(Un)Disciplined futures

Women of color feminism as a disruptive to white affect studies

Datos Bibliográficos

ID8095075
AutoresClaudia Rojas (0000-0002-1559-2243, Northwestern University, autor de correspondencia), Claudia Garcia-Rojas (Northwestern University)
Año2016
Volumen21
Número3
Páginas254-271
Fecha de publicación2016-09-09
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaJournal of Lesbian Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1089-4160 • E-ISSN: 1540-3548
EditorialTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/10894160.2016.1159072
PMID27611895
OpenAlexW2516299033
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas25
Referencias citadas15

The aim of this article is to demonstrate how women of color feminism predates and disrupts dominant dialogues in the field of White affect studies. I introduce the concept of White affect studies as an arena of inquiry that draws from Western-European theories and literatures and architects a sociopolitical structure of affect that positions White affects as universal. Scholars contributing to the field of White affect studies posit theories of affect, embodiment, subjectivity, phenomenology, violence, war, and more, while disregarding the theoretical contributions made by women of color feminism in thinking through these notions and social issues. This is done by engaging in a citational practice that results in an epistemic erasure of women of color feminist thought. The voices of women of color feminists are thus disqualified, and their theoretical contributions are not acknowledged as significant or relevant in conceptualizing affect, affective economies, and the social. By turning to the writings of women of color feminists, I demonstrate how their theories on embodiment, subjectivity, and social structures predate the institutionalization of White affect studies. Feminists of color from the past and present have and continue to theorize through a language of self their experiences as subjects embedded within matrices of violence, power, and pleasure. Lorde, Martinez, and Chinchilla write about the ways in which lesbian and queer women of color institute different affects that counter dominant structures of emotion, systems of power, and heterosexual modes of being. In developing conceptual methodologies, Lorde, Martinez, and Chinchilla are able to weave into the dominant discursive logic a language of self that both introduces new queer subjectivities, while reinterpreting existing forms of thought, thereby contesting mainstream economies of White affects and White affect studies. It is through a language of self that Lorde, Martinez, and Chinchilla develop an ethic of survival that countermobilizes against White hegemonic apparatuses

Aesthetics · Affect (linguistics · Affect theory · Epistemology · Feminism · Feminist theory · Power (physics · Psychoanalysis · Queer · Queer theory · Sociology · Subjectivity · White (mutation · Women of color · Gender Studies · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Participatory Visual Research Methods · Posthumanist Ethics and Activism · Psychology · Social Psychology