The fragility of things : self-organizing processes, neoliberal fantasies, and democratic activism /

Connolly (Johns Hopkins Univ.) ponders the fragile condition of the neoliberal state as it teeters precariously on the precipice of environmental, technological, linguistic, and other challenges. His ponderous prose carefully dissects the myriad yet tenuous relations upon which the survival of neoliberalism depends. Appearing to shore up these relations, Connolly imbues his own fragile turgidity with stumbling jargon, including "imbrications," "human force fields," and "teleodynamism," but in fact he critiques neoliberalism for its weak theoretical foundation and its destructive impact on virtually all aspects of humankind. Connolly's critique consists of four chapters with each followed by a somewhat related "interlude." His topics range from the neoliberal ideological conflict between Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman to Immanuel Kant's apodictic reasoning and Alfred North Whitehead's process thinking, from Hesiod's theogony and the emergence of the universe to Augustine's cosmology and the emergence of moral man and time. From Friedrich Nietzsche and Karl Marx to Michel Foucault and Jurgen Habermas and a host of other political thinkers, philosophers, and scientists, Connolly traverses select dimensions of reality to create his own explanatory universe that reveals the disastrous state of the human experience and the possibility of a democratic remedy. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate and research collections. J. R. Pottenger University of Alabama in Huntsville