Regulating Aversion: Tolerance in the Age of Identity and Empire

Tolerance is generally regarded as an unqualified achievement of the modern West. Emerging in early modern Europe to defuse violent religious conflict and reduce persecution, tolerance today is hailed as a key to decreasing conflict across a wide range of other dividing lines-- cultural, racial, ethnic, and sexual. But, as political theorist Wendy Brown argues in Regulating Aversion, tolerance also has dark and troubling undercurrents.

Dislike, disapproval, and regulation lurk at the heart of tolerance. To tolerate is not to affirm but to conditionally allow what is unwanted or deviant. And, although presented as an alternative to violence, tolerance can play a part in justifying violence--dramatically so in the war in Iraq and the War on Terror. Wielded, especially since 9/11, as a way of distinguishing a civilized West from a barbaric Islam, tolerance is paradoxically underwriting Western imperialism.

Brown's analysis of the history and contemporary life of tolerance reveals it in a startlingly unfamiliar guise. Heavy with norms and consolidating the dominance of the powerful, tolerance sustains the abjection of the tolerated and equates the intolerant with the barbaric. Examining the operation of tolerance in contexts as different as the War on Terror, campaigns for gay rights, and the Los Angeles Museum of Tolerance, Brown traces the operation of tolerance in contemporary struggles over identity, citizenship, and civilization.

Customer Reviews:

A powerful critique of tolerance

By critik - September 3, 2006

Brown delivers a compelling critique of tolerance. In a complex, yet accessible way, she argues that tolerance functions as an instrument of power by regulating group differences and by selectively and differentially integrating "others" into the civic space. Conferring and withholding tolerance can both function as differential modes of exclusion and regulation of difference.

The problem with tolerance is that it dissimulates its political role: tolerance relies on a power differential between those who tolerate and those who are tolerated. Yet this power relation is masked because "tolerance talk" individualizes racial, cultural, and sexual difference. It treats difference as something that should be confronted by civility and behavior: if only we all behaved responsibly and tolerated others, we could all happily live together. Unsatisfactory in this view - as Brown argues convincingly - is that it substitutes a vocabulary of civility for political problems and... read more

An Insightful Look into Tolerance

By simpv - October 30, 2009

Echoing the previous review, Brown's "Regulating Aversion" presents a brilliant analysis of the role of tolerance in modern society. She thoroughly traces the development of tolerance through history, and effectively analyzes the important role that tolerance plays in power relations. Her book begins with a (rather dense) theoretical overview of the discourse of power in the West and an analysis of "Tolerance as Governmentality," borrowing her theoretical framework from Foucault. She proceeds to analyze modern-day examples of tolerance, such as the Tolerance Museum in Los Angeles, gay rights, and the War on Terror using this framework, and duly notes the contradictions of tolerance.

However, her most important point is that the act of tolerance is inherently intolerant. By expressing the need for tolerance--which she notes does not denote acceptance, but rather a clear disapproval--we have already expressly acknowledged there is a problem, and we do not readily accept the... read more

Excellent reading

By J. Riggleman - September 8, 2011

A great series of discussions about a subject that is little understood and often misrepresented. I hope this book is being in introductory classes to start students on a lifelong query.