Journal Title
Journal of Law and Religion
Volume
13
Issue
1
First Page
249
Document Type
Book Review
Publication Information
1996
Abstract
In his latest book, Douglas Sturm reveals himself as almost predictable. In Solidarity and Suffering: Toward a Politics of Relationality, here he is again in the guise of the knowledgeable scholar forever moving to include more: more spirit, more people, more difference, more tension, more justice. His movement of inclusion draws the reader always outside the framework of the conventions of discourse he last inhabited. Yet something about that movement itself has an integral, almost definable theme, a theme of relation and connection permeating the incisive distinctions his fine mind navigates for the reader.
Once again, in Solidarity and Suffering, Sturm is sensitive to the feminine insights of contemporary women scholars. He is again solicitous of the social nature of the individual. He is again versed in the most recent as well as classical religious and political texts. He plays on his readers’ interconnections, conceives of them as engaged in a communal activity of polity-weaving, and brings the resonance of the spirit to the fore in the dialogue into which he enters with zest. No one is excluded, in conception or voice, for long. But these things have always been true of Douglas Sturm’s writing.
Recommended Citation
Emily Albrink Hartigan, Solidarity and Suffering: Toward a Politics of Relationality, by Douglas Sturm (book review), 13 J.L. & Religion 249 (1996-98).