The Politics of Vulnerability

Vulnerability is a concept with fleeting contours as much it is an idea with assured academic success. This book shows that by questioning our hegemonic anthropology and by redefining the political subject - vulnerability, far from being conservative or a-political, works to undo the world such as it is. It was originally published as a special issue of Critical Horizons.

1. Introduction: Vulnerability: A Concept with Which to Undo the World As It Is? 2. The Rise of Uncertainties 3. The Boundaries of the "We:" Cruelty, Responsibility and Forms of Life 4. "On the Whole We Don't:" Michel Foucault, Veena Das and Sexual Violence 5. Politics of Vulnerability and Responsibility for Ordinary Others 6. The Vulnerable and the Political: On the Seeming Impossibility of Thinking Vulnerability and the Political Together and Its Consequences 7. Accounts of Injury as Misappropriations of Race: Towards a Critical Black Politics of Vulnerability 8. All of Us Are Vulnerable, But Some Are More Vulnerable than Others: The Political Ambiguity of Vulnerability Studies, an Ambivalent Critique