Social Thought From the Ruins

An extended critique of academic life today and the context of our own thinking, Social Thought From the Ruins: Quixote's Dinner Party interrogates aspects of our modernity, with its pervasive sense of crisis and uncertainty, and the difficulty of thinking clearly about things like the state and power, data and violence.

David A. Westbrook is Louis A. Del Cotto Professor, University at Buffalo School of Law, State University of New York. His books include Navigators of the Contemporary: Why Ethnography Matters, Getting Through Security: Counterterrorism, Bureaucracy, and a Sense of the Modern (with Mark Maguire), and City of Gold: An Apology for Global Capitalism in a Time of Discontent.

Introduction, Beginning: An Invitation to a Dinner Party, Part I Crises of Meaning, 1. Ruins, 2. Our Times Are Strange, 3. Making the Contemporary Legible, 4. Hope(less), 5. Notes from Underground, Part II Curiosity, 6. Curiosity Outside and Inside the University, 7. The (In)tractable Future, 8. Power I: A Critique of Received Narratives, 9. Power II: Model Wars, 10. Data and Conversation, Part III Powerful Subjects, 11. Why Do You Want to Talk to Us?, 12. Reflection, 13. Translation, 14. Legitimation, 15. Education, Part IV New Buildings from Old Stones, 16. Old Stones, 17. Teaching, 18. Getting There, 19. To "Theory" and Back, 20. A Seat at the Table, Part V Hopes, 21. Caritas in the People's University, Part V Hopes 22. Humanizing Bureaucracy, 23. Café Intellectuals, 24. Philosophy in the Marketplace, Ending: Books of Dreams