Visible Identities Race, Gender, and the Self

by Alcoff, Linda Martin

• ISBN13: 9780195137347
• ISBN10: 0195137345
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-12-22
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

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, Martin Alcoffmakes 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 tointerpretation. 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. Martin Alcoff develops a more realistic characterizationof identity in general through combining phenomenological approaches to embodiment with hermeneutic concepts of the interpretive horizon. Besides addressing the general contours of social identity, Martin Alcoff develops an account of the material infrastructure of gendered identity, compares andcontrasts 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-Latinoracism, and the politics of mestizo or hybrid identity.

Author Biography

Linda Martin Alcoff is Director of Women's Studies and Professor of Philosophy, Women's Studies and Political Science at Syracuse University.

Table of Contents

PART ONE IDENTITIES REAL AND IMAGINED
Introduction: Identity and Visibility	5	(6)
The Pathologizing of Identity	11	(9)
The Political Critique	20	(27)
The Philosophical Critique	47	(37)
Real Identities	84	(49)
PART TWO GENDER IDENTITY AND GENDER DIFFERENCES
The Identity Crisis in Feminist Theory	133	(18)
The Metaphysics of Gender and Sexual Difference	151	(28)
PART THREE RACIALIZED IDENTITIES AND RACIST SUBJECTS
The Phenomenology of Racial Embodiment	179	(16)
Racism and Visible Race	195	(10)
The Whiteness Question	205	(22)
PART FOUR LATINO/A PARTICULARITY
Latinos and the Categories of Race	227	(20)
Latinos, Asian Americans, and the Black-White Binary	247	(17)
On Being Mixed	264	(21)
Conclusion	285	(6)
Notes	291	(10)
Bibliography	301	(18)
Index	319