Book Review: Marc Guinjoan, Parties, Elections and Electoral Contests: Competition and Contamination Effects
| Date | 01 August 2016 |
| Author | Md Irfan |
| Published date | 01 August 2016 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1478929916654618 |
| Subject Matter | Book ReviewsPolitical Theory |
Political Studies Review 14 (3)
the emergence of a new set of questions and prob-
‘forgiveness’ and ‘hospitality’, for example,
lems in the twenty-first century. Accordingly, as a
emphasise the impurity of responsibility, that
set of in-depth examinations of the kinds of prob-
is, the impossibility of a stable relation to the
lems which must attend any normative project,
Other beyond any political decision. Nancy,
theorists of all stripes should find it useful. As a set
on the other hand, conceives community as a
of immediately pressing questions for deliberative
form of ‘being-together’, where separateness
democrats, it is a ‘must-read’.
and commonality are mutually constitutive, so
eliminating any autonomous space to distin-
Paul Gunn
guish the same from the Other. For Nancy, as
(Goldsmiths, University of London)
for Derrida, ethical relations cannot be cap-
© The Author(s) 2016
tured by a privileged normative principle
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(such as responsibility to the Other) but are
DOI: 10.1177/1478929916654615
psrev.sagepub.com
crafted in and through contingent decisions or
forms of conduct. Thus, Fagan argues in a
final chapter that poststructuralism supplies
Ethics and Politics After Poststructuralism:
not a substantive normative framework but a
Levinas, Derrida and Nancy by Madeleine
critical stance towards the ‘ethico-political’
Fagan. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press,
practices that always-already infuse society.
2013. 195pp., £70.00 (h/b), ISBN 9780748685134
This stance, she claims, works at the limits of
theory, exposing any ethical or political clo-
Poststructuralist philosophies are widely asso-
sure where alterity is disavowed.
ciated with an affirmative orientation towards
Without reference to concrete problems by
alterity – the ‘Other’ that is inevitably excluded,
which to illustrate its analysis, the book charts
repressed or marginalised by relations of...
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