Habeas Viscus

Weheliye Alexander Ghedi Weheliye

Description

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-a-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.

Sujets

• Histoire
• USA
• États-Unis

Informations

• Publié par: Duke University Press
• Date de parution: 20 août 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780822376491
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

HABEASVISCUS

HABEASVISCUS

Racializing Assemblages, Biopolitics,

and Black Feminist Theories of the Human

ALEXANDER G. WEHELIYE

Duke University PressDurham and London 2014

© 2014 Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper∞ Designed by Amy Ruth Buchanan Typeset in Quadraat by Copperline Book Services, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Weheliye, Alexander G., 1968– Habeas viscus : racializing assemblages, biopolitics, and black feminist theories of the human / Alexander G. Weheliye. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn978-0-8223-5691-2 (cloth : alk. paper) isbn978-0-8223-5701-8 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. African Americans—Study and teaching. 2. Blacks— Study and teaching. 3. Feminist theory. 4. Spillers, Hortense J. 5. Wynter, Sylvia. I. Title. e184.7.w43 2014 305.4201—dc23 2014000761

Cover art: Wangechi Mutu,Untitled, 2002. Collage, ink on

paper, 12 3 9 inches. Courtesy of the artist.

For Aaliya and Marlena Weheliye

CONTENTS

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

Acknowledgments ix

INTRODUCTION : Now 1

BLACKNESS : The Human 17

BARE LIFE : The Flesh 33

ASSEMBLAGES : Articulation 46

RACISM : Biopolitics 53

LAW : Property 74

DEPRAVATION : Pornotropes 89

DEPRIVATION : Hunger 113

FREEDOM : Soon 125

Notes 139

Bibliography 181

Index 205

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I thank the following individuals, who either read or discussed parts of the book with me, for their valuable insights: Richard Iton, Ruth Wilson-Gilmore, Fred Moten, Saidiya Hartman, Dylan Rodriguez, Katherine McKittrick, An- drea Smith, Alondra Nelson, Dwight McBride, Hortense Spillers, Jodi Kim, John Keene, Nicola Lauré Al-Samarai, Joseph Chaves, Ulla Haselstein, Ewa Ziarek, Annette Schlichter, Anna Parkinson, Samuel Weber, and the anony- mous readers at Duke University Press. Many thanks also to the participants in theuchriresearch group Between Life and Death: Necropolitics in the Era of Late Capitalism, as well as the audiences at Reading Race Todayat Brown University, Critical Ethnic Studies Conference atucRiverside, the Program in American Studies and Ethnicity atusc, the John F. Kennedy In- stitute for American Studies at the Free University Berlin, the English De- partment at University of Wisconsin–Madison, the annual meetings of the American Studies and Modern Language Association, the Comparative Lit- erature Department atucIrvine, and the faculty colloquium in the English Department at Northwestern for allowing me to test out the ideas of the book and for their valuable feedback. Of course, I am extremely thankful for Sylvia Wynter’s and Hortense Spillers’s brilliance in charting the paths of future inquiry, of what needs to be done, for us.