Ladelle Mcwhorter
Biographic Data
| ID | 493623 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ladelle Mcwhorter |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ladelle |
| FAMILY NAME | Mcwhorter |
| SIGNATURE | MCWHORTER L |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Richmond |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7071-3311 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 22 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 42 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 20 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1989 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2021 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Sodomites, witches, and Indians
Does Foucault’s work on sexuality open toward the possibility of a genealogy of sex understood as binary anatomical and genetic sexual difference? I believe that it does. I argue that, if we take seriously work by Mark Jordan, Ann Laura Stoler, and Sylvia Federici, coupled with Foucault’s own statement at the end of HS1 that sex is not an anchor for sexuality but, rather, “a complex idea that was formed inside the deployment of sexuality” (152), …
Powerful Adversaries
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 contains yet another assault on higher education in its unprecedented tax on private university endowment income. This paper argues, first, that this and other attacks should not be seen as anti-intellectual efforts to dismantle higher education but rather as intellectually elitist efforts to rid universities of certain programs and personnel and, second, that viewing these efforts as motivated primarily by racis…
Persons and Sovereigns in Ethical Thought
Contemporary concepts of moral personhood prevent us from grappling effectively with contemporary social, political, and moral problems. One way to counter the power of such concepts is to trace their lineage and shifting political investments. This article presents a genealogy of personhood, focusing on the crisis of both personhood and sovereignty in seventeenth-century England. It demonstrates the optionality of personhood for moral thinking a…
Human rights without human nature
Ben Golder’s Foucault and the politics of rights not only takes up a very timely issue in Foucault studies, but it also addresses a question that looms large in twenty-first century theories of rig
Heidegger and the Earth
Post-liberation Feminism and Practices of Freedom
Most feminist theorists over the last forty years have held that a basic tenet of feminism is that women as a group are oppressed. The concept of oppression has never had a very broad meaning in liberal discourse, however, and with the rise of neo-liberalism since 1980 it has even less currency in public debate. This article argues that, while we may still believe women are oppressed, for pragmatic purposes Michel Foucault’s concept of practices …
Racial Imperatives
Racial Imperatives does something no other book has yet done: it takes on the task of explaining, directly and in detail, how Judith Butler's conception of gender performativity articulates with Michel Foucault's account of normalizing disciplinary practices and techniques of selfhood in the process of constructing and maintaining racial identities. Given how influential both these bodies of theoretical work are, this project fills a major gap in…
Queer Economies
Queer defies categorization and resists preset developmental trajectories. Practices of queering identities emerged near the end of the twentieth century as ways of resisting normalizing networks of power/knowledge. But how effective are queer practices at resisting networks of power/knowledge (including disciplines) that are not primarily normalizing in their functioning? This essay raises that question in light of expanding neoliberal discourse…
Guest Editor's Introduction
Decapitating Power
In “Society Must Be Defended” Foucault examines 17th century race war discourse not so much in order to understand 20th century racism or concepts of race but primarily because it constitutes an historical example of an attempt to think power without a head or king. This essay examines his account of race war discourse and the sources he used to construct it. It then takes issue with his claim that early race war discourse can be separated from 1…
Singing the Earth
Foucault 2.0
The Technology of Biopower
Where do white people come from? A Foucaultian critique of Whiteness Studies
Over the past 15 years we have seen the rise of a field of inquiry known as Whiteness Studies. Two of its major tenets are (1) that white identity is socially constructed and functions as a racial norm and (2) that those who occupy the position of white subjectivity exercise ‘white privilege’, which is oppressive to non-whites. However, despite their ubiquitous use of the term ‘norm’, Whiteness Studies theorists rarely give any detailed account o…
Sex, Race, and Biopower
Sex, Race, and Biopower
For many years feminists have asserted an “intersection” between sex and race. This paper, drawing heavily on the work of Michel Foucault, offers a genealogical account of the two concepts showing how they developed together and in relation to similar political forces in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Thus it attempts to give a concrete meaning to the claim that sex and race are intersecting phenomena
Sex, Race, and Biopower
For many years feminists have asserted an "intersection" between sex and race. This paper, drawing heavily on the work of Michel Foucault, offers a genealogical account of the two concepts showing how they developed together and in relation to similar political forces in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Thus it attempts to give a concrete meaning to the claim that sex and race are intersecting phenomena
The Revenge of the Gay Nihilist
Bodies and Pleasures has been characterized as a confessional discourse that manages to subvert confessional practice. Here it is characterized and discussed as an askesis that works to transform confessional practice as it transforms the writer/reader. Two questions emerge through that transformation: (I) How is race (in particular, whiteness) to be lived? (2) What are the possibilities for political subjectivity in the absence of dualism and th…
The Revenge of the Gay Nihilist
Bodies and Pleasures has been characterized as a confessional discourse that manages to subvert confessional practice. Here it is characterized and discussed as an askesis that works to transform confessional practice as it transforms the writer/reader. Two questions emerge through that transformation: (I) How is race (in particular, whiteness) to be lived? (2) What are the possibilities for political subjectivity in the absence of dualism and th…
Bodies and Pleasures
Engages Foucault in dismantling norms and destabilizing sexual identities
Foucault's Genealogy of Homosexuality
Culture or Nature? The Function of the Term 'Body' in the Work of Michel Foucault
Sex, Race, and Biopower
For many years feminists have asserted an "intersection" between sex and race. This paper, drawing heavily on the work of Michel Foucault, offers a genealogical account of the two concepts showing how they developed together and in relation to similar political forces in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Thus it attempts to give a concrete meaning to the claim that sex and race are intersecting phenomena
Where do white people come from? A Foucaultian critique of Whiteness Studies
Over the past 15 years we have seen the rise of a field of inquiry known as Whiteness Studies. Two of its major tenets are (1) that white identity is socially constructed and functions as a racial norm and (2) that those who occupy the position of white subjectivity exercise ‘white privilege’, which is oppressive to non-whites. However, despite their ubiquitous use of the term ‘norm’, Whiteness Studies theorists rarely give any detailed account o…
Queer Economies
Queer defies categorization and resists preset developmental trajectories. Practices of queering identities emerged near the end of the twentieth century as ways of resisting normalizing networks of power/knowledge. But how effective are queer practices at resisting networks of power/knowledge (including disciplines) that are not primarily normalizing in their functioning? This essay raises that question in light of expanding neoliberal discourse…
Decapitating Power
In “Society Must Be Defended” Foucault examines 17th century race war discourse not so much in order to understand 20th century racism or concepts of race but primarily because it constitutes an historical example of an attempt to think power without a head or king. This essay examines his account of race war discourse and the sources he used to construct it. It then takes issue with his claim that early race war discourse can be separated from 1…
Culture or Nature? The Function of the Term 'Body' in the Work of Michel Foucault
Foucault's Genealogy of Homosexuality
Bodies and Pleasures
Engages Foucault in dismantling norms and destabilizing sexual identities
The Revenge of the Gay Nihilist
Bodies and Pleasures has been characterized as a confessional discourse that manages to subvert confessional practice. Here it is characterized and discussed as an askesis that works to transform confessional practice as it transforms the writer/reader. Two questions emerge through that transformation: (I) How is race (in particular, whiteness) to be lived? (2) What are the possibilities for political subjectivity in the absence of dualism and th…
The Revenge of the Gay Nihilist
Bodies and Pleasures has been characterized as a confessional discourse that manages to subvert confessional practice. Here it is characterized and discussed as an askesis that works to transform confessional practice as it transforms the writer/reader. Two questions emerge through that transformation: (I) How is race (in particular, whiteness) to be lived? (2) What are the possibilities for political subjectivity in the absence of dualism and th…
Sex, Race, and Biopower
Sex, Race, and Biopower
For many years feminists have asserted an “intersection” between sex and race. This paper, drawing heavily on the work of Michel Foucault, offers a genealogical account of the two concepts showing how they developed together and in relation to similar political forces in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Thus it attempts to give a concrete meaning to the claim that sex and race are intersecting phenomena
Sex, Race, and Biopower
For many years feminists have asserted an "intersection" between sex and race. This paper, drawing heavily on the work of Michel Foucault, offers a genealogical account of the two concepts showing how they developed together and in relation to similar political forces in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Thus it attempts to give a concrete meaning to the claim that sex and race are intersecting phenomena
The Technology of Biopower
Where do white people come from? A Foucaultian critique of Whiteness Studies
Over the past 15 years we have seen the rise of a field of inquiry known as Whiteness Studies. Two of its major tenets are (1) that white identity is socially constructed and functions as a racial norm and (2) that those who occupy the position of white subjectivity exercise ‘white privilege’, which is oppressive to non-whites. However, despite their ubiquitous use of the term ‘norm’, Whiteness Studies theorists rarely give any detailed account o…
Foucault 2.0
Singing the Earth
Guest Editor's Introduction
Decapitating Power
In “Society Must Be Defended” Foucault examines 17th century race war discourse not so much in order to understand 20th century racism or concepts of race but primarily because it constitutes an historical example of an attempt to think power without a head or king. This essay examines his account of race war discourse and the sources he used to construct it. It then takes issue with his claim that early race war discourse can be separated from 1…
Queer Economies
Queer defies categorization and resists preset developmental trajectories. Practices of queering identities emerged near the end of the twentieth century as ways of resisting normalizing networks of power/knowledge. But how effective are queer practices at resisting networks of power/knowledge (including disciplines) that are not primarily normalizing in their functioning? This essay raises that question in light of expanding neoliberal discourse…
Post-liberation Feminism and Practices of Freedom
Most feminist theorists over the last forty years have held that a basic tenet of feminism is that women as a group are oppressed. The concept of oppression has never had a very broad meaning in liberal discourse, however, and with the rise of neo-liberalism since 1980 it has even less currency in public debate. This article argues that, while we may still believe women are oppressed, for pragmatic purposes Michel Foucault’s concept of practices …
Racial Imperatives
Racial Imperatives does something no other book has yet done: it takes on the task of explaining, directly and in detail, how Judith Butler's conception of gender performativity articulates with Michel Foucault's account of normalizing disciplinary practices and techniques of selfhood in the process of constructing and maintaining racial identities. Given how influential both these bodies of theoretical work are, this project fills a major gap in…
Heidegger and the Earth
Persons and Sovereigns in Ethical Thought
Contemporary concepts of moral personhood prevent us from grappling effectively with contemporary social, political, and moral problems. One way to counter the power of such concepts is to trace their lineage and shifting political investments. This article presents a genealogy of personhood, focusing on the crisis of both personhood and sovereignty in seventeenth-century England. It demonstrates the optionality of personhood for moral thinking a…
Human rights without human nature
Ben Golder’s Foucault and the politics of rights not only takes up a very timely issue in Foucault studies, but it also addresses a question that looms large in twenty-first century theories of rig
Powerful Adversaries
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 contains yet another assault on higher education in its unprecedented tax on private university endowment income. This paper argues, first, that this and other attacks should not be seen as anti-intellectual efforts to dismantle higher education but rather as intellectually elitist efforts to rid universities of certain programs and personnel and, second, that viewing these efforts as motivated primarily by racis…
Sodomites, witches, and Indians
Does Foucault’s work on sexuality open toward the possibility of a genealogy of sex understood as binary anatomical and genetic sexual difference? I believe that it does. I argue that, if we take seriously work by Mark Jordan, Ann Laura Stoler, and Sylvia Federici, coupled with Foucault’s own statement at the end of HS1 that sex is not an anchor for sexuality but, rather, “a complex idea that was formed inside the deployment of sexuality” (152), …
Sociology (17 works) · Political science (16 works) · Law (14 works) · Gender Studies (13 works) · Philosophy (13 works) · Politics (13 works) · Epistemology (12 works) · Law (10 works) · Gender Studies (9 works) · Foucault, Power, and Ethics (8 works)