Title
Visible identities : race, gender, and the self / Linda Martín Alcoff.
ISBN
9780195137354 (pbk. : alk. paper)
0195137353 (pbk. : alk. paper)
9780195137347 (alk. paper)
0195137345 (alk. paper)
Imprint
New York : Oxford University Press, c2006.
Language
English
Description
xviii, 326 p. ; 23 cm.
Call Number
HM753 .A39 2006
Dewey Decimal Classification
305.8/0097
Summary
"In the heated debates over identity politics, few theorists have looked carefully at the conceptualizations of identity assumed by all sides. Visible Identities fills this gap. Drawing on both philosophical sources as well as theories and empirical studies in the social sciences, Martmn Alcoff makes a strong case that identities are not like special interests, nor are they doomed to oppositional politics, nor do they inevitably lead to conformism, essentialism, or reductive approaches to judging others. Identities are historical formations and their political implications are open to interpretation. But identities such as race and gender also have a powerful visual and material aspect that eliminativists and social constructionists often underestimate. Visible Identities offers a careful analysis of the political and philosophical worries about identity and argues that these worries are neither supported by the empirical data nor grounded in realistic understandings of what identities are. Martmn Alcoff develops a more realistic characterization of identity in general through combining phenomenological approaches to embodiment with hermeneutic concepts of the interpretive horizon. Besides addressing the general contours of social identity, Martmn Alcoff develops an account of the material infrastructure of gendered identity, compares and contrasts gender identities with racialized ones, and explores the experiential aspects of racial subjectivity for both whites and non-whites. In several chapters she looks specifically at Latino identity as well, including its relationship to concepts of race, the specific forms of anti-Latino racism, and the politics of mestizo or hybrid identity." -- Book cover.
Bibliography, etc. Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. 291-318) and index.
Series
Studies in feminist philosophy.
Identities real and imagined. Introduction : identity and visibility ; The pathologizing of identity ; The political critique ; The philosophical critique ; Real identities
Gender identity and gender differences. The identity crisis in feminist theory ; The metaphysics of gender and sexual difference
Racialized identities and racist subjects. The phenomenology of racial embodiment ; Racism and visible race ; The whiteness question
Latino/a particularity. Latinos and the categories of race ; Latinos, Asian Americans, and the black-white binary ; On being mixed.
