All in the Family: On Community and Incommensurability

By closely observing the attachments that arise in families despite profound disagreements and incommensurabilities, Ferguson argues, we can imagine a political engagement that accommodates radical differences without sacrificing community. After examining how the concept of the family has been deployed and misused in political philosophy, Ferguson turns to the ways in which families actually operate: the macropolitical significance of family coping strategies such as silence and the impact that disability and caregiving have on conceptions of spatiality, sameness, and disparity. He also considers the emotional attachment between humans and their pets as an acknowledgment that compassion and community can exist even under conditions of profound difference.

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• The Trouble with Unity: Latino Politics and the Creation of Identity
• It Takes a Family: Conservatism and the Common Good
• The Politics of Disgust
• A Forgetful Nation: On Immigration and Cultural Identity in the United States
• It Takes A Village: And Other Lessons Children Teach Us
• American Families, Second Edition: A Multicultural Reader
• The Meaning of Freedom: And Other Difficult Dialogues (City Lights Open Media)
• The Twilight of Equality?: Neoliberalism, Cultural Politics, and the Attack on Democracy
• Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition (Indigenous Americas)