Curiosity and Power

Perry Zurn is assistant professor of philosophy at American University. He is coeditor of Curiosity Studies: A New Ecology of Knowledge and Intolerable: Writings from Michel Foucault and the Prisons Information Group (1970–1980), both from Minnesota.

• ContentsPrefaceWhy the Politics of Curiosity?1. A Political History of Curiosity Part I. Episodes from Political Theory2. Friedrich Nietzsche: Curiosity and the Scene of Struggle3. Michel Foucault: Institutionalized Curiosity and Resistance4. Jacques Derrida: Sovereign Curiosity and DeconstructionPart II. Archives of Political Experience5. Curiosity, Activism, and Political Resistance6. Cripping Curiosity: A Critical Disability Framework7. Trans Curiosity: Beyond the Curio Unsettling CuriosityAcknowledgmentsNotesIndex

"How curious that recent philosophy has been so incurious about curiosity. But Perry Zurn, to use his apt descriptor for Foucault, shows us how to be ‘incontrovertibly curious’ about curiosity itself. Zurn shows that this is no simple virtue but rather bears within itself a potential for dissecting dominations. There is a politics not only to our incuriosity but also to all our curiosities."-Colin Koopman, author of How We Became Our Data: A Genealogy of the Informational Person"This book is an invitation to engage in curiosity with careful attentiveness to otherwise possibilities. It is also a reminder that curiosity can turn situations into spectacles, cutting into bodies to extract knowledge and value. Perry Zurn navigates this ambiguity with insight, clarity, and compassion, teaching us to encounter the world anew, with both courage and humility."-Lisa Guenther, author of Solitary Confinement: Social Death and Its Afterlives"Curiosity and Power offers a call to acknowledge the importance of collective inquiry."-Art Discourse"The book crucially contributes not only to enhancing curiosity’s status in philosophical inquiry but also o enhancing the role of philosophy in curiosity studies. "-The European Legacy