Diane Enns

In Care of the World: Fear, Responsibility and Justice in the Global Age, Elena Pulcini makes a strong and urgent claim that vulnerability is a force that motivates us to take care of an ailing world. I explore the limitations of this claim, for vulnerability inspires not only kindness, but also indifference and cruelty, and argue that any discussion of vulnerability needs to take into account the motivating effects of shared power or strength under conditions of crisis. This demands a new appreciation of courage, which I illustrate with reference to Ranabir Samaddar’s analysis of the “public power” of Indian migrant workers during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In Care of the World: Fear, Responsibility and Justice in the Global Age, Elena Pulcini makes a strong and urgent claim that vulnerability is a force that motivates us to take care of an ailing world. I explore the limitations of this claim, for vulnerability inspires not only kindness, but also indifference and cruelty, and argue that any discussion of vulnerability needs to take into account the motivating effects of shared power or strength under conditions of crisis. This demands a new appreciation of courage, which I illustrate with reference to Ranabir Samaddar’s analysis of the “public power” of Indian migrant workers during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Speaking of Freedom analyzes the development of ideas about freedom and politics in contemporary French thought from existentialism to deconstruction, in relation to several of the most prominent twentieth century liberation struggles. It describes the paradox of freedom—that freedom "kills itself" in both thought and practice: in the attempt to theorize the indeterminate, and in the revolution or emancipatory discourse that dies as it hurries towards its utopian conclusion, rejecting one system only to be enslaved by another. Both the philosophical wariness of the concept of liberation that one finds in Foucault and Derrida, and the desire for freedom from oppression expressed by anti-colonialists and feminists, are shown to be necessary for political practice. The book thus provides a cogent analysis of some of the most difficult concepts of contemporary continental philosophy, along with a profound sense of engagement with liberation struggles