Diane Perpich – författare

In 2003, Fadela Amara founded Ni Putes Ni Soumises (NPNS), a French feminist social movement that arose in the banlieues, or impoverished suburbs of Paris. Growing up in the banlieues as a child of Algerian immigrants, Amara became a fierce advocate for the underclass and was later appointed to a post in the French government headed by Nicolas Sarkozy. Led by Amara and devoted to equal rights and opportunities for everyone, NPNS is especially focused on improving conditions for Muslim immigrant women who often suffer from discrimination, violence, and repression. Providing ample context and explanation of the NPNS movement for the first time for English-language readers, editors and translators Brittany Murray and Diane Perpich include unpublished materials from the movement's formative days when women spoke out about the difficulties and violence faced daily in France's ghettos. A discussion with the movement's founder provides additional information about immigration, discrimination, feminism, the headscarf affair, and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism. Taking French Feminism to the Streets provides a penetrating analysis of the social, political, and economic conditions in France.

Too often, Levinas's thought is distanced from traditional ethical enterprises, especially from normative ethics. It is put into the service of directly normative ends such as a call for respect for women or disadvantaged social groups, or for new normative understandings of the relation of doctors to patients or teachers to students and the like. There is nothing wrong with using Levinas for normative purposes, but this demands that we be clear on what account of normativity can be found in his work. Perpich re-reads central ethical concepts in Levinas's thought (alterity, the face, and responsibility) in order to offer the first full account of his contribution to our understanding of normativity or the ways in which others' claims are binding on us. She then extends this interpretation into two vexed areas of Levinas scholarship: the possibility of developing an environmental ethics based on his work and the possibility of applying his ethics to the emancipatory projects of new left social movements.