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[Introduction To] Unthinking Mastery: Dehumanism And Colonial Entanglements, Julietta Singh

Bookshelf

In Unthinking Mastery Julietta Singh challenges a core, fraught dimension of geopolitical, cultural, and scholarly endeavor: the drive toward mastery over the self and others. Drawing on postcolonial theory, queer theory, new materialism, and animal studies, Singh traces how pervasive the concept of mastery has been to modern politics and anticolonial movements. She juxtaposes destructive uses of mastery, such as the colonial domination of bodies, against more laudable forms, such as intellectual and linguistic mastery, to underscore how the concept—regardless of its use—is rooted in histories of violence and the wielding of power. For anticolonial thinkers like Fanon and Gandhi, …

Why Life Now?, Ladelle Mcwhorter

Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies Faculty Publications

As we struggle to understand and prepare ourselves for climate change, the effects of globalized neoliberal capitalism, and violence (both govenmental and extra-governmental) on a planetary scale, we also struggle to name what it is that we cherish and hope to foster and protect as well as what it is that, of itself opposes the forces that may well destroy us. One of the words that has emerged in this context is life.

Philosophers do well to pay close attention to any concept that attains such centrality and exercises such power in our thinking, which is one reason to be …

Post-Liberation Feminism And Practices Of Freedom, Ladelle Mcwhorter

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Most feminist theorists over the last forty years have held that a basic tenet of feminism is that women as a group are oppressed. The concept of oppression has never had a very broad meaning in liberal discourse, however, and with the rise of neo-liberalism since 1980 it has even less currency in public debate. This article argues that, while we may still believe women are oppressed, for pragmatic purposes Michel Foucault’s concept of practices of freedom is a more effective way to characterize feminist theory and politics.

The Next Fifty Years, Ladelle Mcwhorter

Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies Faculty Publications

Continental philosophy tends to be very textual, defined not so much by a set of problems as by a set of interpretive practices. We read Levinas or Irigaray and write interpretations of those texts. Of course, we do more than issue commentary; we think through texts, grappling with problems, concepts, and historical and cultural phenomena. Still, most of our work remains closely tied to texts. Consequently, it often reproduces a distinction between primary and secondary philosophical work that we might question. Nobody would deny the creativity of John Sallis’ or David Wood’s work or that of Debra Bergoffen or Kelly …

Practicing Practicing, Ladelle Mcwhorter

Philosophy Faculty Publications

"There is something ludicrous in philosophical discourse," Michel Foucault writes, "when it tries, from the outside, to dictate to others, to tell them where their truth is and how to find it... " (Foucault 1985, 9). In our age of moral relativism and multiculturalism, it is easy to hear in this sentence a simple condemnation of intellectuals who pose as authorities on questions of belief, and it is all too easy to agree; yes, of course, we ought not tell other people what to think. But given the issues, directions, and investments of Foucault's work, especially in The Use of …

Feminist Interpretations Of David Hume By Anne Jaap Jacobson (Book Review), Miriam S. Mccormick

Philosophy Faculty Publications

In this latest addition to the Re-reading the Canon series (a series of collections each devoted to feminist interpretations of a single philosopher), we are offered thirteen essays on Hume's philosophy, covering his views on metaphysics, epistemology, moral philosophy, religion, aesthetics politics, and history. They address all of his main works and many of his less discussed essays. This diverse collection is bound together by the theme of feminism, but how this theme works itself in varies considerably from essay to essay. There are, broadly, four different ways that feminism enters into the interpretations.

Absolute Margaret: Margaret More Roper And "Well Learned" Men, Peter Iver Kaufman

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

This article suggests that Margaret More Roper's 1534 letter to Alice Alington is an important witness to Tudor ideas of patriarchy and the history of gender identity. In 1557 William Ras tell was the first of many to question not only Margaret's authorship of the letter, but also her acquiescence to authorities and opposition to her father. Evidence suggests, however, that Margaret was a part of Erasmus's humanist network of friendship, remained so after More's refusal to swear the oath and his imprisonment, and that her appeals to her father were genuine. By the time Margaret and More debated conformity, …