Posthuman Feminism. Rosi Braidotti

Posthuman Feminism - Rosi  Braidotti


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and hence implements the racialization of the categories of the excluded (hooks, 1981, 1990, 1992; Ware, 1992; Tuana, 1992; Alcoff, 2006, 2015). They argue consequently that we need to rescue humanism from the contradictory and violent mess into which Western culture plunged it, as evidenced by the legacies of colonialism, slavery and imperialism. As Gayatri Spivak writes, ‘There is an affinity between the imperialist subject and the subject of humanism’ (1987: 202). And this imperialist and exclusive form of humanism needs to be historicized and held to account.

      Race theorists also point out the proximity between European humanism, as the foundation for the Enlightenment rule of scientific reason and democratic rule, and practices of violent domination, enslavement and instrumental use of terror. Reason and horror need not be, and historically have not been, mutually exclusive within the European colonial mindset and patriarchal system of values. This is what Sylvia Wynter defines as the paradox of the complementarity of European modernity and colonialism. This produces ‘the Janus-faced effects of large-scale human emancipation yoked to the no less large-scale human degradation and immiseration’ (Wynter, 2003: 270). Acknowledging that reason and barbarism are not self-contradictory, nor are humanism and genocide, may horrify the ‘clarity fetishists’ (Spivak, 1989: 206) of Western rationalism, but remains true. By extension, the claim to universality by Western scientific rationality is challenged (Spivak, 1999) as an expression of aggressive Western culture and of white supremacy (hooks, 1990).

      Post- and decolonial feminist thinkers developed trenchant analyses of the physical and epistemic violence involved in reducing the sexualized, racialized and naturalized ‘others’ to inferior ontological status (Spivak, 1985, 1999). In her classic ‘Under Western Eyes’, Chandra Talpade Mohanty (1991) extended postcolonial feminist criticism to bear on Western feminist scholarship, exposing the binary constructions of first world and third world women within that community. The European colour-blindness and disregard of diversity has been revealed as everyday racism (Essed, 1991). Decolonial feminism developed from South and Native American feminists, such as Gloria Anzaldúa’s Chicana feminism (1987). They foregrounded the decolonial figuration of mestiza consciousness as an empowering alternative to dominant subject positions (Lugones, 2010).

      Drawing inspiration from a variety of non-European sources, such as African Ubuntu (Mandela, 1994), Black, decolonial and Indigenous feminists rescue the humanist project by inscribing it into transformative politics with a strong spiritual undertone (hooks, 1990; Hill Collins, 1991). Buddhist, Marxist and other schools of ecofeminism and environmental activism produce their own brand of humanist defence of the human, combining the critique of the epistemic and physical violence of modernity with that of European colonialism (Shiva, 1997). These non-Western forms of radical humanism allow us to look at the ‘human’ from a more inclusive and diverse angle. They suggest new recompositions of humanity after Eurocentrism. This leads to a critical form of humanism referring to non-Western sources and looking at the human from a more inclusive and diverse angle (Narayan, 1989).

      Black, decolonial and Indigenous feminists adopted a cautious approach to the generative potential of other traditions of humanism. Or, as the Combahee River Collective argued decades ago (1979), for those who have been systematically excluded from humanity, to be recognized as human, levelly human, is enough. They take humanism as an unfulfilled project, betrayed by Eurocentric violence and aim to develop its anti-racist and inclusive potential. They are committed to explore new understandings of humanity after colonialism and to draw from non-Western sources the inspiration to fully realize the potential of the humanist project.

      By extension, the racialized ontology of ‘Man’ in Western philosophy is assessed by Black feminists as non-representative of humanity. Wynter urges to correct this through a revision of humanism in relation to concepts of Blackness. She makes a useful distinction between the humanist ‘Man of Reason’ – whom she defines as ‘Man 1’ – and the nineteenth-century version – ‘Man 2’ – of post-Darwinian science. She argues that neither version of ‘Man’ does justice to the dehumanized others; only a full recognition of the racialized character of all ontologies can provide an adequate analysis of the human. For Wynter, ‘the human has not yet come’. She calls for the need for a third event (after Man 1 and Man 2), in which the deselected people join forces to recognize what they actually are. This involves contesting the workings of capital and developing a new kind of politics emerging from those who have been ‘de-selected’ (2003).

      Looking back at the mixed legacy of European humanism, notably its historical connection to empire, colonialism and enslavement, Audre Lorde put it with characteristic visionary force: ‘Our survival means learning to use difference for something other than destruction. So does yours’ (Lorde in Rodriguez, 2020).


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