Articulated Experiences Toward a Radical Phenomenology of Contemporary Movements

Analyzes new social movements and their ramifications for social and political theory.

By reexamining the very foundations of everyday acting and thinking and stepping into the open expanse of a possible transition to a postmodern era, this book presents a radical phenomenological approach to the study of contemporary social movements. It offers a theory of acting that refuses to surrender to norms and legislations and thus always intimates a mode of thinking that challenges various manifestations of ultimacy. Vahabzadeh invites us to radically rethink many basic principles that inform our lives, such as the democratic discourse, the concept of rights, liberal democratic regimes, time and epochs, oppression, acting, and the practice of sociology, in an effort to instate a reworked concept of experience in theories about social movements.

?An impressive aspect of this book is the way in which the author cuts across disciplines. He is clearly at home in sociological theory and is well-versed in contemporary philosophy, rhetoric, and literary criticism.? ? Ernesto Laclau, editor of The Making of Political Identities

?This is an excellent analysis of new social movements and their ramifications for social and political theory. The author provides a number of new insights in organizing and interpreting the many theories involved. A first-rate survey.? ? Lawrence Hatab, author of Ethics and Finitude: Heideggerian Contributions to Moral Philosophy

Peyman Vahabzadeh is a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Postdoctoral Fellow of Political Science at the University of Victoria.





Table Of Contents

Acknowledgments


1. What Can New Social Movements Tell about Post-Modernity?


2. Identity and Contemporary Social Movements


3. Identity, Experiential Hegemonies, Urstiftung


4. Articulated Experiences: The Epochal (Trans-)Formations of Identities and Social Movements


5. Technological Liberalism and the Oppressive Categorization of "Transgressive" Actors


6. An Epochal Theory of Action


7. Radical Phenomenology and the Sociology of Possibilities


Notes


Index