It is typical of Smith that she can accommodate such questions of reality and truth, without self-contradiction, in the course of a defence and explication of what is variously called scepticism, perspectivism, constructivism or postmodernism, but for which relativism seems a perfectly good term. Belief and Resistance is not only a substantively powerful book; its conscientious approach and restrained style are equally welcome. Indeed, its only possible rivals are the work of Joseph Margolis...and the late, unjustly neglected Paul Feyerabend...Smith's point is not that there is anything wrong about objectivity in the classic sense of 'justifiable in a context-transcendent and subject-independent way'. It is, rather, that whether legal, scientific, or political, such evaluation--'as distinct from judgments that are good under certain (perhaps quite broad) conditions and from the perspectives of certain (perhaps especially relevant) people'--never occurs. In epistemology and axiology, there are 'no touchstones of truth, no automatic refutations of error, no ready-made exposures of deception'. In rich and subtle detail, Smith explores the implications of this view in relation to (among other things) Holocaust denial and the 'Science Wars'. Proceeding from the view that what we variously call nature, reality, or truth is the result of ongoing material, cognitive, conceptual and social interactions (but not social or linguistic alone), she offers some fascinating speculations on the general dynamics of belief and resistance. Their overall context is the project of a naturalized but non-reductive evolutionary epistemology, very much in the spirit of Gregory Bateson. Barbara Hernnstein Smith's book, however, sets a new standard.
   --Patrick Curry, Times Literary Supplement

Smith's analyses of recent controversies about objectivity are unusually subtle, and very helpful indeed.
   --Richard Rorty, University of Virginia

Barbara Herrnstein Smith is not the UN peace-keeping forces intervening in the Science and Moral Wars. Rather, she does an ecological study of many entangled controversies, paying due attention to all the camps while not pretending to be above any of them--thus exemplifying the fact that relativism leads not, as many believe, to a lake of fire in which illegitimate scholars are inevitably fried, but to the open seas on which it is possible to travel much further than on the supposed solid ground of 'firm foundations,' if only we have ship!
   --Bruno Latour, Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Mines, Paris

Sober and wise, engaged yet tolerant, this book offers--for those who really want one--an antidote to the absolutism and the incivility of our present controversies.
   --Steven Shapin, University of California at San Diego

Barbara Herrnstein Smith is Braxton Craven Professor of Comparative Literature and English at Duke University, where she is also Director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Science and Cultural Theory.

Read More by Barbara H. Smith:

• Contingencies of Value: Alternative Perspectives for Critical Theory