Book Review: Becoming Who We Are: Politics and Practical Philosophy in the Work of Stanley Cavell, by Andrew Norris

• DOI: 10.1177/0090591718797487
• Published date: 01 February 2019
• Date: 01 February 2019
• Author: Aletta J. Norval
• Subject Matter: Book Reviews

Political Theory

2019, Vol. 47(1) 114 –151

© The Author(s) 2018

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Book Review

Book Reviews

Becoming Who We Are: Politics and Practical Philosophy in the Work of Stanley Cavell, by

Andrew Norris. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.

Reviewed by: Aletta J. Norval, Anglia Ruskin University, Chelmsford Campus, UK

DOI: 10.1177/0090591718797487

Writing about politics and practical philosophy in our contemporary context

is a daunting undertaking. Our world is replete with political struggles that

seemingly disrupt and challenge long-standing political forms and raise radi-

cal claims against the extant order. Trump-ism and Brexit vie for visibility

alongside the Black Lives Matter and #metoo movements. Struggles for rec-

ognition of children identifying as trans in UK schools occur alongside

demands for restriction on gun use in schools in the USA. In contexts such as

these, doing political theory demands that we contribute to an understanding

of our contemporary condition, elucidating the wrongs, and opening up

imaginative ways of thinking about democracy and justice.

In Becoming Who We Are: Politics and Practical Philosophy, Andrew

Norris examines the work of Stanley Cavell with a view to explore how his

writings contribute to our thinking about politics and practical philosophy in

ways that can transform contemporary political theory and contemporary

political life. Norris starts from acknowledging that this is no simple task as

Cavell has often been taken to have little to say about core concerns of politi-

cal theory. His style of writing is distinctive and not familiar to mainstream

ways of theorizing. Like Wittgenstein, Cavell does not propose theses on

canonical topics of politics, nor does he seek to discover first principles of

politics. Rather, and this is a key theme of Norris’ book, Cavell offers “a series

of readings”—readings of books and of the world (170) in which philosophy,

and by extension political philosophy, is treated “not as a set of problems but

as a set of texts” (4). Taking Cavell’s own practice—his focus on texts—as a

starting point, Norris situates Cavell in relation to key texts in political theory,

focusing on what he argues are central themes in Cavell’s writings. Norris thus

797487PTXXXX10.1177/0090591718797487Political TheoryBook Reviews

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