95 Theses on Politics, Culture, and Method
In 1517, Martin Luther challenged the orthodoxies of medieval Europe with a quiet but significant act of frustration: he drew up a list of objections to the prevailing theological order, nailed it to the nearby Schlosskirche castle church and invited people to debate it. That document, which became known as his 95 theses, professed to be composed "out of love and concern for the truth, and with the object of eliciting it." With a nod to this ideal, political science professor Norton has drafted her own 95 theses; they too are intended to undermine accepted dogmas, in this case within modern-day social sciences. Her arguments draw upon "structuralism, post-structuralism, post-colonialism, cultural studies, literary theory, institutional analysis and the philosophy of science," and she cites thinkers as diverse as the medieval Tunisian historian Ibn Khaldun and the 20th-century French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. However, readers will quickly discover that this book is not so much a polemic of original ideas as it is a survey of the theoretical and methodological critiques that emerged from the New Left and Continental philosophy during the 1960s. Norton's theses No. 6, "Language is political," and No. 80, "Truth is a cultural category," cover well-known terrain. And occasionally, such rubrics force her to simplify complex issues to the point of tautology. For example, in thesis No. 71, "Names Constitute," she argues that "Choosing whether to call the territories in question 'the occupied territories,' 'the West Bank' or 'Judea and Samaria' provides an indication of the speaker's position on the status of those territories." But Norton, no doubt, is hoping that her arguments will be challenged: she is gracious toward her ideological opponents, and she readily admits that "nothing here is ahead of its time." This kind of intellectual honesty runs throughout her book, making it a welcoming and enthusiastic introduction to the ideas under discussion.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.