Pub Date : 2020-02-05DOI: 10.5325/critphilrace.8.1-2.0084
Omar Rivera
Abstract:Emphasizing the embodied, physical aspect of María Lugones's decolonial feminism, this article elucidates ways in which the oppressed appears to colonizing gazes and beyond them in order to explore possibilities of resistance. It proposes "stillness" as a sentient physicality that can transgress the hold of racist/colonizing gazes and sense a multiplicity of worlds from a limen. In order to do this, it focuses on the temporality of "stillness" and on modes of appearing of resistant praxis.
{"title":"Stillness, Aesthesis, Resistance","authors":"Omar Rivera","doi":"10.5325/critphilrace.8.1-2.0084","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/critphilrace.8.1-2.0084","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Emphasizing the embodied, physical aspect of María Lugones's decolonial feminism, this article elucidates ways in which the oppressed appears to colonizing gazes and beyond them in order to explore possibilities of resistance. It proposes \"stillness\" as a sentient physicality that can transgress the hold of racist/colonizing gazes and sense a multiplicity of worlds from a limen. In order to do this, it focuses on the temporality of \"stillness\" and on modes of appearing of resistant praxis.","PeriodicalId":43337,"journal":{"name":"Critical Philosophy of Race","volume":"8 1","pages":"101 - 84"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2020-02-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48147794","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-02-05DOI: 10.5325/critphilrace.8.1-2.0265
E. Ewara
Abstract:This article approaches Judith Butler as herself a theorist of race and racism by exploring her unacknowledged and often problematic reading of Frantz Fanon and his concept of the historico-racial schema. It first traces Butler's uses of Fanon's thinking across her work, outlining the different ways that she draws on Fanon in theorizing race and racism. The article then shows how that theorizing stems from Butler's reading of the historico-racial schema, focusing on her insertion of words that do not appear in either the translation she cites or in the original French text into a key quotation. This article argues that this systematic misreading of the historico-racial schema in Black Skin, White Masks problematically restricts Butler's understanding of the lasting effects and ethical consequences of racism and colonialism as they appear in her readings of that text and of The Wretched of the Earth.
{"title":"Fanon's Body: Judith Butler's Reading of the \"Historico-Racial Schema\"","authors":"E. Ewara","doi":"10.5325/critphilrace.8.1-2.0265","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/critphilrace.8.1-2.0265","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article approaches Judith Butler as herself a theorist of race and racism by exploring her unacknowledged and often problematic reading of Frantz Fanon and his concept of the historico-racial schema. It first traces Butler's uses of Fanon's thinking across her work, outlining the different ways that she draws on Fanon in theorizing race and racism. The article then shows how that theorizing stems from Butler's reading of the historico-racial schema, focusing on her insertion of words that do not appear in either the translation she cites or in the original French text into a key quotation. This article argues that this systematic misreading of the historico-racial schema in Black Skin, White Masks problematically restricts Butler's understanding of the lasting effects and ethical consequences of racism and colonialism as they appear in her readings of that text and of The Wretched of the Earth.","PeriodicalId":43337,"journal":{"name":"Critical Philosophy of Race","volume":"8 1","pages":"265 - 291"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2020-02-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41626428","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-07-19DOI: 10.5325/CRITPHILRACE.7.2.0372
E. Driggers
Abstract:This article examines the chemistry of race at the turn of the nineteenth century. Physicians, philosophers, and intellectuals from Benjamin Rush to Everard Home defined the skin color of Africans as resulting from the changes of the body's humors (or fluids). Radical physicians like Benjamin Rush believed that he could "cure" African slaves of what he identified as indicative of sickness, their skin color, as they were essentially sick white people in his mind. Overall, the study seeks to explain the medical and chemical understanding of race and the potential for "curing" blackness. Often these cures were linked to balancing and unblocking the fluids. A justification for these ideas comes from cases where people seemed to have spontaneously turned black and experiments where black people were turned white.
{"title":"The Chemistry of Blackness: Benjamin Rush, Thomas Jefferson, Everard Home, and the Project of Defining Blackness through Chemical Explanations","authors":"E. Driggers","doi":"10.5325/CRITPHILRACE.7.2.0372","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/CRITPHILRACE.7.2.0372","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article examines the chemistry of race at the turn of the nineteenth century. Physicians, philosophers, and intellectuals from Benjamin Rush to Everard Home defined the skin color of Africans as resulting from the changes of the body's humors (or fluids). Radical physicians like Benjamin Rush believed that he could \"cure\" African slaves of what he identified as indicative of sickness, their skin color, as they were essentially sick white people in his mind. Overall, the study seeks to explain the medical and chemical understanding of race and the potential for \"curing\" blackness. Often these cures were linked to balancing and unblocking the fluids. A justification for these ideas comes from cases where people seemed to have spontaneously turned black and experiments where black people were turned white.","PeriodicalId":43337,"journal":{"name":"Critical Philosophy of Race","volume":"7 1","pages":"372 - 391"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2019-07-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44140445","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-07-19DOI: 10.5325/CRITPHILRACE.7.2.0223
Michael O. Hardimon
Abstract:This article critically examines the proposal that the word "racism" should be restricted to the most egregious of racial ills. It argues that the costs of restricting the scope of the term in this way are too great and that the proposal gives too much weight to white sensitivities.
{"title":"Should We Narrow the Scope of \"Racism\" to Accommodate White Sensitivities?","authors":"Michael O. Hardimon","doi":"10.5325/CRITPHILRACE.7.2.0223","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/CRITPHILRACE.7.2.0223","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article critically examines the proposal that the word \"racism\" should be restricted to the most egregious of racial ills. It argues that the costs of restricting the scope of the term in this way are too great and that the proposal gives too much weight to white sensitivities.","PeriodicalId":43337,"journal":{"name":"Critical Philosophy of Race","volume":"7 1","pages":"223 - 246"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2019-07-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47600504","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-07-19DOI: 10.5325/CRITPHILRACE.7.2.0289
R. Òké
Abstract:This article follows a perplexing juncture in Chimamaanda Ngozi Adichie's 2013 novel Americanah: Ifemelu's choice to return back to Nigeria. Following the themes of "home," "travel," and "Africanness," this article explores the link between the migration away from and to Africa and the apparent racelessness Ifemelu experiences as she crosses the fragmented racial zones between Nigeria and America. It challenges the claim that returning to Africa is counterintuitive and only a departure from the Continent is desirable, thus, analyzing the logic of travel concomitant with contemporary phenomenologies of Africanness (Afropolitanism). This analysis seeks to distinguish Afropolitanism from "Americanah" and to offer Americanah's emphasis on reverse migration as a counterweight to Afropolitanism's emphasis on extra-continental travel. Ifemelu's return opens up two questions in the context of this analysis: (1) What does the logic of travel offer to Ifemelu's racial identity as she comes to understand herself in two geospatial temporalities? and (2) What does the language of "home" as contrasted to the discomfort of travel, contributes to her ontological understandings of herself as African?
{"title":"Traveling Elsewheres: Afropolitanism, Americanah, and the Illocution of Travel","authors":"R. Òké","doi":"10.5325/CRITPHILRACE.7.2.0289","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/CRITPHILRACE.7.2.0289","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article follows a perplexing juncture in Chimamaanda Ngozi Adichie's 2013 novel Americanah: Ifemelu's choice to return back to Nigeria. Following the themes of \"home,\" \"travel,\" and \"Africanness,\" this article explores the link between the migration away from and to Africa and the apparent racelessness Ifemelu experiences as she crosses the fragmented racial zones between Nigeria and America. It challenges the claim that returning to Africa is counterintuitive and only a departure from the Continent is desirable, thus, analyzing the logic of travel concomitant with contemporary phenomenologies of Africanness (Afropolitanism). This analysis seeks to distinguish Afropolitanism from \"Americanah\" and to offer Americanah's emphasis on reverse migration as a counterweight to Afropolitanism's emphasis on extra-continental travel. Ifemelu's return opens up two questions in the context of this analysis: (1) What does the logic of travel offer to Ifemelu's racial identity as she comes to understand herself in two geospatial temporalities? and (2) What does the language of \"home\" as contrasted to the discomfort of travel, contributes to her ontological understandings of herself as African?","PeriodicalId":43337,"journal":{"name":"Critical Philosophy of Race","volume":"7 1","pages":"289 - 305"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2019-07-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46992225","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-07-19DOI: 10.5325/CRITPHILRACE.7.2.0261
N. Bromell
Abstract:This article explores several challenges African-American political thinkers pose to the continental tradition of European political philosophy as represented by two eminent theorists, Jacques Rancière and Axel Honneth. It focuses on the three sharpest points of disagreement between them—over (1) the nature of the political subject (actor) and her motivations for becoming political; (2) the need for normative grounds as a basis of political critique; (3) the quality of political temporality—and shows how a range of African-American political thinkers have developed rigorous accounts of all three of these matters. These accounts not only expose the limitations of Rancière's and Honneth's views but also provide a capacious theoretical framework able to hold their disagreements in productive tension with each other.
{"title":"\"That Third and Darker Thought\": African-American Challenges to the Political Theories of Jacques Rancière and Axel Honneth","authors":"N. Bromell","doi":"10.5325/CRITPHILRACE.7.2.0261","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/CRITPHILRACE.7.2.0261","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article explores several challenges African-American political thinkers pose to the continental tradition of European political philosophy as represented by two eminent theorists, Jacques Rancière and Axel Honneth. It focuses on the three sharpest points of disagreement between them—over (1) the nature of the political subject (actor) and her motivations for becoming political; (2) the need for normative grounds as a basis of political critique; (3) the quality of political temporality—and shows how a range of African-American political thinkers have developed rigorous accounts of all three of these matters. These accounts not only expose the limitations of Rancière's and Honneth's views but also provide a capacious theoretical framework able to hold their disagreements in productive tension with each other.","PeriodicalId":43337,"journal":{"name":"Critical Philosophy of Race","volume":"7 1","pages":"261 - 288"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2019-07-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49542416","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-07-19DOI: 10.5325/CRITPHILRACE.7.2.0333
D. Restrepo
Abstract:According to Ronald Sundstrom, nationalism shelters xenophobia by creating obstacles that prevent immigrants and refugees from attaining a sense of civic belonging. He uses the metaphor of sheltering to suggest that xenophobia becomes a by-product of nationalism in the right conditions. This is a misunderstanding of the relationship between nationalism and xenophobia. This article argues that nationalism is inseparable from xenophobia because certain core beliefs already presuppose some form of civic ostracism. These core beliefs are sovereignty and partiality. Despite the various noble causes behind nationalism—cultural preservation, survival, and liberation—its roots are grounded in the expulsion of foreign Others and preference for fellow nationals. Any attempts to reform nationalism must reckon with these two core beliefs. An ideology that abandons those beliefs would no longer be nationalism. In other words, there is no nationalism without xenophobia.
{"title":"Is It Still Nationalism? A Critique of Ronald Sundstrom's \"Sheltering Xenophobia\"","authors":"D. Restrepo","doi":"10.5325/CRITPHILRACE.7.2.0333","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/CRITPHILRACE.7.2.0333","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:According to Ronald Sundstrom, nationalism shelters xenophobia by creating obstacles that prevent immigrants and refugees from attaining a sense of civic belonging. He uses the metaphor of sheltering to suggest that xenophobia becomes a by-product of nationalism in the right conditions. This is a misunderstanding of the relationship between nationalism and xenophobia. This article argues that nationalism is inseparable from xenophobia because certain core beliefs already presuppose some form of civic ostracism. These core beliefs are sovereignty and partiality. Despite the various noble causes behind nationalism—cultural preservation, survival, and liberation—its roots are grounded in the expulsion of foreign Others and preference for fellow nationals. Any attempts to reform nationalism must reckon with these two core beliefs. An ideology that abandons those beliefs would no longer be nationalism. In other words, there is no nationalism without xenophobia.","PeriodicalId":43337,"journal":{"name":"Critical Philosophy of Race","volume":"7 1","pages":"333 - 351"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2019-07-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49669485","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-07-19DOI: 10.5325/CRITPHILRACE.7.2.0247
S. Spoto
Abstract:Wittgenstein's theory of aspect perception has been taken up by scholars interested in the ways that people take in and interpret visual stimuli. Within this field of inquiry, Wittgenstein proposes the notion of "aspect blindness," the failure of a person to see a particular aspect or expression. An important turn in the use of Wittgenstein's aspect perception has not always been in the ways that deviating perspectives fail to "see" in the same way that the normative category "sees," but in the ways that those on the constructed margins turn a critical eye on the failure of normative "seeing." Using this framework, this article turns to critique the racism and "aspect blindness" embedded in whiteness. It examines Enlightenment scientific racism and the racialized hierarchies used as the justification for excluding some people from the category of humanity. The work finishes by linking with insights developed within the Black Lives Matter movement.
{"title":"Wittgenstein, Aspect Blindness, and White Supremacy","authors":"S. Spoto","doi":"10.5325/CRITPHILRACE.7.2.0247","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/CRITPHILRACE.7.2.0247","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Wittgenstein's theory of aspect perception has been taken up by scholars interested in the ways that people take in and interpret visual stimuli. Within this field of inquiry, Wittgenstein proposes the notion of \"aspect blindness,\" the failure of a person to see a particular aspect or expression. An important turn in the use of Wittgenstein's aspect perception has not always been in the ways that deviating perspectives fail to \"see\" in the same way that the normative category \"sees,\" but in the ways that those on the constructed margins turn a critical eye on the failure of normative \"seeing.\" Using this framework, this article turns to critique the racism and \"aspect blindness\" embedded in whiteness. It examines Enlightenment scientific racism and the racialized hierarchies used as the justification for excluding some people from the category of humanity. The work finishes by linking with insights developed within the Black Lives Matter movement.","PeriodicalId":43337,"journal":{"name":"Critical Philosophy of Race","volume":"7 1","pages":"247 - 260"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2019-07-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43593373","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-07-19DOI: 10.5325/CRITPHILRACE.7.2.0306
Anna Sophie Lauwers
Abstract:Recent scholarship increasingly defines Islamophobia as a form of racism. The possibility that Islamophobia could also manifest itself as religious or cultural bigotry is generally overlooked. This article argues that although anti-Islam bigotry is intertwined with anti-Muslim racism, the two are conceptually distinct. Making this distinction allows us to better analyze, unmask, and critically assess Islamophobia. The article conceptually explores the similarities and differences between anti-Muslim racism and anti-Islam bigotry. It finds that although anti-Islam bigotry implies a prejudicial rejection of an essentialized idea of Islam, it understands religion or culture to be an individual choice and allows for the possibility that Muslims convert or assimilate. As such, it differs from anti-Muslim racism, which implies that the Muslim identity and the negative characteristics associated with Islam are innate and unchangeable. The article argues that contemporary Islamophobic political discourse in Europe is predominantly racist, although it hides behind a cloak of anti-Islam bigotry.
{"title":"Is Islamophobia (Always) Racism?","authors":"Anna Sophie Lauwers","doi":"10.5325/CRITPHILRACE.7.2.0306","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/CRITPHILRACE.7.2.0306","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Recent scholarship increasingly defines Islamophobia as a form of racism. The possibility that Islamophobia could also manifest itself as religious or cultural bigotry is generally overlooked. This article argues that although anti-Islam bigotry is intertwined with anti-Muslim racism, the two are conceptually distinct. Making this distinction allows us to better analyze, unmask, and critically assess Islamophobia. The article conceptually explores the similarities and differences between anti-Muslim racism and anti-Islam bigotry. It finds that although anti-Islam bigotry implies a prejudicial rejection of an essentialized idea of Islam, it understands religion or culture to be an individual choice and allows for the possibility that Muslims convert or assimilate. As such, it differs from anti-Muslim racism, which implies that the Muslim identity and the negative characteristics associated with Islam are innate and unchangeable. The article argues that contemporary Islamophobic political discourse in Europe is predominantly racist, although it hides behind a cloak of anti-Islam bigotry.","PeriodicalId":43337,"journal":{"name":"Critical Philosophy of Race","volume":"7 1","pages":"306 - 332"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2019-07-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49609708","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}