Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-nmvwc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-28T16:38:46.371Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The “New:” A Colonization of Non-Modern Scholars and Knowledges

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 June 2020

Shara Cherniak  and
Ashli Moore Walker
Shara Cherniak*
Affiliation:
Educational Theory and Practice, University of Georgia Athens, GA30602
Ashli Moore Walker
Affiliation:
Educational Theory and Practice, University of Georgia Athens, GA30602
*
Corresponding authors. Email: schernia@gmail.com, ashlidwalker@gmail.com
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

We engage in an affirmative feminist reading of the recent, predominantly Western, philosophical movement called the new materialisms—that is, we problematize the “new” while still valuing its contributions toward justice (Todd 2016; Schaeffer 2018). We put Sara Ahmed in conversation with María Lugones and Zoe Todd in order to recognize that not only have feminist scholars engaged in conversations around the material before publications of the “new” (Ahmed 2008; Lugones 2010; Todd 2016), but we also argue that the “new” creates a coloniality of non-modern knowledges that think and live some of the so-called groundbreaking ideas of the “new.” The new materialisms, then, function systematically to deny and silence the multiple and varied ways in which the concepts it engages have a prolonged and deep scholarship of theorization in both feminisms and non-modern knowledges. The significance of this, we contend, is not merely a question of semantics as (some) authors of the “new” purport—language matters. That is, language materializes the world; it affects. In engendering this philosophy as “new,” it acts, in effect, as a colonization that reinforces harmful and violent discourses of white, neoliberal, colonial capitalism (Lugones 2010) that some feminist theories seek to dismantle.

Type
Articles
Information
Hypatia , Volume 35 , Special Issue 3: Toward Decolonial Feminisms: Tracing the Lineages of Decolonial Thinking through Latin American/Latinx Feminist Philosophy , Summer 2020 , pp. 424 - 438
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Hypatia, a Nonprofit Corporation.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Ahmed, Sara. 2008. Open forum imaginary prohibitions: Some preliminary remarks on the founding gestures of the “New materialism.” European Journal of Women's Studies 15 (1): 23–39.10.1177/1350506807084854CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ahmed, Sara. 2013. Making feminist points. Feministkilljoys. http://feministkilljoys.com/2013/09/11/making-feminist-points/.Google Scholar
Alaimo, Stacy. 2012. Sustainable this, sustainable that: New materialisms, posthumanism, and unknown futures. PMLA 127 (3): 558–64.10.1632/pmla.2012.127.3.558CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alaimo, Stacy, and Hekman, Susan. 2008. Material feminisms. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Aparicio, Juan Ricardo, and Blaser, Mario. Unpublished manuscript. La “Cuidad Letrada” y la insurrección de saberes subyugados en América Latina.Google Scholar
Barad, Karen. 2003. Posthumanist performativity: Toward an understanding of how matter comes to matter. Journal of Women in Culture and Society 28 (3): 801–31.10.1086/345321CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barad, Karen. 2007. Meeting the universe halfway. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Barad, Karen. 2010. Quantum entanglements and hauntological relations of inheritance: Dis/continuities, spacetime infoldings, and justice-to-come. Derrida Today 3 (2): 240–68.10.3366/drt.2010.0206CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Braidotti, Rosi. 2000. Teratologies. In Deleuze and feminist theory, ed. Buchanan, Ian and Colebrook, Claire. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Coole, Diana. 2013. Agentic capacities and capacious historical materialism: Thinking with new materialisms in the political sciences. Millennium 41 (3): 451–69.10.1177/0305829813481006CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coole, Diana, and Frost, Samantha. 2010. Introducing the new materialisms. In New materialisms: Ontology, agency, and politics, ed. Coole, Diana and Frost, Samantha. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
DeLanda, Manuel. 1996. The geology of morals: A neo-materialist interpretation. http://www.t0.or.at/delanda/geology.htm.Google Scholar
Deleuze, Gilles, and Guattari, Félix. 1980/1987. A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. Translated by Massumi, Brian. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Descartes, René. 1637/2006. A discourse on the method of correctly conducting one's reason and seeking truth in the sciences. Translated by Maclean, Ian. New York: Oxford University Press. http://rlwclarke.net/Theory/SourcesPrimary/DescartesDiscourseonMethod.pdfGoogle Scholar
Descartes, René. 1998. Discourse on method and meditations on first philosophy, 4th edition. Trans. Donald A. Cress. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Dolphijn, Rick, and van der Tuin, Iris. 2012. New materialism: Interviews & cartographies. Ann Arbor, Mich.: Open Humanities Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frost, Samantha. 2011. The implications of the new materialisms for feminist epistemology. In Feminist epistemology and philosophy of science, ed. Grasswick, Heidi E.. Dordrecht: Springer.Google Scholar
Haraway, Donna. 1988. Situated knowledges: The science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective. Feminist Studies 14 (3): 575–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haraway, Donna. 2003. The companion species manifesto: Dogs, people, and significant otherness. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press.Google Scholar
Haraway, Donna. 2016. Staying with the trouble: Making kin in the Chthulucene. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.10.1215/9780822373780CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lenz Taguchi, Hillevi. 2010. Going beyond the theory/practice divide in early childhood: Introducing an intra-active pedagogy. Abingdon, UK: Routledge.Google Scholar
Lugones, María. 1994. Purity, impurity, and separation. Signs: Journal in Women in Culture and Society 19 (2): 458–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lugones, María. 2010. Toward a decolonial feminism. Hypatia 25 (4): 742–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McBride, Dwight A. 2000. The ghosts of memory: Representing the past in Beloved and The Woman Warrior. In Re-placing America: Conversations and contestations: Selected essays, ed. Hsu, Ruth, Franklin, Cynthia G., and Kosanke, Suzanne. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press.Google Scholar
New materialism: How matter comes to matter. n.d. “COST Action IS1307: New materialism: Networking European scholarship on ‘how matter comes to matter.’” http://newmaterialism.eu/about/cost-action-is1307.html.Google Scholar
Nhất Hạnh, Thích. 1988. The heart of understanding: Commentaries on the Prajnaparamita Heart Sutra. Edited by Peter Levitt. Berkeley: Parallax Press.Google Scholar
Nhất Hạnh, Thích. 1991. Peace is every step: The path of mindfulness in everyday life. Edited by Kotler, Arnold. New York: Bantam Books.Google Scholar
Nhất Hạnh, Thích. 1997. True love: A practice for awakening the heart. Boston: Shambhala Publications Inc.Google Scholar
Nhất Hạnh, Thích. 2001/2009. You are here: Discovering the magic of the present moment. Translated by Kohn, Sherab Chödzin, ed. McLeod, Melvin. Boston: Shambhala Publications, Inc.Google Scholar
Nxumalo, Fikile. 2016. Towards “refiguring presences” as an anti-colonial orientation to research in early childhood studies. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 29 (5): 640–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paddock, Richard C. 2019. “Thich Nhat Hanh, preacher of mindfulness, has come home to Vietnam.” New York Times, May 16. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/16/world/asia/thich-nhat-hanh-vietnam.html.Google Scholar
Quijano, Anibal. 1991. Colonialidad, modernidad/racialidad. Perú Indígena 13 (29): 11–29.Google Scholar
Rodríguez, Clelia O. 2018. Decolonizing academia: Poverty, oppression and pain. Halifax, N.S.: Fernwood Publishing.Google Scholar
Schaeffer, Felicity Amaya. 2018. Spirit matters: Gloria Anzaldúa's cosmic becoming across human/non-human borderlands. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 43 (4): 1005–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
St. Pierre, Elizabeth Adams. 2016. The empirical and the new empiricisms. Cultural studies <-> Critical Methodologies 16 (2): 111–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
St. Pierre, Elizabeth Adams, Jackson, Alecia Youngblood, and Mazzei, Lisa A.. 2016. New empiricisms and new materialisms: conditions for new inquiry. Cultural studies <-> Critical Methodologies 16 (2): 99–110.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sundberg, Juanita. 2013. Decolonizing posthuman geographies. Cultural Geographies 21 (1): 33–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Todd, Zoe. 2016. An Indigenous feminist's take on the ontological turn: ‘Ontology’ is just another name for colonialism. Journal of Historical Sociology 29 (1): 4–22.10.1111/johs.12124CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tuana, Nancy. 2004. Coming to understand: Orgasm and the epistemology of ignorance. Hypatia 19 (1): 194–232.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tuck, Eve, Wayne Yang, K., and Gaztambide-Fernández, Rubén. 2015. Citation practices. Critical Ethnic Studies. http://www.criticalethnicstudiesjournal.org/citation-practices/.Google Scholar
Tuck, Eve, and Wayne Yang, K.. 2018. Toward what justice? Describing diverse dreams of justice in education. New York: Routledge. Kindle edition.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
van der Tuin, Iris. 2011. “A different starting point, a different metaphysics”: Reading Bergson and Barad diffractively. Hypatia 26 (1): 22–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Watts, Vanessa. 2013. Indigenous place-thought and agency amongst humans and non-humans (First woman and sky woman go on a European Tour!). DIES: Decolonization, Indigeneity, Education and Society 2 (1): 20–34.Google Scholar
Weheliye, Alexander G. 2014. Habeas viscus: Racializing assemblages, biopolitics and black feminist theories of the human. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar