Are the “culture wars” over? When did they begin? What is their relationship to gender struggle and the dynamics of class? In her first full treatment of postcolonial studies, a field that she helped define, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, one of the world’s foremost literary theorists, poses these questions from within the postcolonial enclave. “We cannot merely continue to act out the part of Caliban,” Spivak writes; and her book is an attempt to understand and describe a more responsible role for (...) the postcolonial critic. A Critique of Postcolonial Reason tracks the figure of the “native informant” through various cultural practices—philosophy, history, literature—to suggest that it emerges as the metropolitan hybrid. The book addresses feminists, philosophers, critics, and interventionist intellectuals, as they unite and divide. It ranges from Kant’s analytic of the sublime to child labor in Bangladesh. Throughout, the notion of a Third World interloper as the pure victim of a colonialist oppressor emerges as sharply suspect: the mud we sling at certain seemingly overbearing ancestors such as Marx and Kant may be the very ground we stand on. A major critical work, Spivak’s book redefines and repositions the postcolonial critic, leading her through transnational cultural studies into considerations of globality. (shrink)

In this dissertation, I question the masculinist assumptions of subjectivity that shape the direction of scientific inquiry, most notably in psychology and medicine, and propose alternative views. I argue that when philosophers write about the nature of human beings, they abstract ideals from their status as white, educated, European men, thereby leaving these categories unmarked and invisible. The invisibility of these categories makes visible sexual and racial differences, highlighting such differences as deviations from the norm. Differences become markings of deficiency. (...) ;Examining in particular the discourses on melancholia and depression within the history of medicine and philosophy in relation to gender, I expose the gender and racial bias of philosophical and scientific inquiry. The historical discourses on melancholia reflect it as a sign of male genius and creativity. If men show symptoms of emotional frailty, something "quite typical" for women, it is so rare that it must symbolize something extraordinary. However, if women suffer something similar to melancholia, it does not imply greater creativity or cultural worth. Instead, it confirms their inferiority to men. ;I show that this masculinist bias not only undercuts psychologists' and physicians' ability to treat women suffering from depression, but also engenders it in women. By structuring a world around men's needs and desires, men continually alienate women. The defining texts of a culture serve as mirrors that reflect back hyperbolic images of men, while diminishing images of women. Women grow up learning to devalue themselves, as the masculinist culture devalues them. ;I argue against a univocal, masculine subject that transcends sexual and racial difference. As an alternative, I propose a notion of subjectivity that fundamentally entails sexual difference, and claim that our most basic theories of personhood must begin by recognizing that no one model---especially a masculinist one---will capture both sexes, especially as sex is racialized and vice versa. We must negotiate new models of the self when occasions arise, such as the high rates of women's depression. By beginning to remember the female self and reflecting it too in culture, philosophers and scientists will move closer discovering the truths of human existence. (shrink)

Challenging the fundamental tenet of the multicultural movement -- that social struggles turning upon race, gender, and sexuality are struggles for recognition -- this work offers a powerful critique of current conceptions of identity and ...

This book investigates the concept of body shame and explores its significance when considering philosophical accounts of embodied subjectivity, providing phenomenological reflections on how the body is shaped by social forces.

The `riddle of femininity', like Freud's reference to women's sexuality as a `dark continent', has been treated as a romantic aside or a sexist evasion, rather than a problem to be solved. In this first comprehensive study, Teresa Brennan suggests that by placing these theories in the context of Freud's work overall, we will begin to understand why femininity was such a riddle for Freud.