Mariana Ortega | The Pennsylvania State University (original) (raw)
Books by Mariana Ortega
Oxford University Press, 2020
"A theory in the flesh means one where the physical realities of our lives all fuse to create a p... more "A theory in the flesh means one where the physical realities of our lives all fuse to create a politic born of necessity," writes activist Cherríe L. Moraga. This volume of new essays stages an intergenerational dialogue among philosophers to introduce and deepen engagement with U.S Latinx and Latin American feminist philosophy, and to explore their "theories in the flesh." It explores specific intellectual contributions in various topics in U.S. Latinx and Latin American feminisms that stand alone and are unique and valuable; analyzes critical contributions that U.S. Latinx and Latin American interventions have made in feminist thought more generally over the last several decades; and shows the intellectual and transformative value of reading U.S Latinx and Latin American feminist theorizing.
The collection features a series of essays analyzing decolonial approaches within U. S. Latinx and Latin American feminist philosophy, including studies of the functions of gender within feminist theory, everyday modes of resistance, and methodological questions regarding the scope and breadth of decolonization as a critical praxis. Additionally, essays examine theoretical contributions to feminist discussions of selfhood, narrativity, and genealogy, as well as novel epistemic and hermeneutical approaches within the field. A number of contributors in the book address themes of aesthetics and embodiment, including issues of visual representation, queer desire, and disability within U. S. Latinx and Latin American feminisms.
Together, the essays in this volume are groundbreaking and powerful contributions in the fields of U.S Latinx and Latin American feminist philosophy.
Draws from Latina feminism, existential phenomenology, and race theory to explore the concept o... more Draws from Latina feminism, existential phenomenology, and race theory to explore the concept of selfhood.
This original study intertwining Latina feminism, existential phenomenology, and race theory offers a new philosophical approach to understanding selfhood and identity. Focusing on writings by Gloría Anzaldúa, María Lugones, and Linda Martín Alcoff, Mariana Ortega articulates a phenomenology that introduces a conception of selfhood as both multiple and singular. Her Latina feminist phenomenological approach can account for identities belonging simultaneously to different worlds, including immigrants, exiles, and inhabitants of borderlands. Ortega’s project forges new directions not only in Latina feminist thinking on such issues as borders, mestizaje, marginality, resistance, and identity politics, but also connects this analysis to the existential phenomenology of Martin Heidegger and to such concepts as being-in-the-world, authenticity, and intersubjectivity. The pairing of the personal and the political in Ortega’s work is illustrative of the primacy of lived experience in the development of theoretical understandings of who we are. In addition to bringing to light central metaphysical issues regarding the temporality and continuity of the self, Ortega models a practice of philosophy that draws from work in other disciplines and that recognizes the important contributions of Latina feminists and other theorists of color to philosophical pursuits.
Philosophers and social theorists of color examine how racism can creep into defensive forms of n... more Philosophers and social theorists of color examine how racism can creep into defensive forms of nationalism.
“What does it mean today to be an ‘American’ when one does not represent or embody the norm of ‘Americanness’ because of one’s race, ethnicity, culture of origin, religion, or some combination of these? What is the norm of ‘Americanness’ today, how has it changed, and how pluralistic is it in reality?” — from the Introduction
In this volume philosophers and social theorists of color take up these questions, offering nuanced critiques of race and nationalism in the post-9/11 United States focused around the themes of freedom, unity, and homeland. In particular, the contributors examine how normative concepts of American identity and unity come to be defined and defended along increasingly racialized lines in the face of national trauma, and how nonnormative Americans experience the mistrust that their identities and backgrounds engender in this way. The volume takes an important step in recognizing and challenging the unreflective notions of nationalism that emerge in times of crisis.
“The idealized and abstract nation-state may be a familiar topic for political investigation, but the actual white nation and its racial state are territory far less explored. This stimulating set of essays—ranging from a reading of post-9/11 children’s literature to an analysis of the racialized aesthetic of white nationalism—provides a valuable and eye-opening introduction to the racial construction of the American polity.” — Charles W. Mills, author of The Racial Contract
“A smart and unique set of theoretical reflections on the constitutive role of race and ethnicity in the post-9/11 U.S. American political imaginary, this book should find its place on the bookshelves of everyone interested in questions of citizenship and belonging in a multiracial U.S. polity.” — Chandra Talpade Mohanty, author of Feminism without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity
http://www.sunypress.edu/p-4893-constructing-the-nation.aspx
Papers by Mariana Ortega
Routledge eBooks, Mar 19, 2024
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Nov 30, 2021
University of Texas Press eBooks, Dec 31, 2011
Radical Philosophy Review, 2023
Mariana Ortega is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at ... more Mariana Ortega is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Pennsylvania State University and the author of In-Between: Latina Feminist Phenomenology, Multiplicity, and the Self (2016). Ortega brings an original approach to questions of selfhood and identity by intertwining the work of Latina feminists such as Gloria Anzaldua and Maria Lugones with existential phenomenology, in particular the work of Martin Heidegger. Understanding the self as both singular and multiple, Ortega examines accounts of world-traveling and border crossings that illuminatethe everyday experiences of marginality, migration, and exile. With keen attention to the experience of living between worlds and the borders that define—politically and conceptually—current categories of identity, Ortega’s work challenges abstract and general accounts of selfhood that remain central to the academic tradition of philosophy, a tradition that has marginalized and ignored the unique cont...
Diacritics, 2023
Proof only; please cite the published version. For the "Heidegger Today" special issue of Diac... more Proof only; please cite the published version.
For the "Heidegger Today" special issue of Diacritics, this interview explores the influence both Latina feminisms and Martin Heidegger have had on the development of Ortega's mestiza theory.
Puncta, 2022
In this work I discuss what I regard as the current race for critical phenomenology of race in l... more In this work I discuss what I regard as the current race for critical phenomenology of race in light of María Lugones’s understanding of the “logic of purity” and her call for impure theorizing, In so doing, I raise the question of critical criticality—that is, I would like to point to the need of a critical stance toward phenomenology’s very criticality.
"A theory in the flesh means one where the physical realities of our lives all fuse to c... more "A theory in the flesh means one where the physical realities of our lives all fuse to create a politic born of necessity," writes activist Cherríe L. Moraga. This volume of new essays stages an intergenerational dialogue among philosophers to introduce and deepen engagement with U.S Latinx and Latin American feminist philosophy, and to explore their "theories in the flesh." It explores specific intellectual contributions in various topics in U.S. Latinx and Latin American feminisms that stand alone and are unique and valuable; analyzes critical contributions that U.S. Latinx and Latin American interventions have made in feminist thought more generally over the last several decades; and shows the intellectual and transformative value of reading U.S Latinx and Latin American feminist theorizing. The collection features a series of essays analyzing decolonial approaches within U. S. Latinx and Latin American feminist philosophy, including studies of the functions of gender within feminist theory, everyday modes of resistance, and methodological questions regarding the scope and breadth of decolonization as a critical praxis. Additionally, essays examine theoretical contributions to feminist discussions of selfhood, narrativity, and genealogy, as well as novel epistemic and hermeneutical approaches within the field. A number of contributors in the book address themes of aesthetics and embodiment, including issues of visual representation, queer desire, and disability within U. S. Latinx and Latin American feminisms. Together, the essays in this volume are groundbreaking and powerful contributions in the fields of U.S Latinx and Latin American feminist philosophy.
Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal, 2020
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The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 2008
Hypatia, 2006
The aim of this essay is to analyze the notion of “loving, knowing ignorance,” a type of “arrogan... more The aim of this essay is to analyze the notion of “loving, knowing ignorance,” a type of “arrogant perception” that produces ignorance about women of color and their work at the same time that it proclaims to have both knowledge about and loving perception toward them. The first part discusses Marilyn Frye's accounts of “arrogant” as well as of “loving” perception and presents an explanation of “loving, knowing ignorance.” The second part discusses the work of Audre Lorde, Elizabeth Spelman, and María Lugones in their attempts to deal with the issue of arrogant perception within feminism, and examines how Lugones's notion of “‘world’-traveling” may help us deal with “loving, knowing ignorance.” Ultimately, the author suggests that we need to become aware of instances of “loving, knowing ignorance,” especially if we are to stay true to Third Wave feminism's commitment to diversity.
"Altars for the Living" in Thinking the US South: Contemporary Philosophy from Southern Perspectives, ed. Shannon Sullivan (Norwestern University Press) ), 2021
In this chapter I discuss the production of spaces of mourning in connection to memory practices ... more In this chapter I discuss the production of spaces of mourning in connection to memory practices for the living. In so doing, I wish to explore the question of who deserves to be remembered—or rather, who is not remembered, even when alive, even when there are altars for them? In the first section, I present photos from Verónica G. Cárdenas’s Traveling Soles series. I analyze the photographs in the series as well as the spatialities Cárdenas creates in order to honor border crossers and highlight Central American children who have been apprehended at the U.S Border and put in detention camps. I present the photographs and the spaces they were created as instances of spontaneous memorialization and as altars for the living. The photographs in turn become memento vivere, reminders to live in such a way that we cannot forget the lives of these bordercrossers. In the second section I discuss the resistant role of the photographs if understood as memento vivere, and as aesthetic memories, thus showing the political possibilities that are mediated by what Ann Cvetkovich calls a sensational archive or an archive of feelings
Hypatia Reviews Online
Crutcher-Black women, men, and children murdered, not in the brutal past of slavery or in the not... more Crutcher-Black women, men, and children murdered, not in the brutal past of slavery or in the not so distant past of Jim Crow but in the present. Many names are missing from this list; more names will be added as senseless killings of Blacks continue, all at the same time as memorials to Dr. King are erected, as stones of hope are built to commemorate Black lives lost in a past that supposedly has nothing to do with our "postracial," wonderful present in which Barack Obama is president. Strange indeed. It is this strangeness that Alfred Frankowski's The Post-Racial Limits of Memorialization analyzes by critically assessing the intertwining of the aesthetic, the political, memorialization, and racism in a US context. Frankowski shows not just the strangeness but also the failure and perversity of memorialization under post-racial practices that effectively silence antiblack racism. Under the regime of post-raciality, memory becomes a type of forgetting, a silencing, a way not to carry the past and present dead with us and, ultimately, a way to detach ourselves from moral responsibility in the face of continued anti-black racism. Frankowski's deeply important, original, and timely work introduces a political sense of mourning; it is also a work that mourns-not only all the Black lives lost to the pervasive anti-black violence of the past and of a forgetful present but also of a future condemned to repetition if we fail to critically assess how some of our so-called progressive and resistant practices of remembrance are tied to deadly forgetting.
The Philosophers' Magazine
This article calls for an examination of the spectral operations of the perceptual architecture o... more This article calls for an examination of the spectral operations of the perceptual architecture of colonization in conjunction with the enactment of a decolonial feminism as proposed by María Lugones. The first section discusses both the notion of ghostly subjectivity from Lugones's early work as well as the echoes of this notion in her recent work on the coloniality of gender that emphasizes the gender/race/sex nexus. Subsequently, through a photographic example, the article presents an analysis of the perceptual operations of specter-making in practices of colonization in light of Lugones's understanding of the "light" and "dark" sides of the coloniality of gender. This analysis highlights not only the intricate nexus between racialization and gender and sex norms both in the past and in the present context, but it also points to the necessity for of a decolonial feminism attuned to perceptual practices or a decolonial aesthesis.
Oxford University Press, 2020
"A theory in the flesh means one where the physical realities of our lives all fuse to create a p... more "A theory in the flesh means one where the physical realities of our lives all fuse to create a politic born of necessity," writes activist Cherríe L. Moraga. This volume of new essays stages an intergenerational dialogue among philosophers to introduce and deepen engagement with U.S Latinx and Latin American feminist philosophy, and to explore their "theories in the flesh." It explores specific intellectual contributions in various topics in U.S. Latinx and Latin American feminisms that stand alone and are unique and valuable; analyzes critical contributions that U.S. Latinx and Latin American interventions have made in feminist thought more generally over the last several decades; and shows the intellectual and transformative value of reading U.S Latinx and Latin American feminist theorizing.
The collection features a series of essays analyzing decolonial approaches within U. S. Latinx and Latin American feminist philosophy, including studies of the functions of gender within feminist theory, everyday modes of resistance, and methodological questions regarding the scope and breadth of decolonization as a critical praxis. Additionally, essays examine theoretical contributions to feminist discussions of selfhood, narrativity, and genealogy, as well as novel epistemic and hermeneutical approaches within the field. A number of contributors in the book address themes of aesthetics and embodiment, including issues of visual representation, queer desire, and disability within U. S. Latinx and Latin American feminisms.
Together, the essays in this volume are groundbreaking and powerful contributions in the fields of U.S Latinx and Latin American feminist philosophy.
Draws from Latina feminism, existential phenomenology, and race theory to explore the concept o... more Draws from Latina feminism, existential phenomenology, and race theory to explore the concept of selfhood.
This original study intertwining Latina feminism, existential phenomenology, and race theory offers a new philosophical approach to understanding selfhood and identity. Focusing on writings by Gloría Anzaldúa, María Lugones, and Linda Martín Alcoff, Mariana Ortega articulates a phenomenology that introduces a conception of selfhood as both multiple and singular. Her Latina feminist phenomenological approach can account for identities belonging simultaneously to different worlds, including immigrants, exiles, and inhabitants of borderlands. Ortega’s project forges new directions not only in Latina feminist thinking on such issues as borders, mestizaje, marginality, resistance, and identity politics, but also connects this analysis to the existential phenomenology of Martin Heidegger and to such concepts as being-in-the-world, authenticity, and intersubjectivity. The pairing of the personal and the political in Ortega’s work is illustrative of the primacy of lived experience in the development of theoretical understandings of who we are. In addition to bringing to light central metaphysical issues regarding the temporality and continuity of the self, Ortega models a practice of philosophy that draws from work in other disciplines and that recognizes the important contributions of Latina feminists and other theorists of color to philosophical pursuits.
Philosophers and social theorists of color examine how racism can creep into defensive forms of n... more Philosophers and social theorists of color examine how racism can creep into defensive forms of nationalism.
“What does it mean today to be an ‘American’ when one does not represent or embody the norm of ‘Americanness’ because of one’s race, ethnicity, culture of origin, religion, or some combination of these? What is the norm of ‘Americanness’ today, how has it changed, and how pluralistic is it in reality?” — from the Introduction
In this volume philosophers and social theorists of color take up these questions, offering nuanced critiques of race and nationalism in the post-9/11 United States focused around the themes of freedom, unity, and homeland. In particular, the contributors examine how normative concepts of American identity and unity come to be defined and defended along increasingly racialized lines in the face of national trauma, and how nonnormative Americans experience the mistrust that their identities and backgrounds engender in this way. The volume takes an important step in recognizing and challenging the unreflective notions of nationalism that emerge in times of crisis.
“The idealized and abstract nation-state may be a familiar topic for political investigation, but the actual white nation and its racial state are territory far less explored. This stimulating set of essays—ranging from a reading of post-9/11 children’s literature to an analysis of the racialized aesthetic of white nationalism—provides a valuable and eye-opening introduction to the racial construction of the American polity.” — Charles W. Mills, author of The Racial Contract
“A smart and unique set of theoretical reflections on the constitutive role of race and ethnicity in the post-9/11 U.S. American political imaginary, this book should find its place on the bookshelves of everyone interested in questions of citizenship and belonging in a multiracial U.S. polity.” — Chandra Talpade Mohanty, author of Feminism without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity
http://www.sunypress.edu/p-4893-constructing-the-nation.aspx
Routledge eBooks, Mar 19, 2024
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Nov 30, 2021
University of Texas Press eBooks, Dec 31, 2011
Radical Philosophy Review, 2023
Mariana Ortega is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at ... more Mariana Ortega is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Pennsylvania State University and the author of In-Between: Latina Feminist Phenomenology, Multiplicity, and the Self (2016). Ortega brings an original approach to questions of selfhood and identity by intertwining the work of Latina feminists such as Gloria Anzaldua and Maria Lugones with existential phenomenology, in particular the work of Martin Heidegger. Understanding the self as both singular and multiple, Ortega examines accounts of world-traveling and border crossings that illuminatethe everyday experiences of marginality, migration, and exile. With keen attention to the experience of living between worlds and the borders that define—politically and conceptually—current categories of identity, Ortega’s work challenges abstract and general accounts of selfhood that remain central to the academic tradition of philosophy, a tradition that has marginalized and ignored the unique cont...
Diacritics, 2023
Proof only; please cite the published version. For the "Heidegger Today" special issue of Diac... more Proof only; please cite the published version.
For the "Heidegger Today" special issue of Diacritics, this interview explores the influence both Latina feminisms and Martin Heidegger have had on the development of Ortega's mestiza theory.
Puncta, 2022
In this work I discuss what I regard as the current race for critical phenomenology of race in l... more In this work I discuss what I regard as the current race for critical phenomenology of race in light of María Lugones’s understanding of the “logic of purity” and her call for impure theorizing, In so doing, I raise the question of critical criticality—that is, I would like to point to the need of a critical stance toward phenomenology’s very criticality.
"A theory in the flesh means one where the physical realities of our lives all fuse to c... more "A theory in the flesh means one where the physical realities of our lives all fuse to create a politic born of necessity," writes activist Cherríe L. Moraga. This volume of new essays stages an intergenerational dialogue among philosophers to introduce and deepen engagement with U.S Latinx and Latin American feminist philosophy, and to explore their "theories in the flesh." It explores specific intellectual contributions in various topics in U.S. Latinx and Latin American feminisms that stand alone and are unique and valuable; analyzes critical contributions that U.S. Latinx and Latin American interventions have made in feminist thought more generally over the last several decades; and shows the intellectual and transformative value of reading U.S Latinx and Latin American feminist theorizing. The collection features a series of essays analyzing decolonial approaches within U. S. Latinx and Latin American feminist philosophy, including studies of the functions of gender within feminist theory, everyday modes of resistance, and methodological questions regarding the scope and breadth of decolonization as a critical praxis. Additionally, essays examine theoretical contributions to feminist discussions of selfhood, narrativity, and genealogy, as well as novel epistemic and hermeneutical approaches within the field. A number of contributors in the book address themes of aesthetics and embodiment, including issues of visual representation, queer desire, and disability within U. S. Latinx and Latin American feminisms. Together, the essays in this volume are groundbreaking and powerful contributions in the fields of U.S Latinx and Latin American feminist philosophy.
Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal, 2020
<jats:p />
The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 2008
Hypatia, 2006
The aim of this essay is to analyze the notion of “loving, knowing ignorance,” a type of “arrogan... more The aim of this essay is to analyze the notion of “loving, knowing ignorance,” a type of “arrogant perception” that produces ignorance about women of color and their work at the same time that it proclaims to have both knowledge about and loving perception toward them. The first part discusses Marilyn Frye's accounts of “arrogant” as well as of “loving” perception and presents an explanation of “loving, knowing ignorance.” The second part discusses the work of Audre Lorde, Elizabeth Spelman, and María Lugones in their attempts to deal with the issue of arrogant perception within feminism, and examines how Lugones's notion of “‘world’-traveling” may help us deal with “loving, knowing ignorance.” Ultimately, the author suggests that we need to become aware of instances of “loving, knowing ignorance,” especially if we are to stay true to Third Wave feminism's commitment to diversity.
"Altars for the Living" in Thinking the US South: Contemporary Philosophy from Southern Perspectives, ed. Shannon Sullivan (Norwestern University Press) ), 2021
In this chapter I discuss the production of spaces of mourning in connection to memory practices ... more In this chapter I discuss the production of spaces of mourning in connection to memory practices for the living. In so doing, I wish to explore the question of who deserves to be remembered—or rather, who is not remembered, even when alive, even when there are altars for them? In the first section, I present photos from Verónica G. Cárdenas’s Traveling Soles series. I analyze the photographs in the series as well as the spatialities Cárdenas creates in order to honor border crossers and highlight Central American children who have been apprehended at the U.S Border and put in detention camps. I present the photographs and the spaces they were created as instances of spontaneous memorialization and as altars for the living. The photographs in turn become memento vivere, reminders to live in such a way that we cannot forget the lives of these bordercrossers. In the second section I discuss the resistant role of the photographs if understood as memento vivere, and as aesthetic memories, thus showing the political possibilities that are mediated by what Ann Cvetkovich calls a sensational archive or an archive of feelings
Hypatia Reviews Online
Crutcher-Black women, men, and children murdered, not in the brutal past of slavery or in the not... more Crutcher-Black women, men, and children murdered, not in the brutal past of slavery or in the not so distant past of Jim Crow but in the present. Many names are missing from this list; more names will be added as senseless killings of Blacks continue, all at the same time as memorials to Dr. King are erected, as stones of hope are built to commemorate Black lives lost in a past that supposedly has nothing to do with our "postracial," wonderful present in which Barack Obama is president. Strange indeed. It is this strangeness that Alfred Frankowski's The Post-Racial Limits of Memorialization analyzes by critically assessing the intertwining of the aesthetic, the political, memorialization, and racism in a US context. Frankowski shows not just the strangeness but also the failure and perversity of memorialization under post-racial practices that effectively silence antiblack racism. Under the regime of post-raciality, memory becomes a type of forgetting, a silencing, a way not to carry the past and present dead with us and, ultimately, a way to detach ourselves from moral responsibility in the face of continued anti-black racism. Frankowski's deeply important, original, and timely work introduces a political sense of mourning; it is also a work that mourns-not only all the Black lives lost to the pervasive anti-black violence of the past and of a forgetful present but also of a future condemned to repetition if we fail to critically assess how some of our so-called progressive and resistant practices of remembrance are tied to deadly forgetting.
The Philosophers' Magazine
This article calls for an examination of the spectral operations of the perceptual architecture o... more This article calls for an examination of the spectral operations of the perceptual architecture of colonization in conjunction with the enactment of a decolonial feminism as proposed by María Lugones. The first section discusses both the notion of ghostly subjectivity from Lugones's early work as well as the echoes of this notion in her recent work on the coloniality of gender that emphasizes the gender/race/sex nexus. Subsequently, through a photographic example, the article presents an analysis of the perceptual operations of specter-making in practices of colonization in light of Lugones's understanding of the "light" and "dark" sides of the coloniality of gender. This analysis highlights not only the intricate nexus between racialization and gender and sex norms both in the past and in the present context, but it also points to the necessity for of a decolonial feminism attuned to perceptual practices or a decolonial aesthesis.
The aim of this essay is to analyze the notion of "loving, knowing ignorance," a type of "arrogan... more The aim of this essay is to analyze the notion of "loving, knowing ignorance," a type of "arrogant perception" that produces ignorance about women of color and their work at the same time that it proclaims to have both knowledge about and loving perception toward them. The first part discusses Marilyn Frye's accounts of "arrogant" as well as of "loving" perception and presents an explanation of "loving, knowing ignorance." The second part discusses the work of Audre Lorde, Elizabeth Spelman, and María Lugones in their attempts to deal with the issue of arrogant perception within feminism, and examines how Lugones's notion of "'world'-traveling" may help us deal with "loving, knowing ignorance." Ultimately, the author suggests that we need to become aware of instances of "loving, knowing ignorance," especially if we are to stay true to Third Wave feminism's commitment to diversity.
The aim of this essay is to carry out an analysis of the multi-voiced, multi-cultural self discus... more The aim of this essay is to carry out an analysis of the multi-voiced, multi-cultural self discussed by Latina feminists in light of a Heideggerian phenomenological account of persons or "Existential Analytic." In so doing, it (a) points out similarities as well as differences between the Heideggerian description of the self and Latina feminists' phenomenological accounts of self, and (b) critically assesses María Lugones's important notion of "world-traveling." In the end, the essay defends the view of a "multiplicitous" self which takes insights from Lugones's view of the self that "travels 'worlds'" and from other Latina feminists' accounts of self as well as from Martin Heidegger's account of Dasein.
Photography, famously described as the “pencil of nature” and the “writing with light,” is a part... more Photography, famously described as the “pencil of nature” and the “writing with light,” is a particularly important visual technology and art for understanding how visuality—the complexes of information, images and ideas employed for social ordering—serves to undermine those considered “other” given their social location, be it race, sex, class gender, sexuality, ability, or nationality. Photographic technologies and images are thus inextricably tied to practices of “othering.” From its inception when photographic techniques were used for the purposes of “scientifically” indexing and classifying racial and so-called deviant “others” to contemporary understandings of photography as art, photographic practices remain tied to forms of violence against subjects deemed different.
The overall aim of this project is consequently to help teachers, students and lovers of photography, to engage with the various ways in which photography and photographic technologies are complicit with practices of “othering.” An attunement to the essential link between photography and these practices allows for a complex reading of photographic techniques, art, and criticism that not only discloses the collusion of photography with violence against those deemed different, but that also provides possibilities for “countervisuality” or practices that resist dominant, violent photographic technologies and representation.