Reviews for The Situated Self: The View from Without and the View from Within

The average rating for The Situated Self: The View from Without and the View from Within based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-08-06 00:00:00 James E Schaeffer III A highly individualized approach to psychology with a focus on adjusting people rather than assigning blame to systems and states of affairs which cause distress to many reinforces and directly serves the status quo and is incompatible with social justice. The role of psychology in fostering mental health in humans should be to help individuals understand the forces which are causing them distress, provide avenues for them to express themselves and explore their relationship to the world, advocate on their behalf, and address systemic and institutional causes of distress.

Review # 2 was written on 2015-11-10 00:00:00 James Vail I read this on the plane home primarily with the idea that it might be a good text to use in an undergrad class. If you've read Mouffe's work with Laclau or any of her other books, you certainly won't find anything new here: adversary over enemy, agonism over antagonism, democratic conflict over lazy Habermasian consensual discussion, and so on. She takes on the cosmopolites here and makes good arguments. This part of the book suffers because she chooses rather weak opponents. Someone like Pheng Cheah would have been more formidable. What is really interesting is her assertion that Hardt and Negri's "Empire" is also part of larger liberal, cosmopolitan visions of a post-political world. That should raise some eyebrows. Pedagogically, Mouffe would be useful because she so clearly stakes out her arguments and oppositions. It is hard to imagine that an undergrad incapable of reconstructing her arguments and her political investments.