HatredParizad Bathai
Reflections of a Junkyard RoomYetunde Ade-Serrano
'I'm Not as Bad as You'Carter Jacobs
Is there something you need to tell us?Julia Brewer?
Part IV: The UncannyMartin Milton
A Refugee in a World without RefugeAnastasios Gaitanidis
An Uncanny ResemblanceElena Manafi
Making the Invisible VisibleMartin Milton
AfterwordMartin Milton
Index