Editor’s Note
This issue of Public Culture was produced in conjunction with the Late Liberalism Project of the Center for Gender Studies at the University of Chicago. In 2000–2001, the Late Liberalism Project sponsored a series of lectures, workshops, and colloquiums to critically interrogate the imaginaries and practices of a variety of global social movements and contestations, some self-consciously liberal, some self-consciously not, others working to free themselves from the grip of this seemingly inevitable choice—to be or not to be liberal. The conceptual linkage of violence and redemption offered a particularly rich place to begin rethinking the genealogies of liberalism outside its own terms. In October 2001, the Late Liberalism Project sponsored a conference on Violence and Redemption to start a discussion on the subject of this special issue. Some of the essays collected in this issue were first presented at the conference. These discussions were generously supported by the University of Chicago’s Provost’s Office, the Lesbian and Gay Studies Project, and the Department of Anthropology’s Lichtstern Fund, and by the Center for Transcultural Studies. Members of the Late Liberalism Project’s collective are Lauren Berlant, Elaine Hadley, Charles Hirschkind, Saba Mahmood, Patchen Markell, Elizabeth A. Povinelli, Michel-Rolph Trouillot, and Candace Vogler. It is fortuitous that the responses to John Borneman’s essay and his reply are also contained in this issue since they speak so directly to its theme.
—Elizabeth A. Povinelli New York City December 2002