Alexis Shotwell.
Against Purity: living ethically in compromised times.
University of Minnesota Press. 2016
The world is in a terrible mess.
It is toxic, irradiated, and full of injustice.
Standing aside from the mess can produce a seemingly satisfying self-righteousness
in the scant moments we achieve it,
but individual purity will always disappoint since it is ultimately impossible.
Might it be better to understand complexity,
and our own complicity in much of what we think of as bad,
as fundamental to our lives?
Against Purity argues that the only answer – if we are to tackle the past, present, and future of colonialism, disease, pollution, and climate change – is a resounding yes. Proposing a powerful conception of social movements as custodians for the past and incubators for liberated futures, Alexis Shotwell draws on theories of race, disability, gender, and animal ethics in an innovative approach to the politics and ethics of responding to systemic problems. The slate has never been clean, she reminds us, and we can't wipe off the surface to start afresh. But hope for new futures is found in distributed ethics, collective activist work, and speculative fiction writing for gender and disability liberation.