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José Medina: The Epistemology of Resistance

Oxford University Press, 368 pp, £22.99, 2013, ISBN: 978-0199929047

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Notes

  1. On this point, see: Bernard Gert (2005), Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2007), specifically chapter 10; Sanyika Shakur (2013). But see also: Adale Sholock (2012) (arguing that epistemic uncertainty should be considered an additional strategy rather than a dilemma for the white Western woman).

  2. Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (Charles Lam Markmann, Eng. tr, Grove Press 1967) discusses the complex processes involved in the internalisation of racist philosophies.

  3. An early elaboration of ‘dual perspective’ or ‘multiple consciousness’ is found in W.E.B. Du Bois (A.C. McClurg & Co. 1903/Bartleby 1999) <http://www.bartleby.com/114/1.html>. References to multiple consciousness are common among intersectional critical race feminists; see for example: Charles R. Lawrence (1992) pp. 2231, 2239, 2274–2275 (noting that the ‘burden/gift of dual subjectivity enables those who bear it to recognize and articulate social realities that are unseen by those who live more fully within the world of privilege’); Adrien K. Wing (1991); Deborah K. King (1998).

  4. On two pivotal days of 25 and 26 June 2013, the court issued three landmark rulings to which civil rights and LGBT equality lawyers responded with varying amounts of dismay and elation. In Shelby County v. Holder, 570 US ___ (2013) the issue was whether or not states with a history of discriminatory voting practices (called ‘covered jurisdictions’) should be barred from implementing any change affecting voting without first obtaining the approval of the Department of Justice—a process known as preclearance—as specified in the Voting Rights Act; in United States v. Windsor, 570 US ___ (2013) (Docket No. 12-307) the court was asked to decide if DOMA’s definition of marriage as ‘a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife’ and spouse as ‘a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife’ is constitutional; and in Hollingsworth v. Perry, 570 US ___ (2013) (Docket No. 12-144) the state of California appealed a decision by the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit declaring unconstitutional the voter-passed proposition that ‘only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California’.

  5. The relationship between formalism and equality is related to a basic tenet of critical race feminism—the belief that racism and other forms of discrimination are not an aberration; they occur in the everyday experiences of most oppressed persons. It is for this reason that race scholars reject colour-blind ‘equality’—such formal laws and policies can only address the most obvious forms of discrimination.

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  1. London School of Business and Finance, London, UK

    Jeremy C. Bradley

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  1. Jeremy C. Bradley
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Correspondence to Jeremy C. Bradley.

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Bradley, J.C. José Medina: The Epistemology of Resistance. Fem Leg Stud 22, 311–317 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10691-014-9260-6

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