The feminist campaign against pornography, the furore over a racial epithet in the O.J. Simpson trial, and Iran's continuing threat to kill Salman Rushdie exemplify the intense passions aroused by hurtful speech. In this study Richard Abel offers an original framework for understanding and attempting to resolve these pervasive and intractable conflicts. Drawing on sociological theories of symbollic politics, he views such confrontations as struggles for respect among status categories defined by nationality, religion, race gender, sexual orientation and physical difference. The text seeks to expose the inadequacies of the conventional responses to speech: absolutist civil libertarianism and enthusiastic state regulation. Instead the author argues that only apologies exchanged within the communities that construct collective identities can readjust social standing damaged by hurtful words and images. Abel recasts the problem in terms of equalizing cultural capital and aims to open a new pathway through the wrongs and rights of speech.
- ISBN10 0226000575
- ISBN13 9780226000572
- Publish Date 4 June 1999 (first published 6 May 1998)
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country US
- Imprint University of Chicago Press
- Edition New edition
- Format Paperback
- Pages 390
- Language English
- URL http://wiley.com/remtitle.cgi?isbn=9780226000572