Draws from Latina feminism, existential phenomenology, and race theory to explore the concept of selfhood. This original study intertwining Latina feminism, existential phenomenology, and race theory offers a new philosophical approach to understanding selfhood and identity. Focusing on writings by Gloría Anzaldúa, María Lugones, and Linda Martín Alcoff, Mariana Ortega articulates a phenomenology that introduces a conception of selfhood as both multiple and singular. Her Latina feminist phenomenological approach can account for identities belonging simultaneously to different worlds, including (...) immigrants, exiles, and inhabitants of borderlands. Ortega’s project forges new directions not only in Latina feminist thinking on such issues as borders, mestizaje, marginality, resistance, and identity politics, but also connects this analysis to the existential phenomenology of Martin Heidegger and to such concepts as being-in-the-world, authenticity, and intersubjectivity. The pairing of the personal and the political in Ortega’s work is illustrative of the primacy of lived experience in the development of theoretical understandings of who we are. In addition to bringing to light central metaphysical issues regarding the temporality and continuity of the self, Ortega models a practice of philosophy that draws from work in other disciplines and that recognizes the important contributions of Latina feminists and other theorists of color to philosophical pursuits. Mariana Ortega is Professor of Philosophy at John Carroll University and coeditor (with Linda Martín Alcoff) of Constructing the Nation: A Race and Nationalism Reader, also published by SUNY Press. (shrink)

The aim of this essay is to carry out an analysis of the multi-voiced, multi-cultural self discussed by Latina feminists in light of a Heideggerian phenomenological account of persons or "Existential Analytic." In so doing, it (a) points out similarities as well as differences between the Heideggerian description of the self and Latina feminists' phenomenological accounts of self, and (b) critically assesses María Lugones's important notion of "world-traveling." In the end, the essay defends the view of a "multiplicitous" self which (...) takes insights from Lugones's view of the self that "travels 'worlds'" and from other Latina feminists' accounts of self as well as from Martin Heidegger's account of Dasein. (shrink)

This original study intertwining Latina feminism, existential phenomenology, and race theory offers a new philosophical approach to understanding selfhood and identity. Focusing on writings by Gloría Anzaldúa, María Lugones, and Linda Martín Alcoff, Mariana Ortega articulates a phenomenology that introduces a conception of selfhood as both multiple and singular. Her Latina feminist phenomenological approach can account for identities belonging simultaneously to different worlds, including immigrants, exiles, and inhabitants of borderlands. Ortega’s project forges new directions not only in (...) Latina feminist thinking on such issues as borders, mestizaje, marginality, resistance, and identity politics, but also connects this analysis to the existential phenomenology of Martin Heidegger and to such concepts as being-in-the-world, authenticity, and intersubjectivity. The pairing of the personal and the political in Ortega’s work is illustrative of the primacy of lived experience in the development of theoretical understandings of who we are. In addition to bringing to light central metaphysical issues regarding the temporality and continuity of the self, Ortega models a practice of philosophy that draws from work in other disciplines and that recognizes the important contributions of Latina feminists and other theorists of color to philosophical pursuits. (shrink)

Abstract:Jessica Elkayam asks Mariana Ortega about the influence both Latina feminisms and Martin Heidegger have had on the development of Ortega's mestiza theory.

The aim of this essay is to analyze the notion of “loving, knowing ignorance,” a type of “arrogant perception” that produces ignorance about women of color and their work at the same time that it proclaims to have both knowledge about and loving perception toward them. The first part discusses Marilyn Frye's accounts of “arrogant” as well as of “loving” perception and presents an explanation of “loving, knowing ignorance.” The second part discusses the work of Audre Lorde, Elizabeth Spelman, and (...) María Lugones in their attempts to deal with the issue of arrogant perception within feminism, and examines how Lugones's notion of “‘world’-traveling” may help us deal with “loving, knowing ignorance.” Ultimately, the author suggests that we need to become aware of instances of “loving, knowing ignorance,” especially if we are to stay true to Third Wave feminism's commitment to diversity. (shrink)

: The aim of this essay is to analyze the notion of "loving, knowing ignorance," a type of "arrogant perception" that produces ignorance about women of color and their work at the same time that it proclaims to have both knowledge about and loving perception toward them. The first part discusses Marilyn Frye's accounts of "arrogant" as well as of "loving" perception and presents an explanation of "loving, knowing ignorance." The second part discusses the work of Audre Lorde, Elizabeth Spelman, (...) and María Lugones in their attempts to deal with the issue of arrogant perception within feminism, and examines how Lugones's notion of "'world'-traveling" may help us deal with "loving, knowing ignorance." Ultimately, the author suggests that we need to become aware of instances of "loving, knowing ignorance," especially if we are to stay true to Third Wave feminism's commitment to diversity. (shrink)

This article calls for an examination of the spectral operations of the perceptual architecture of colonization in conjunction with the enactment of a decolonial feminism as proposed by María Lugones. The first section discusses both the notion of ghostly subjectivity from Lugones's early work as well as the echoes of this notion in her recent work on the coloniality of gender that emphasizes the gender/race/sex nexus. Subsequently, through a photographic example, the article presents an analysis of the perceptual operations of (...) specter‐making in practices of colonization in light of Lugones's understanding of the “light” and “dark” sides of the coloniality of gender. This analysis highlights not only the intricate nexus between racialization and gender and sex norms both in the past and in the present context, but it also points to the necessity for of a decolonial feminism attuned to perceptual practices or a decolonial aesthesis. (shrink)

It matters that we learn to walk our brave decolonizing talks. … Coalitions that are productive are based on principled associations of mutual understanding and respect, not just declarations of solidarity that mean well but because of privileges of class, "race" or ethnicity, gender, and sexuality do not engage the work of transforming such subjectivity.Silences, when heard, become the negotiating spaces for the decolonizing subject.In this article I reflect about "decolonial woes"—not the misfortunes and distress that are associated with expressions (...) such as "woe is me" but a kind of affliction that is inherent in resistant academic practices that despite their being resistant, even radical and transformative, are... (shrink)

How does everyday, inauthentic Dasein dominated by das Man become authentic? The aim of this article is to answer this and other questions about Dasein's authenticity by carrying out an analysis of the 'call of conscience'. This analysis, in turn, provides insights about Dasein's possibility for ethical existence. We will see that even though there are some puzzling issues in Heidegger's explanation of Dasein in its everydayness and its authenticity, the Heideggerian Existential Analytic is not 'anti-ethical' as some have claimed. (...) We will also see that the Existential Analytic's commitment to the ontic raises doubts about Heidegger's claim that the Analytic is prior to any ethics and examine how reading Being and Time as a project of 'metontology' may dissolve these doubts. Finally, the paper offers a suggestion about the importance of 'authentic historicality' in a factical account of the moral life. (shrink)

What is the norm of Americanness today, how has it changed, and how pluralistic is it in reality? from the Introduction In this volume philosophers and social ...

The aim of this essay is to carry out an analysis of the multi-voiced, multi-cultural self discussed by Latina feminists in light of a Heideggerian phenomenological account of persons or "Existential Analytic." In so doing, it points out similarities as well as differences between the Heideggerian description of the self and Latina feminists' phenomenological accounts of self, and critically assesses María Lugones's important notion of "world-traveling." In the end, the essay defends the view of a "multiplicitous" self which takes insights (...) from Lugones's view of the self that "travels 'worlds'" and from other Latina feminists' accounts of self as well as from Martin Heidegger's account of Dasein. (shrink)

Existential space is lived space, space permeated by our raced, gendered selves. It is representative of our very existence. The purpose of this essay is to explore the intersection between this lived space and art by analyzing the work of the Cuban‐born artist Ana Mendieta and showing how her Siluetas Series discloses a space of exile. The first section discusses existential spatiality as explained by the phenomenologists Heidegger and Watsuji and as represented in Mendieta's Siluetas. The second section analyzes the (...) space of exile as a space of in‐between‐ness and borders. Lastly, the third section discusses temporality as it relates to the space of exile. Through the analysis of Mendieta's Siluetas, and in light of phenomenological accounts of space and the works of Anzaldúa and Mignolo, Ana Mendieta herself is disclosed as well as the space characteristic of those who can no longer be said to have a “home.” My exploration through my art of the relationship between myself and nature has been a clear result of my having been torn from my homeland during my adolescence. The making of my Silueta in nature keeps (makes) the transition between my homeland and my new home. It is a way of reclaiming my roots and becoming one with nature. Although the culture in which I live is part of me, my roots and cultural identity are a result of my Cuban heritage.1 As quoted in Gloria Moure, Ana Mendieta (Barcelona: Ediciones Polígrafa, S.A., 1996), 108. Ana MendietaLiving in a state of psychic unrest, in a Borderland, is what makes poets write and artists create.2 Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands La Frontera, The New Mestiza (San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1987), 73. Gloria Anzaldúa. (shrink)

The article presents a study that aims to bring together the image and the word or ways of knowing through the concept of words and their respective ways to see images. Accordingly, when words are put together, phenomenological insight has been followed which does justice to lived experiences. Moreover, the author stresses the idea of the punctum in words as a wound.

Heideggerian existential phenomenology remains largely ignored by Latin American feminists due to their preference for more Marxist and Sartrean philosophies. But its influence on Latin American feminism can be felt through the work of thinkers such as Beauvoir and Irigaray, who have had a great impact on Latin American feminists’ involvement in political movements and developmentof theories. The aim of this essay is to discuss ways in which Latin American and U.S. Latina feminists have been influenced by phenomenology’s commitment to (...) lived experience, but have yet to embrace existential phenomenology in an explicit manner. (shrink)

Inspired by the Kristevan notion of abjection and her view of the corpse as the “most sickening of wastes,” I propose a notion of photographic incandescence—the affective and carnal possibility of a photograph to undo the self. I first discuss the notion of abjection and its relation to incandescence and explore how this incandescence is connected to Kristeva’s view of the corpse. Second, I discuss the notion of photographic incandescence in light of an analysis of Susan Meiselas’s photograph, Cuesta del (...) Plomo, and Roland Barthes’s notions of piercing and fulguration. Finally, I engage Gloria Anzaldúa’s practice of putting Coyolxauhqui together in its attempt to “re-member” the self through the act of creativity, an experience not without pain or the possibility of failure and unreconcilable carnal excess. (shrink)

The following paper discusses Latina feminist debates on selfhood and identity. Since work by Latina feminists is not widely recognized or studied within the discipline of philosophy, the aim of the first section of this paper is to provide a brief introduction to Chicana feminism as it has been and continues to be pivotal in the development of Latina feminism. Included in this section is an introduction to the work of celebrated Chicana theorist Gloria Anzaldúa who has played a major (...) influence in the theories of selfhood and identity developed by Latina feminists discussed in this paper. The second section analyzes the work of key contemporary Latina philosophers and theorists and shows the manner in which these theorists are reclaiming the notion of experience. (shrink)

Heideggerian existential phenomenology remains largely ignored by Latin American feminists due to their preference for more Marxist and Sartrean philosophies. But its influence on Latin American feminism can be felt through the work of thinkers such as Beauvoir and Irigaray, who have had a great impact on Latin American feminists’ involvement in political movements and developmentof theories. The aim of this essay is to discuss ways in which Latin American and U.S. Latina feminists have been influenced by phenomenology’s commitment to (...) lived experience, but have yet to embrace existential phenomenology in an explicit manner. (shrink)

Informed by María Lugones’s understanding of the “logic of purity,” this essay analyzes the race for critical phenomenology. It suggests how Lugones’s analysis of such a logic may guide us in developing phenomenological analyses of complex social identities such as race. It also shows how traces of the logic of purity remain even in critical phenomenological analyses of race. Specifically, the essay analyzes the methodological call for a reduction of quasi-transcendental structures. Ultimately an attitude and practice of critical criticality and (...) a mode of critical impurity are suggested so as to avoid problematic traces of the logic of purity. Ultimately, the discussion reveals how Latina feminist theorizing stands to enhance critical phenomenology. (shrink)

The aim of this essay is to carry out an analysis of the multi-voiced, multi-cultural self discussed by Latina feminists in light of a Heideggerian phenomenological account of persons or “Existential Analytic.” In so doing, it points out similarities as well as differences between the Heideggerian description of the self and Latina feminists' phenomenological accounts of self, and critically assesses María Lugones's important notion of “world-traveling.” In the end, the essay defends the view of a “multiplicitous” self which takes insights (...) from Lugones's view of the self that “travels ‘worlds’” and from other Latina feminists' accounts of self as well as from Martin Heidegger's account of Dasein. (shrink)

This article discusses sorrow in terms of its resistant possibilities. It describes bodies of color as ontological sites of sorrow in the context of racism and xenophobia. This sorrow, however, does not condemn these bodies to hopelessness and erasure. Rather, it may constitute a rupture with a present that fails to acknowledge racist and xenophobic practices. In addition, it connects sorrow to the kind of melancholia that bodies of color experience given their being-in-worlds that consider them unwanted, unworthy, and disposable. (...) By way of photographic analysis, this article also presents the notion of aesthetic unsettlement in order to point to coalitional possibilities across experiences and histories of woundedness, melancholia, and sorrow. (shrink)

This essay examines photographic representations of queer Latinidad. A longing to discover a photographic history of Latina lesbian desire prompts a discussion of queerness in the context of Latinx love, sexuality, and desire. By way of examples of photographic representations, queer Latinidad is presented as complex and capable of encompassing paradoxical but expansive, nondichotomous understandings of sexuality and of gender presentation. Such photographic representations also allow for disidentifications that introduce the possibility of desires that cut across races and racism. Following (...) Muñoz, queer Latinidad is ultimately connected to a sense of longing and melancholia that is resistant in the face of the various erasures of queer Latinidad, both in the context of queer theory and in the context of everydayness. (shrink)

The overall aim of this project is to provide an explanation of Dasein that takes into account both Dasein's social and individual characters as well as both Division I and II of Being and Time. Chapter 1 provides an exposition of the existentialia of Dasein which illustrate the difference between Heidegger's characterization of human beings as Dasein and the traditional Cartesian epistemic subject. Chapter 2 analyzes the roles of das Man and Mitsein, the existential structures that are key in explaining (...) Dasein's social character. Furthermore, this chapter provides an account of what the individual character of Dasein amounts to, given that Dasein is an entity that has both das Man and Mitsein as part of its existential make-up. Chapter 3 concentrates on the important notion of authenticity or what Heidegger calls resoluteness. It addresses Heidegger's puzzling claims that authentic Being-one's-Self is a modification of das Man and that the das Man self is an existentiell modification of the authentic self. Lastly, Chapter 4 studies the role that the notion of choice plays in Heidegger's existential analytic as well as the relationship that an authentic Dasein has to history. ;In conclusion, this work shows that recent interpretations which portray Dasein as a being that is primarily social and that is completely defined by the norms of its community do not do justice to the fact that Dasein has an individual character which is a key element in its ontological make-up as well as in its ontic involvements, more specifically, in the ways in which, as authentic, it can appropriate the history of its community. In the end, we are left with a picture in which Dasein cannot be seen as wholly dominated by its sociality or as completely individualistic, but as an entity whose existential structure involves a social as well as an individual character, both of which contribute to its being-in-the-world. (shrink)

The following essay examines visual representations of hurricane Katrina in popular media in order to show how photography continues to be enlisted in the production of the racial spectacle, the transformation of the plight of people of color into entertainment. The essay also analyzes how such a use of the visual serves to solidify the understanding of people of color by way of a black-white binary that does not do justice to current U.S. demographics. The essay provides a glimpse into (...) the intertwining between the visual and racial thinking. (shrink)

This paper examines photographic representations of the racialized body, more specifically, photographic representation of Afro-Mexicans, a group that has been previously made invisible from Mexican national identity but that has reemerged as the “Third Root of Mexico.” The question guiding the discussion is whether such racialized bodies can be represented in such a way that does not perpetuate racist, colonialist desires and impulses. First, I analyze the indexical nature of photographs and its role in the indexicality of race. Second, I (...) discuss the problematic representation of Afro-Mexicans in the series Tierra Negra, by contemporary Mexican photographer Maya Goded. Last, I examine photographic representations of racialized bodies in light of contemporary U.S African American–Latino relations. (shrink)

This essay is an introduction to the cluster on Latina feminism published in Hypatia (Spring 2016), Vo. 31 (2), which features essays on various areas of Latina feminisms as well as discussions on the intersection of Latina feminisms and the work of thinkers such as Mikhail Bakhtin, Simone de Beauvoir, Enrique Dussell, Immanuel Kant, Édouard Glissant, Walter Mignolo, and Friedrich Nietzsche. Contributors to the cluster include Stephanie Rivera Berruz, Cynthia M. Paccacerqua, Andrea J. Pitts, Monique Roelofs, Susan C. Méndez, Gabriela (...) Veronelli, and Elena Flores Ruiz. (shrink)

This volume brings together many prominent philosophical voices today focusing on issues of U. S. Latinx and Latin American identities and feminist theory. As such, the essays collected here highlight the varied and multidimensional aspects of gender, racial, cultural, and sexual questions impacting U.S. Latinx and Latin American communities today. The collection also highlights a number of important threads of analysis from fields as diverse as disability studies,aesthetics, literary theory, and pop culture studies.

Jurisdiction, Scale and Governance: Chronotopes of Law develops a post-metaphysical framework for analyzing the spatio-temporal workings of law and other forms of governance. In this regard, it does not seek merely to combine analyses of legal temporality carried out by anthropologists with analyses of law and space carried out by geographers and socio-legal scholars. Adding two metaphysical abstractions together does not produce anything but somewhat more complex, but equally metaphysical, abstractions. After Kant, 'time' and 'space' are simply categories of human (...) understanding, not metaphysical entities. And, in this book Mariana Valverde develops an anti-metaphysical theoretical approach to law that aims not to theorize the world in general, but rather to be useful to researchers who seek to shed light on the actual workings of law and other forms of governance. Written by one of the foremost theorists in the area, this theoretically innovative work constitutes a major contribution to contemporary studies in law and society. (shrink)

Exploring the radical potential of fiction as a tool for social change through speculative design, afro-surrealism, critical fabulations and alternative pedagogies.

S'appuyant sur l'analyse philosophique, la recherche historique, l'évolution des pratiques médicales, cet ouvrage met en lumière les articulations entre les idées scientifiques du médecin et idéologue Pierre Jean Georges Cabanis (1757-1808), son analyse des rapports sociaux et sa philosophie de la connaissance.

Features of threatening cues and the associated context influence the perceived imminence of threat and the defensive responses evoked. To provide additional knowledge about how the directionality of a threat (i.e. directed-towards or away from the viewer) might impact defensive responses in humans, participants were shown pictures of a man carrying a gun (threat) or nonlethal object (neutral) directed-away from or towards the participant. Cardiac and electrodermal responses were collected. Compared to neutral images, threatening images depicting a gun directed-towards the (...) participant induced sustained bradycardia and an increased electrodermal response, interpreted as immobility under attack. This defensive immobility reaction is evoked by high perceived threat and inescapable situations and indicates intense action preparation. Pictures of guns directed-away from the participant induced shorter bradycardia and no significant modulation of the electrodermal response compared to neutral pictures, which might be consistent with the perception of a less threatening situation. The results show that the directionality of threat stimuli is a key factor that prompts different patterns of defensive responses. (shrink)

Under the light of ancient Western philosophies, our darker moods like grief, anguish, and depression can seem irrational. When viewed through the lens of modern psychology, they can even look like mental disorders. The self-help industry, determined to sell us the promise of a brighter future, can sometimes leave us feeling ashamed that we are not more grateful, happy, or optimistic. Night Vision invites us to consider a different approach to life, one in which we stop feeling bad about feeling (...) bad. -/- In this powerful and disarmingly intimate book, Existentialist philosopher Mariana Alessandri draws on the stories of a diverse group of nineteenth- and twentieth-century philosophers and writers to help us see that our suffering is a sign not that we are broken but that we are tender, perceptive, and intelligent. Thinkers such as Audre Lorde, María Lugones, Miguel de Unamuno, C. S. Lewis, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Søren Kierkegaard sat in their anger, sadness, and anxiety until their eyes adjusted to the dark. Alessandri explains how readers can cultivate “night vision” and discover new sides to their painful moods, such as wit and humor, closeness and warmth, and connection and clarity. -/- Night Vision shows how, when we learn to embrace the dark, we begin to see these moods—and ourselves—as honorable, dignified, and unmistakably human. (shrink)