|
Showing 1 - 4 of
4 matches in All Departments
How does our understanding of the reality (or lack thereof ) of
race as a category of being affect our understanding of racism as a
social phenomenon, and vice versa? How should we envision the aims
and methods of our struggles against racism? Traditionally, the
Western political and philosophical tradition held that true social
justice points toward a raceless future-that racial categories are
themselves inherently racist, and a sincere advocacy for social
justice requires a commitment to the elimination or abolition of
race altogether. This book focuses on the underlying assumptions
that inform this view of race and racism, arguing that it is
ultimately bound up in a "politics of purity"-an understanding of
human agency, and reality itself, as requiring all-or-nothing
categories with clear and unambiguous boundaries. Racism, being
organized around a conception of whiteness as the purest
manifestation of the human, thus demands a constant policing of the
boundaries among racial categories. Drawing upon a close engagement
with historical treatments of the development of racial categories
and identities, the book argues that races should be understood not
as clear and distinct categories of being but rather as ambiguous
and indeterminate (yet importantly real) processes of social
negotiation. As one of its central examples, it lays out the case
of the Irish in seventeenth-century Barbados, who occasionally
united with black slaves to fight white supremacy-and did so as
white people, not as nonwhites who later became white when they
capitulated to white supremacy. Against the politics of purity,
Monahan calls for the emergence of a "creolizing subjectivity" that
would place such ambiguity at the center of our understanding of
race. The Creolizing Subject takes seriously the way in which
racial categories, in all of their variety and ambiguity, situate
and condition our identity, while emphasizing our capacity, as
agents, to engage in the ongoing contestation and negotiation of
the meaning and significance of those very categories.
How does our understanding of the reality (or lack thereof ) of
race as a category of being affect our understanding of racism as a
social phenomenon, and vice versa? How should we envision the aims
and methods of our struggles against racism? Traditionally, the
Western political and philosophical tradition held that true social
justice points toward a raceless future-that racial categories are
themselves inherently racist, and a sincere advocacy for social
justice requires a commitment to the elimination or abolition of
race altogether. This book focuses on the underlying assumptions
that inform this view of race and racism, arguing that it is
ultimately bound up in a "politics of purity"-an understanding of
human agency, and reality itself, as requiring all-or-nothing
categories with clear and unambiguous boundaries. Racism, being
organized around a conception of whiteness as the purest
manifestation of the human, thus demands a constant policing of the
boundaries among racial categories. Drawing upon a close engagement
with historical treatments of the development of racial categories
and identities, the book argues that races should be understood not
as clear and distinct categories of being but rather as ambiguous
and indeterminate (yet importantly real) processes of social
negotiation. As one of its central examples, it lays out the case
of the Irish in seventeenth-century Barbados, who occasionally
united with black slaves to fight white supremacy-and did so as
white people, not as nonwhites who later became white when they
capitulated to white supremacy. Against the politics of purity,
Monahan calls for the emergence of a "creolizing subjectivity" that
would place such ambiguity at the center of our understanding of
race. The Creolizing Subject takes seriously the way in which
racial categories, in all of their variety and ambiguity, situate
and condition our identity, while emphasizing our capacity, as
agents, to engage in the ongoing contestation and negotiation of
the meaning and significance of those very categories.
Knowledge emerges from contexts, which are shaped by people's
experiences. The varied essays in Thinking the US South:
Contemporary Philosophy from Southern Perspectives demonstrate that
Southern identities, borders, and practices play an important but
unacknowledged role in ethical, political, emotional, and global
issues connected to knowledge production. Not merely one
geographical region among others, the US South is sometimes a
fantasy and other times a nightmare, but it is always a prominent
component of the American national imaginary. In connection with
the Global North and Global South, the US South provides a valuable
perspective from which to explore race, class, gender, and other
inter- and intra-American differences. The result is a fresh look
at how identity is constituted; the role of place, ancestors, and
belonging in identity formation; the impact of regional differences
on what counts as political resistance; the ways that affect and
emotional labor circulate; practices of boundary policing,
deportation, and mourning; issues of disability and slowness;
racial and other forms of suffering; and above all, the question of
whether and how doing philosophy changes when done from Southern
standpoints. Examining racist tropes, Indigenous land claims, Black
Southern philosophical perspectives, migrant labor, and more, this
incisive anthology makes clear that roots matter.
Creolizing Practices of Freedom argues that many of our
long-standing debates over the concept of "freedom" have been bound
up in "the politics of purity" - explicitly or implicitly insisting
on clear and distinct boundaries between self and other or between
choice and coercion. In this model, "freedom" becomes a matter of
purifying the "self" at the individual level, and the body politic
at the larger social level. The appropriate response to this is a
"creolizing" theory of freedom, an approach that sees indeterminacy
and ambiguity not as tragic flaws, but as crucial productive
elements of the practice of freedom. Using debates about the
"politics of recognition" as a central example, the book argues
that both contemporary proponents and critics of recognition theory
fall prey to the politics of purity. Building on a reappropriate of
the Hegelian origins of recognition theory the book advances a
reading of recognition in which "recognition" is a necessarily
open-ended, dynamic, and relational account of human subjectivity
in which freedom in this creolizing sense emerges as an aim.
Arguing further that any appropriate theorization of freedom as
creolizing must itself engage in an open-ended and productive
encounter with different approaches and traditions, the book draws
upon the work of Steve Biko, Gloria Anzaldua, Sylvia Wynter, and
Lewis Gordon to further enrich and elaborate the emerging account
of freedom as a creolizing practice. Key to the development of this
account of freedom is a recurring appeal to the sonic. Oppression
operates as a mode of "destructive interference," like a kind of
white noise, and freedom operates as mode of "constructive
interference" where human activity is mutually-enhancing and
directed toward reciprocity or "resonance."
|
|