Symbolic Forms for a New Humanity: Cultural and Racial Reconfigurations of Critical Theory

Just Ideas: Transformative Ideals of Justice in Ethical and Political Thought

by Drucilla Cornell, Kenneth Michael Panfilio

In dialogue with afro-caribbean philosophy, this book seeks in Cassirer’s philosophy of symbolic forms a new vocabulary for approaching central intellectual and political issues of our time. For Cassirer, what makes humans unique is that we are symbolizing creatures destined to come into a world through varied symbolic
forms; we pluralistically work with and develop these forms as we struggle to come to terms with who we are and our place in the universe.

This approach can be used as a powerful challenge to hegemonic modes of study that mistakenly place the Western world at the center of intellectual and political life. Indeed, the authors argue that the symbolic dimension of Cassirer’s thinking of possibility can be linked to a symbolic dimension in revolution via the ideas of Frantz Fanon, who argued that revolution must be a thoroughgoing cultural process, in which what is at stake is nothing less than how we symbolize a new humanity and bring into being a new set of social institutions worthy of that new humanity.

224 pages, Hardcover

First published September 10, 2010

About the author

Drucilla Cornell is National Research Foundation Professor in Customary Law, Indigenous Ideals, and the Dignity Jurisprudence at the University of Cape Town in South Africa and Professor of Political Science, Women & Gender Studies, and Comparative Literature at Rutgers University.