Subjects That Matter: Philosophy, Feminism, and Postcolonial Theory

Description

Argues for postcoloniality as a model for philosophical practice. In this ambitious book, Namita Goswami draws on continental philosophy, postcolonial criticism, critical race theory, and African American and postcolonial feminisms to offer postcoloniality as a model for philosophical practice. Moving among and between texts, traditions, and frameworks, including the work of Gayatri Spivak, Theodor Adorno, Barbara Christian, Paul Gilroy, Neil Lazarus, and Hortense Spillers, among others, she charts a journey that takes us beyond Eurocentrism by understanding postcoloniality as the pursuit of heterogeneity, that is, of a non-antagonistic understanding of difference. Recognizing that philosophy, feminism, and postcolonial theory share a common concern with the concept of heterogeneity, Goswami shows how postcoloniality empowers us to engage more productively the relationships between these disciplines. Subjects That Matter confronts the ways Eurocentrism, an identity politics that considers difference as inherently oppositional, relegates minority traditions to a diagnostic and/or corrective standpoint to prevent their general implications from playing a critical and transformative role in how we understand subjectivity and agency. Through unexpected, often surprising, and thought-provoking analytic connections and continuities, this book’s interdisciplinary approach reveals a postcolonial pluralism that expands philosophical resources, confounds and limits our habitual disciplinary lexicons, and opens up new areas of inquiry. Namita Goswami is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Indiana State University. She is the coeditor (with Maeve O’Donovan and Lisa Yount) of Why Race and Gender Still Matter: An Intersectional Approach. Contents Acknowledgments Introduction: What Tradition Tells, Tradition Wanted: Subjects That Matter Postcoloniality: A Non-Antagonistic Understanding of Difference Section One: Heterogeneity Section Two: The Resurrection of the Flesh Part I: Heterogeneity Chapter 1 Objects Behaving Like Subjects Because We’re Way Past the Post I. Past-ing the Post II. Adorno and Postcolonial Theory III. The Philosopher and the Postcolonial Critic IV. Adorno as Postcolonial Theorist Chapter 2 Without Sacrifice, Without Vengeance: The Postcolonial Adorno I. The Philosophical Adorno II. The Picture of Dorian Gray III. Negativity: Remainder Nonidentity Nonconceptuality Subalternity Heterogeneity Postcoloniality IV. Shock and Awe V. Thinking Things VI. Exit Strategy VII. The Postcolonial Adorno: Philosophy Historical Dimension Postcoloniality Qualitative Variety of Experience Chapter 3 Europe as an Other: Subalternity, Postcolonial Theory, and Philosophers of the Future I. Philosophy Postcoloniality Subalternity Heterogeneity II. Europe as an Other: We Were Not Yet Such a Group III. Proceedings IV. Avant La Lettre V. The Good Woman VI. The Good Wife VII. My Rani VIII. The End IX. Proceedings 2.0 Chapter 4 The Second Sex: Philosophy, Feminism, and the Race for Theory I. Introduction II. “ASAP” III. Are there black women, really? IV. Pallid Ephemeras V. For the Record VI. Dialectically Down VII. Timeliness Chapter 5 Hit-Take, Hit-Alliance: Paradigmatically Postcolonial and Exemplarily Western I. We Were Not Yet Such a Group 2.0 II. Postcolonialism and Its Others III. Postcolonialism as an Other IV. Significant Blackness V. Too Much Difference VI. Synoikismos VII. Conclusion Part II: The Resurrection of the Flesh Chapter 6 I Am an Animal: Time, Cruelty, and Metaphysics I. The Horror, the Horror II. Dead Zones III. t=03 IV. (Ersatz) Animals V. Bleating VI. Clear and Distinct Ideas VII. What’s There? VIII. From Little Things Big Things Grow Chapter 7 The (M)other of All Posts: Postcolonial Melancholia in the Anthropocene I. Introduction II. Heterogeneity III. Cultural Biology IV. Demotic Multiculturalism V. Nation as Narration (Revisited) VI. The Elephant in the Room VII. Culture Talk: Or Else Chapter 8 Compulsory Rationality in the Economics of Empire: Sati, Always Sati I. Litmus Tests II. Proceedings 3.0 III. The Sign of History Woman IV. The Cultural Woman V. The Goddess Woman VI. The Woman (To Be) VII. The Family Woman Chapter 9 Sacred Texts, Sacred Deaths: For Family Women I. Archive’s Fever: A Global Warming II. Same Difference III. Undoing Culture IV. For Robert Ross V. My Bhuvaneswari VI. Resurrected Blood Chapter 10 Wagging Fingers and Missing Dicks: An Updated Grammar Book (Race, Gender, and the Animal in the Age of Global Warming) I. American, Not Anglo-Clone II. Not the Good Wife III. Dog Whistles IV. But We Are Not Finished Yet V. Lacerations, Woundings, Fissures, Tears, Scars, Openings, Ruptures, Lesions, Rendings, Punctures Openness of Flesh Heterogene VI. An (Ironic and Melancholy) “ASAP” Review VII. Mama’s Baby: The Resurrection of the Flesh Conclusion: Three Women’s Texts and a Critique of Imperialism 2.0: An Aesthetic Education and the Planetary Imperative I. Who Wins Loses/Who Loses Wins II. The Planetary Imperative: PostcolonialityHeterogeneity Planet Alterity III. The Square Root of Minus One Bessie K. Beloved Douloti IV. Staging the Failure of a Response Coda Notes Bibliography Index