· 2014
Habeas Viscus: Racializing Assemblages, Biopolitics, and Black Feminist Theories of the Human
- 1,987citations
- 2014year
Short summary
This work introduces the concept of "racializing assemblages," arguing that race is a core process that categorizes beings into full humans, not-quite-humans, and nonhumans, often by grounding political hierarchies in physical bodies.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Key points
- Introduces "racializing assemblages" as sociopolitical processes that categorize beings based on race.
- Argues race, though not strictly biological, often uses physical flesh to anchor political hierarchies.
- Leverages Black feminist theories from Spillers and Wynter to disrupt the equation of humanity with white, Western men.
- Contends that Agamben and Foucault's biopolitics discourse underestimates the significance of race in constructing the human.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Abstract
Habeas Viscus focuses attention on the centrality of race to notions of the human. Alexander G. Weheliye develops a theory of "racializing assemblages," taking race as a set of sociopolitical processes that discipline humanity into full humans, not-quite-humans, and nonhumans. This disciplining, while not biological per se, frequently depends on anchoring political hierarchies in human flesh. The work of the black feminist scholars Hortense Spillers and Sylvia Wynter is vital to Weheliye's argument. Particularly significant are their contributions to the intellectual project of black studies vis-à-vis racialization and the category of the human in western modernity. Wynter and Spillers configure black studies as an endeavor to disrupt the governing conception of humanity as synonymous with white, western man. Weheliye posits black feminist theories of modern humanity as useful correctives to the "bare life and biopolitics discourse" exemplified by the works of Giorgio Agamben and Michel Foucault, which, Weheliye contends, vastly underestimate the conceptual and political significance of race in constructions of the human. Habeas Viscus reveals the pressing need to make the insights of black studies and black feminism foundational to the study of modern humanity
The authors' abstract, as published at the source., 2014 · DOI ↗
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Field: Philosophy
PhilosophyArts and Humanities