The impetus for the volume arose from a conference celebrating the already published work of Adriana Cavarero, in particular her recent work on a postural ethics of non-violence. It contains an original essay by Cavarero developing the topic further, responses by Butler and Honig that bring their own body of work to bear on how best to think a postural ethics, and then a wider dialogue on the interstices of these three thinkers drawing on post-Marxist, Italian feminist, queer theory and lesbian and gay politics, with an original response by Cavarero in which she replies to the concerns raised in order to reaffirm her account of ethics.
This is a timely publication given the backlash to feminism seen in the growth of right wing politics across the globe. The volume celebrates in critical spirit Cavarero's extraordinary contribution to philosophical and political debate over four decades. It demonstrates how her wide-ranging and critical interventions have helped reinvigorate a stagnant political scene, asserting against persistent claims that There Is No Alternative that there are many alternatives lived by people across the world, despite oppression and exclusion.
Of further interest, the text develops Butler's ethics of non-violence beyond Precarious Lives and Frames of War and shows Honig applying her agonistic theory to an ethics of non-violence. The volume is not merely supplementary to already existing publications by any of these three authors but is instead an original contribution in its own right.
Although inspired by Cavarero's recent work on an ethical maternal posture of inclination[1] the responses by Judith Butler, Bonnie Honig and seven other interlocutors situate Cavarero's argument in her wider corpus of nonviolence and uniqueness, that critiques and offers an alternative to the masculine symbolic of philosophy. This introduction endeavours to not only introduce Cavarero's work, but to chart the journey of an increasingly productive dialogue between Cavarero and other traditions within feminism, bringing together what were initially perceived to be radically divergent positions. It also seeks to capture the, collaborative but provocative spirit of the inspirational scholarly friendship between Butler, Honig and Cavarero as they contest the boundaries of their common project for a pluralistic, heterogeneous but urgent feminist ethics of nonviolence.
[1] see chapter one here and Inclinations: a Critique of Rectitude
