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Palgrave Macmillan

Radical Social Change in the United States

Badiou's Apostle and the Post-Factual Moment

  • Book
  • © 2017

Overview

Authors:
  1. Joanna Swanger

    1. Earlham College, Richmond, USA

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  • Locates the present moment in US history within the context of a philosophical and activist history of radicalism
  • Analyzes Alain Badiou’s writings on Saint Paul to find resonances about a break between truth and knowledge, notions of the subject, and possibilities for change
  • Connects its timely political analysis and theoretical readings with discourses of peace studies, conflict analysis, and conflict transformation

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Table of contents (7 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xiii
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  2. Introduction: So Close, and Yet So Far

    • Joanna Swanger
    Pages 1-22

  3. Paul: Patron Saint of the Post-Factual

    • Joanna Swanger
    Pages 23-52

  4. The Lure of the Ancien Regime

    • Joanna Swanger
    Pages 53-90

  5. Nothing but the Truth

    • Joanna Swanger
    Pages 91-133

  6. Nothing Cures Malaise Quite Like Torture

    • Joanna Swanger
    Pages 135-171

  7. To Have Seen Too Much: The 1960s and the Turning of the Camera

    • Joanna Swanger
    Pages 173-222

  8. Now What?

    • Joanna Swanger
    Pages 223-308

  9. Back Matter

    Pages 309-328
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Keywords

About this book

This book tackles the question of why the United States is so resistant to radical change towards economic justice and peace. Taking full stock of the despair that launched the popular support for Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, Swanger historicizes the political paralysis of post-1974 United States that deepened already severe economic inequalities, asking how the terrain for social movements in the early  twenty-first-century US differs from that of the 1960s.  This terrain is marked by the entrenchment of neoliberalism, anti-intellectualism, and difficulties paradoxically posed by the ease of social media. Activists now must contend with a paralyzing “post-factual” moment. Alain Badiou’s thought informs this book on breaking through contemporary political paralysis.  

Reviews

“Professor Swanger’s Radical Social Change in the United States offers a timely and essential re-thinking of twenty-first century social movements that will become required reading for anyone interested in social movement theory, conflict and peace studies, and the struggle for a more just world.  Swanger historicizes social movements in the context of the ‘post-factual’ moment, a theoretical move that liberates our conceptualization of radical change from the despair of contemporary crises.  The result is a manifesto for the possible.” (Glen David Kuecker, Professor of History, DePauw University, USA)

Authors and Affiliations

  • Earlham College, Richmond, USA

    Joanna Swanger

About the author

Joanna Swanger is Associate Professor and Director of the Peace and Global Studies Program at Earlham College, USA. Her most recent publication is Rebel Lands of Cuba: The Campesino Struggles of Oriente and Escambray, 1934-1974 (2015).  Her scholarly work focuses on the intersection of social justice movements and resistance encountered by those movements. 

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