- Feminist Theory, Queer Theory, Queer of Color Critique, Decolonial Feminism, Georges Bataille, Queer temporality, and 19 moreNeoliberalism, Gender and Sexuality, Black Studies Or African American Studies, Black feminism, Black Feminist Theory/Thought, Black Women's Studies, Blackness, Sylvia Wynter, Saidiya Hartman, Hortense Spillers, Philosophy Of Race, Boaventura De Sousa Santos, Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan, Gender Studies, Anti-Blackness, Anti-Black Violence, Afropessimism, and Critical Whiteness Studiesedit
Way Too Cool uses the trope of a brief history of “coolness” to examine the provocation that neoliberalism may be altering how we feel, not only how we think. The focus of the book is a careful examination of the shifting meanings of... more
Way Too Cool uses the trope of a brief history of “coolness” to examine the provocation that neoliberalism may be altering how we feel, not only how we think. The focus of the book is a careful examination of the shifting meanings of social difference in the post-Civil Rights United States. Beginning with a close reading of Foucault's lectures on neoliberalism, the book develops a Lacanian reading of racialization in the contemporary neoliberal episteme, with particular attention to the limits of reading social difference and authority through the conceptual framework of interpellation. Laced with various contemporary and historical examples, the book shows how we are becoming "way too cool" to feel, much less deal with, the long histories of xenophobia that continue to animate the cultural unconscious of the United States and, mutatis mutandis, much of Europe. With a particular focus on the categories of gender and race, the book shows how categories of social difference respond differently to the neoliberal flattening to a common metric of fungibility. The trope of coolness, traced across the book, elaborates how anti-black racism remains intransigent--and is thus the site of our deepest ethical challenges.
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In Queering Freedom, Shannon Winnubst crafts a grammar with which to converse with the violent and shrewd techniques honed to carve power onto certain bodies. Winnubst has written a careful and absorbing assessment of the elasticity and... more
In Queering Freedom, Shannon Winnubst crafts a grammar with which to converse with the violent and shrewd techniques honed to carve power onto certain bodies. Winnubst has written a careful and absorbing assessment of the elasticity and tenacity of 'phallicized whiteness', a term ...
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Through a reading of Miguel Gutierrez' performance, This Bridge Called My Ass, and his essay, "Does Abstraction Belong to White People?", this essay explores how abstraction enables particular forms of whiteness' violence. The essay... more
Through a reading of Miguel Gutierrez' performance, This Bridge Called My Ass, and his essay, "Does Abstraction Belong to White People?", this essay explores how abstraction enables particular forms of whiteness' violence. The essay draws on the work of Hortense Spillers, Saidiya Hartman and Christina Sharpe to sketch the particular tools of the number and the ledger as modes of this abstracted violence of whiteness. It sketches general provocations about the limitations three central conceptual apparati: Marxist analyses of capital, the European concept of the Other, and the 19th century concept of race.
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This article maps the many lives of the concept of fungibility in contemporary theories of both blackness and neoliberalism. Framed by the 2018 political chants across the US against ‘white supremacy’, the article unravels how... more
This article maps the many lives of the concept of fungibility in contemporary theories of both blackness and neoliberalism. Framed by the 2018 political chants across the US against ‘white supremacy’, the article unravels how neoliberalism obfuscates the singular vector of anti-blackness that grounds the colonial ontology of liberalism, modernity, and global capitalism. By tracing the concept of fungibility through the work of Hortense Spillers, Saidiya Hartman, and C. Riley Snorton, the article shows how fungibility works both ontologically and semiotically. The article then tracks fungibility through the neoliberal episteme, as derived from Michel Foucault’s lectures on biopolitics, to expose how the neoliberal episteme bastardizes the concepts of social difference into clever accoutrement, thereby eroding the capacity of neoliberal subjects to grasp the persistent ontology of anti-blackness. While the article does not track these dynamics strictly along the trajectories of bio/necropolitics, the foundational role of black death in the colonial ontology of liberalism, modernity, and global capitalism is precisely what the neoliberal episteme obfuscates; by approaching neoliberalism, through Foucault, as the birthing of biopolitics, we see how the division and tensions between biopolitics and necropolitics are racialized. Put more stridently, neoliberalism enables the biopolitical celebration of both life and diversity as values in and of themselves, without any concern for the histories of specific forms of life and specific forms of difference. In this vein, necropolitics calls out the foundational and persistent role of anti-blackness in the colonial ontology of liberalism that neoliberalism intensifies. This leads to the article’s concluding demand that white subjects must countenance fungibility in its ontological and semiotic iterations, speculating that we may be entering a historical moment when this might occur.
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This essay explores the method of close reading as a critical strategy for feminist classrooms, especially when focused on the foundational violence of anti-Blackness and coloniality. Through a personal reflection on my own efforts to... more
This essay explores the method of close reading as a critical strategy for feminist classrooms, especially when focused on the foundational violence of anti-Blackness and coloniality. Through a personal reflection on my own efforts to break away from my formal education in “the Western canon” (sic.), I argue that radical learn- ing requires vulnerability and an attentiveness to unconscious habits, motivations, and defenses. I focus on the method of close reading as a pedagogical strategy that cultivates these kinds of sensibilities, while also undercutting the informatics-diversity machine of the neoliberal university. I describe my experiences with this radical learning through three meditations that build upon one another: the methodology of close reading; the effects of reading Black feminists as canonical texts; and the strategic, limited use of canonical European theories as methods for the construction of syllabi, rather than objects of analysis. The essay concludes with an examina- tion of a recent course I designed and taught with psychoanalytic heuristic devices. Throughout the essay, I argue for grounding our feminist classrooms in prolonged discussions of the ongoing impact of the transatlantic slave trade and colonialism, in all its forms.
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This is an essay for a terrific volume, Philosophy for Girls: An Invitation to the Life of Thought, eds. Shew & Garchar (OxfordUP: 2020), that is directed to "girls," which I take to mean feminine-identified 16+ year olds. It was a true... more
This is an essay for a terrific volume, Philosophy for Girls: An Invitation to the Life of Thought, eds. Shew & Garchar (OxfordUP: 2020), that is directed to "girls," which I take to mean feminine-identified 16+ year olds. It was a true pleasure to write for that audience!
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This essay argues that eroticism is central to feminist theory and activism. It frames this problem through generational disagreements, especially within "the sex wars" in the United States, and engages Georges Bataille's writings on... more
This essay argues that eroticism is central to feminist theory and activism. It frames this problem through generational disagreements, especially within "the sex wars" in the United States, and engages Georges Bataille's writings on eroticism and transgression to forge a path through the polarized figures of "the dowdy prude" and the "sex-positive hot feminist."
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Essay connects ethics of real-as-race to discourses of post humanism.
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Through a careful reading of Foucault’s 1979 lectures on neoliberalism alongside Volumes 1 and 2 The History of Sexuality, I argue that scholarship on both neoliberalism and queer theory should heed Foucault’s framing of both... more
Through a careful reading of Foucault’s 1979 lectures on neoliberalism alongside Volumes 1 and 2 The History of Sexuality, I argue that scholarship on both neoliberalism and queer theory should heed Foucault’s framing of both neoliberalism and sexuality as central to biopolitics. I thus offer two correctives to these fields of scholarship: for scholarship on neoliberalism, I locate a way to address the ethical bankruptcy of neoliberalism in a manner that Marxist analyses fail to provide; for scholarship in queer theory, I warn that the longstanding embrace of non-conformity as a mode of resistance to normalization is suspiciously neoliberal.
I conclude with the possibility of rehabilitating the concept of jouissance as a non-
fungible limit to the enterprising rationality of neoliberalism that, if historicized and especially racialized, might offer a meaningful response to the increasing ethical
collapse wrought by the neoliberalization of our lives.
I conclude with the possibility of rehabilitating the concept of jouissance as a non-
fungible limit to the enterprising rationality of neoliberalism that, if historicized and especially racialized, might offer a meaningful response to the increasing ethical
collapse wrought by the neoliberalization of our lives.
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The connections between the fields of queer theory and continental philosophy are strange and strained: simultaneously difficult and all too easy to ferret out, there is no easy narrative for how the two fields interconnect. Both sides of... more
The connections between the fields of queer theory and continental philosophy are strange and strained: simultaneously difficult and all too easy to ferret out, there is no easy narrative for how the two fields interconnect. Both sides of the relation seem either to disavow or simply repress any relation to the other. For example, despite the impact of Foucault’s History of Sexuality, Volume One on early queer theory, current work in queer of color critique challenges the politics and epistemology of placing this text in such a canonical position, particularly for the adamantly anti-foundational field of queer theory.1 On the other hand, continental philosophy, perhaps in its ongoing beleaguered attempt to form an identity within the analytically dominated discipline of philosophy in the United States,2 seems largely to ignore the growth of queer theory, despite the provocative and invigorating work on some of continental philosophy’s most beloved topics, such as temporality, embodiment, desire, the negative, and radically anti-foundational subjectivity, epistemology, and politics. Setting aside the thorny project of their genealogical connections and disconnections, this essay turns to current trajectories in the field of queer theory, particularly the heated debates about temporality and the future, to indicate how this contemporary scholarship both draws on and exceeds a grounding in continental philosophy.
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This essay argues there is a strange religiosity afoot in neoliberal cultures, wherein we bow down at one altar: the calculation of interests. To do so, the essay places Foucault’s lectures on neoliberalism alongside Bataille’s work on... more
This essay argues there is a strange religiosity afoot in neoliberal cultures, wherein we bow down at one altar: the calculation of interests. To do so, the essay places Foucault’s lectures on neoliberalism alongside Bataille’s work on Protestantism in Volume I of The Accursed Share. Bataille argues that it is Calvin, not Luther, who breaks most radically from Catholic theology and ontology, giving nascent forms of capitalism their theological scaffolding. Tracing this carefully, the essay argues that neoliberalism carries the Calvinist break to its extreme, rendering commerce and the endless circuit of interests our god. It then speculates that Bataille’s sacrificial ethics may yet offer a way back into a meaningful ethics in these dizzying times.
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Michel Foucault wrote only one essay explicitly on the work of Georges Bataille, “A Preface to Transgression.” The influence of Bataille on Foucault's thinking is so formative that it simply goes unmarked in his texts. In the terms of his... more
Michel Foucault wrote only one essay explicitly on the work of Georges Bataille, “A Preface to Transgression.” The influence of Bataille on Foucault's thinking is so formative that it simply goes unmarked in his texts. In the terms of his work on locating moments of that insubordinate jouissance in various historical terms, Bataille frames insubordinate jouissance as acts of consumption that are a part of all societies. The author develops a reading of Bataille's Accursed Share alongside Foucault's lectures on neoliberalism, The Birth of Biopolitics, not only to develop an example of the benefits of reading these two thinkers together, but also to argue that they help us see how homo economicus is a crucial link in our thinking about twentieth-century biopolitics.
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Discussion of the insufficiency of the language of "race" and "racism" to name the onto-sociological violence of anti-Blackness and anti-Indigeneity that are the foundations of modernity.
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Interview on pedagogical strategies for teaching "race" as a white instructor. Includes discussion of changing attitudes of students across last 20 years as well as the constant need for humility.
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Interview with Zoe Brigley Thompson on the various themes of Way Too Cool, with emphasis on speaking to a broad audience.
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Interview with Chris Richardson on Way Too Cool, with emphasis on contemporary racism. Part of his podcast series at "This Is Not a Podcast."
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An account of how the Open Letter calling for the retraction of Rebecca Tuvel's essay, "In Defense of Transracialism" (Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy (2017), 32 (2): 263-278), was written and became the object of public concern... more
An account of how the Open Letter calling for the retraction of Rebecca Tuvel's essay, "In Defense of Transracialism" (Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy (2017), 32 (2): 263-278), was written and became the object of public concern in the Spring of 2017. This essay is not included in the problematic account of this remarkable situation given on Wikipedia.
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Special Issue: "Mapping the Margins of Europe"
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A biannual journal of feminist continental philosophy. philoSOPHIA is an international, peer-reviewed journal for scholarship that engages the rich traditions of feminist theory and continental philosophy, both broadly construed. The... more
A biannual journal of feminist continental philosophy.
philoSOPHIA is an international, peer-reviewed journal for scholarship that engages the rich traditions of feminist theory and continental philosophy, both broadly construed. The journal aims to broaden the discipline of philosophy and enrich the practices of feminist theory, bringing the conceptual resources of these fields together to address pressing socio-political issues. We encourage a wide range of theoretical approaches, particularly those exploring feminist philosophical questions through the lenses of queer, critical race, disability, and transnational perspectives.
philoSOPHIA is an international, peer-reviewed journal for scholarship that engages the rich traditions of feminist theory and continental philosophy, both broadly construed. The journal aims to broaden the discipline of philosophy and enrich the practices of feminist theory, bringing the conceptual resources of these fields together to address pressing socio-political issues. We encourage a wide range of theoretical approaches, particularly those exploring feminist philosophical questions through the lenses of queer, critical race, disability, and transnational perspectives.
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Issue 6.1 of philoSOPHIA, co-edited by Lisa Guenther and Chloe Taylor
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... Download citation data in RIS format. Review essay. No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive. Shannon Winnubst. Abstract. There is no abstract for this paper. PDF Full-text PDF size: 91 Kb. HTML References 8 references, 1 ...
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Deeply concerned about the possibilities of political agreement in a multicul-tural society, Georgia Warnke takes up the interpretive strategies of Gadamer's hermeneutics, and with a more critical eye, Habermas's deliberative... more
Deeply concerned about the possibilities of political agreement in a multicul-tural society, Georgia Warnke takes up the interpretive strategies of Gadamer's hermeneutics, and with a more critical eye, Habermas's deliberative democracy to appeal for a revamping of some of the most ...
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Research Interests: Information Systems, Real Estate, Sociology, Psychology, Distributed Computing, and 15 morePhilosophy, Parallel Programming, Political Science, Applied Economics, Early Childhood, Computer Software, Humans, Minority Groups, Business and Management, Credit Risk, Education Systems, Foucault Studies, Curriculum and Pedagogy, Philosophical Studies, and Business Society
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This essay draws on a wide range of feminist, psychoanalytic and other anti-racist theorists to work out the specific mode of space as ‘contained’ and the ways it grounds dominant contemporary forms of racism i.e. the space of phallicized... more
This essay draws on a wide range of feminist, psychoanalytic and other anti-racist theorists to work out the specific mode of space as ‘contained’ and the ways it grounds dominant contemporary forms of racism i.e. the space of phallicized whiteness. Offering a close reading of Lacan’s primary models for ego-formation, the mirror stage and the inverted bouquet, I argue that psychoanalysis can help us to map contemporary power relations of racism because it enacts some of those very dynamics. Casting the production of subjectivity on the field of the visual, Lacan performs some of the fundamental conceptions of space and embodiment that ground the dominant forms of racism in these cultural symbolics. Namely, he articulates a body that is bound by skin, structured by a logic of containment, cathected through aggression and distance, and read primarily through the way it looks – both how it appears and how it beholds the appearances of other bodies. Unraveling this nexus of power relations, I argue that a fundamental anti-racist strategy is to interrupt, interrogate and re-deploy this interpellation of images.