Crypto-normativism and Double Gestures: The Politics of Post-Structuralism
Author(s)
Anderson, Amanda
Abstract
In this essay I wish to render explicit and to theorize the normative ideals that underlie contemporary critiques of hegemonic constructions of otherness. I will approach the topic through an examination of what is widely regarded as the primary impasse or, in less skeptical formulations, the constitutive tension of post-structuralist thought: the incommensurability between its epistemological stance and its political claims, between its descriptions and its prescriptions, between the pessimism of its intellect and the intrusiveness of its moral and political will.
