L M Alcoff
Biographic Data
| ID | 7752 |
|---|---|
| NAME | L M Alcoff |
| GIVEN NAMES | L M |
| FAMILY NAME | Alcoff |
| SIGNATURE | ALCOFF L M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Syracuse University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4260-3400 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 54 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 205 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 54 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1990 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Myths, Fallacies and Mass Suffering: A Discussion with Illan Pappe and Nassim Moroozi with an Introduction by Linda Martín Alcoff
Fallacies are often treated either as simple logical errors or as tactical tools to win debates and legitimize indefensible political positions. Curiously, despite their real-world impact, they are usuallytaught in an apolitical, stylized light. Historically, however, the study of fallacies has been driven by a pursuit of justice. It stems from concerns over paid deceptive narratives used to maintain power,foreign interference in political sovere…
A Remembrance of Richard Schmitt
The roots (and routes) of the epistemology of ignorance”
This paper elaborates on the idea of the epistemology of ignorance developed in Charles Mills’s work beginning in the 1980s and continuing throughout his writings. I I argue that his account developed initially from experiences of racism in north America as well as certain methods of organizing within parts of the Caribbean left. Essentially the epistemic practice of ignorance causes knowers to discredit or push away knowledge they in fact have. …
The Life of Charles Mills, Radical Philosopher Extraordinaire
Charles Wade Mills was one of the most influential and recognized philosophers in the English- speaking world and played a major role in changing the discourse of political philosophy. But how did he come to be? This article offers a personal remembrance and an account of his emerging ideas about race and racism as developed in some of his key texts. It also explores the relationship between his philosophy and his Jamaican background, arguing tha…
Is conferralism descriptively adequate
This paper will develop a set of concerns about a central feature of Ásta's account of social categories that she calls “conferralism.” I argue that generalist approaches to social categories such as Ásta provides are inadequate as a way of understanding the diverse formations of diverse categories, and that conferralism overemphasizes the power of top‐down forces (what she calls “persons with standing”) to confer social identities. This approach…
The Persistent Power of Cultural Racism
Cultural racism' is central to understanding racism today yet has receded into the background behind the focus on attitudinal racism. Even the turn to structural racism is largely circumscribed to inclusion without substantive challenge to existing processes or profit margins. When portions of the racist public are targeted, it is often the least elite members of society. Without question, the concept of cultural racism requires some clarificatio…
Extractivist epistemologies
This paper develops an account and critique of extractivist epistemologies, which are generated by extractivist projects. I argue that certain metaphysical and epistemological ideas and practices emerge from extractivist projects, and these ideas and practices have influenced the development of Western epistemologies. After presenting a critique, I develop four correct epistemic norms to counteract the effect of extracivist epistemologies: these …
Identity
This chapter offers an account of central issues and themes in feminist philosophical reflections on identity, including examples of important contributions to this discussion, as well as current and future directions. The central questions are, what is the ground of our social identity categories, what function do they serve, and for whom? Are identity concepts inherently oppressive, or can they be transformed in liberatory ways? Feminist analys…
The Radical Future of #MeToo: The Effects of an Intersectional Analysis
When feminist movements develop intersectional analyses of the problems they are addressing, especially to include race and class as well as other dimensions of society, their analyses of sexism will shift, and their demands will as a result become more structural, systemic, and radical. This paper will focus primarily on sexual harassment, with the understanding that harassment often escalates to coercive sex. I will argue that the future of the…
‘To Possess the Power to Speak’
I argue here that first person speech on sexual violence remains an important dimension of the movement for social change in regard to sexual violence, and that the public speech of survivors faces at least three groups of obstacles: 1) the problem of epistemic injustice, that is, injustice in the sphere of knowledge 2) the problem of language and power, and 3) the problem of dominant discourses. I explain and develop these points and end with a …
Consent
Lugones's World-Making
This article reflects on the worlds that María Lugones has made and has transformed, particularly for the doing of feminist theory. Thus this article will be more exploratory than argumentative: to explore the lessons that Lugones's work holds, especially her work on pluralist feminism, world-traveling, the uses of anger, boomerang perception, and the multiplicitousness of both our selves and our communities, for our twenty-first-century challeng…
Khader’s minimalist, pluralist universalism
Serene Khader’s effort to develop a decolonized approach to transnational feminism takes a helpfully nonideal approach. Much of decolonial theory has criticized universalism in order to espouse pluralism. Khader attempts to develop a form of minimalist universalism compatible with a significant dose of pluralism in regard to how we understand liberation from gender-based forms of oppression, and she effectively shows how the nonideal, meliorative…
Decolonial trends in higher education: Voices from Latin America
The theme of the Comparative and International Education Society’s (CIES) 2018 Annual Conference in Mexico City, ‘Re-mapping Global Education: South–North Dialogue’, called for scholars and practit
The Hegel of Coyoacán
This essay offers an analysis of Enrique Dussel’s Ethics of Liberation: In the Age of Globalization and Exclusion, a book that culminates Dussel’s lifework on developing a materialist ethics. Dussel’s critique of Eurocentric and Hegelian approaches to freedom is treated at some length, along with his differences from postmodernism, liberalism, and proceduralism. Dussel argues against formalism in favor of a model that incorporates three elements:…
Philosophy and Philosophical Practice
This chapter suggests that avoiding and denying the contextual influences on philosophical systems and trends is the work of an epistemology of ignorance. That is, transcendental illusions about the creation of philosophical ideas and the progression of philosophical debates must be cultivated and protected. Such illusions have been and continue to be functional for certain groups of philosophers, not to mention the empires that house them. The c…
Uma epistemologia para a próxima revolução
Este artigo discute a necessidade de desenvolvimento de uma epistemologia decolonial revolucionária, identificando dois obstáculos para a formulação de uma nova epistemologia: um relacionado à própria epistemologia e outro às discussões sobre identidade. Argumenta-se pela necessidade de um debate propositivo e reconstrutivo sobre a verdade, bem como de uma discussão reconstrutiva sobre como e por quem o conhecimento é produzido. Por outro lado, d…
Autonomism in Theory and Practice
Autonomism is a growing force on the global left and an important influence on the “movements of the squares.” Often misidentified by anarchists as a Marxist deviation, and by Marxists as a form of anarchism, autonomism is something in between: a form of Marxism with a strong bent toward localism, horizontal decision-making, and anti-authoritarianism. Surveying its history, four aspects of its theoretical distinctiveness may be identified: its un…
The Ethics of Polarization in the United States and the World
In one of my classes some time back, during a group discussion of identity, a young Puerto Rican woman from New York City insisted against the disagreement of her classmates that she was an “American.” She didn't want to be called Puerto Rican; she thought of herself simply as an “American.” Knee-jerk leftist responses, mine included, have long treated such pronouncements as a species of false consciousness or ideological conditioning. Puertorriq…
Sexual Violations and the Question of Experience
This paper explores the complications of naming and interpreting experiences of sexual violation that arise from the complexity of experience and the possibility of a discursive relativism. If our experiences are discursively and historically constituted, even in part, by the happenstance of the cultures we are born into, by what Foucault wonderfully called our historical a priori, how does this alter the epistemic status, and fruitfulness, of ex…
Foucault's Normative Epistemology
As this essay will argue, and as this epigraph should suggest, epistemology was a central concern of Michel Foucault's. By denying the conflation of knowledge with power, and consistently maintaining a dyadic relationship ("power/knowledge") rather than a relationship in which power eclipses knowledge, Foucault maintains that knowledge requires its own analysis irreducible to the strategic maneuvers of power. But clearly, given Foucault's politic…
Epistemology and Politics
Luce Irigaray Cluster—Editor's Introduction
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Afterword
Living in these times of ongoing, persistent, and extreme antiblack racism, from police violence to voter suppression to crushing unemployment and poverty, it feels a harsh task to criticize the hegemony of the black/white binary in antiracist discourses. The difficult challenge of this critical project has always been the question of how to critique the binary without deflating our commitment to address antiblack racism or implicitly denying the…
Epistemologies of Ignorance: Three Types
Visible identities: Race, Gender, and the Self
In the heated debates over identity politics, few theorists have looked carefully at the conceptualizations of identity assumed by all sides. Visible Identities fills this gap. Drawing on both philosophical sources as well as theories and empirical studies in the social sciences, Martmn Alcoff makes a strong case that identities are not like special interests, nor are they doomed to oppositional politics, nor do they inevitably lead to conformism…
Mignolo's Epistemology of Coloniality
Mignolo's Epistemology of Coloniality Linda Martín Alcoff Walter Mignolo's epistemological claims about subaltern knowledge owe much for their inspiration to the work of Michel Foucault. Thus it is little wonder that, in some important respects, Mignolo bears a similar relationship as Foucault to the discipline of philosophy, and to epistemology in particular. Even though the entirety of Foucault's theoretical writings concerned knowledge in the …
What Should White People Do
In this paper I explore white attempts to move toward a proactive position against racism that will amount to more than self-Criticism in the following three ways: by assessing the debate within feminism over white women's relation to whiteness; by exploring “white awareness training” methods developed by Judith Katz and the “race traitor” politics developed by Ignatiev and Garvey, and; a case study of white revisionism being currently attempted …
Fraser on Redistribution, Recognition, and Identity
This article analyzes Nancy Fraser's account of the contrasting social movements for recognition versus those for redistribution. In her most recent analysis, only those forms of recognition struggles that she equates with identity politics are subject to critique. I argue that identity politics does not have an inevitable logic to it that destines it to fracture, border patrol, internal conservatism, etc., and further that the very redistributio…
Latino vs. Hispanic: The politics of ethnic names
The politics of ethnic names, such as ‘Latino’ and ‘Hispanic’, raises legitimate issues for three reasons: because non-political considerations of descriptive adequacy are insufficient to determine absolutely the question of names; political considerations may be germane to an ethnic name’s descriptive adequacy; and naming opens up the political question of a chosen furture, to which we are accountable. The history of colonial and neo-colonial co…
Extractivist epistemologies
This paper develops an account and critique of extractivist epistemologies, which are generated by extractivist projects. I argue that certain metaphysical and epistemological ideas and practices emerge from extractivist projects, and these ideas and practices have influenced the development of Western epistemologies. After presenting a critique, I develop four correct epistemic norms to counteract the effect of extracivist epistemologies: these …
The Politics of Postmodern Feminism, Revisited
In a recent essay entitled Contingent Foundations: Feminism and the Question of'Postmodernism,' Judith Butler tries to circumvent the generic term on the grounds that there is no unity within the field nor linking thread that could tie together the disparate body of work that gets called (3-6). In other words, the postmodern is a fragmented, incoherent heteroglossia of contested meanings. The only thing surprising in this claim is that Butler ass…
An Epistemology for the Next Revolution
It is my intention, by this optimistic title, to mark the need for a newly revised and reformulated language of liberation. To explain this idea, let me begin with two distinct and important claims made by Sylvia Wynter and by Enrique Dussel. Wynter has suggested that the principal oversight of Marxist revolutionary discourses was to forsake the epistemological question of social theory, that is, the question of who knows. To be sure, Marx develo…
Uma epistemologia para a próxima revolução
Este artigo discute a necessidade de desenvolvimento de uma epistemologia decolonial revolucionária, identificando dois obstáculos para a formulação de uma nova epistemologia: um relacionado à própria epistemologia e outro às discussões sobre identidade. Argumenta-se pela necessidade de um debate propositivo e reconstrutivo sobre a verdade, bem como de uma discussão reconstrutiva sobre como e por quem o conhecimento é produzido. Por outro lado, d…
Autonomism in Theory and Practice
Autonomism is a growing force on the global left and an important influence on the “movements of the squares.” Often misidentified by anarchists as a Marxist deviation, and by Marxists as a form of anarchism, autonomism is something in between: a form of Marxism with a strong bent toward localism, horizontal decision-making, and anti-authoritarianism. Surveying its history, four aspects of its theoretical distinctiveness may be identified: its un…
The Persistent Power of Cultural Racism
Cultural racism' is central to understanding racism today yet has receded into the background behind the focus on attitudinal racism. Even the turn to structural racism is largely circumscribed to inclusion without substantive challenge to existing processes or profit margins. When portions of the racist public are targeted, it is often the least elite members of society. Without question, the concept of cultural racism requires some clarificatio…
Michel Foucault's Archaeology of Scientific Reason
Decolonial trends in higher education: Voices from Latin America
The theme of the Comparative and International Education Society’s (CIES) 2018 Annual Conference in Mexico City, ‘Re-mapping Global Education: South–North Dialogue’, called for scholars and practit
Enrique Dussel’s Transmodernism
According to some of his critics, the work of Enrique Dussel fails to escape the illusions of modernism, despite his vigorous and revisionary critiques of it. For Horacio Cerutti Guldberg, Ofelia Schutte, and Santiago Castro-Gómez, Dussel’s invocation of a we-subject among the poor, indeed, his very reference to macro-identities such as “the poor, women, blacks, and Indians,”returns us to a modernist meta-narrative. And the problem with this meta…
Against "Post-Ethnic" Futures
Where rationality is measured by the ability to distance oneself from one's cultural and religious traditions, the preemptive commitments of ethnicity seem counter to the ideal of a rational life. Arthur Schlesinger's The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society gives a typical account of this view. Schlesinger paints a picture of a past "America" happily moving toward the melting pot that Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, autho…
Khader’s minimalist, pluralist universalism
Serene Khader’s effort to develop a decolonized approach to transnational feminism takes a helpfully nonideal approach. Much of decolonial theory has criticized universalism in order to espouse pluralism. Khader attempts to develop a form of minimalist universalism compatible with a significant dose of pluralism in regard to how we understand liberation from gender-based forms of oppression, and she effectively shows how the nonideal, meliorative…
Afterword
Living in these times of ongoing, persistent, and extreme antiblack racism, from police violence to voter suppression to crushing unemployment and poverty, it feels a harsh task to criticize the hegemony of the black/white binary in antiracist discourses. The difficult challenge of this critical project has always been the question of how to critique the binary without deflating our commitment to address antiblack racism or implicitly denying the…
Cluster: The Myths of Maternity – Editor's Introduction
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Gender and Reproduction
What is the role of reproduction in formulating the categories of sex, gender, or of sexual difference? If Judith Butler is right that gender and sex cannot be neatly disentangled from the realm of affects, “sensation, acts, and sexual practice,” then it is equally doubtful that the realm of biological reproduction can be disentangled. There is a danger, however, of re-inscribing heterosexism or heteronormativity. Clearly, reproduction has histor…
Objectivity and Its Politics
New Literary History - Volume 32, Number 4, Autumn 2001
Feminist Epistemologies
Feminist Politics and Foucault: The Limits to a Collaboration
Michel Foucault's Archaeology of Scientific Reason
Feminist Epistemologies
Is the Feminist Critique of Reason Rational?
Immanent Truth
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
The Politics of Postmodern Feminism, Revisited
In a recent essay entitled Contingent Foundations: Feminism and the Question of'Postmodernism,' Judith Butler tries to circumvent the generic term on the grounds that there is no unity within the field nor linking thread that could tie together the disparate body of work that gets called (3-6). In other words, the postmodern is a fragmented, incoherent heteroglossia of contested meanings. The only thing surprising in this claim is that Butler ass…
What Should White People Do?
In this paper I explore white attempts to move toward a proactive position against racism that will amount to more than self-Criticism in the following three ways: by assessing the debate within feminism over white women's relation to whiteness; by exploring “white awareness training” methods developed by Judith Katz and the “race traitor” politics developed by Ignatiev and Garvey, and; a case study of white revisionism being currently attempted …
What Should White People Do
In this paper I explore white attempts to move toward a proactive position against racism that will amount to more than self-Criticism in the following three ways: by assessing the debate within feminism over white women's relation to whiteness; by exploring “white awareness training” methods developed by Judith Katz and the “race traitor” politics developed by Ignatiev and Garvey, and; a case study of white revisionism being currently attempted …
Philosophy Matters: A Review of Recent Work in Feminist Philosophy
Introduction to the Symposium on Mar a P a Lara's Moral Textures: Feminist Narratives in the Public Sphere
Introduction to the Symposium on María Pía Lara's Moral Textures: Feminist Narratives in the Public Sphere
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Introduction for symposium
Objectivity and Its Politics
New Literary History - Volume 32, Number 4, Autumn 2001
Schutte's Nietzschean Postcolonial Politics
Against "Post-Ethnic" Futures
Where rationality is measured by the ability to distance oneself from one's cultural and religious traditions, the preemptive commitments of ethnicity seem counter to the ideal of a rational life. Arthur Schlesinger's The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society gives a typical account of this view. Schlesinger paints a picture of a past "America" happily moving toward the melting pot that Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, autho…
A response to Gracia
Latino vs. Hispanic: The politics of ethnic names
The politics of ethnic names, such as ‘Latino’ and ‘Hispanic’, raises legitimate issues for three reasons: because non-political considerations of descriptive adequacy are insufficient to determine absolutely the question of names; political considerations may be germane to an ethnic name’s descriptive adequacy; and naming opens up the political question of a chosen furture, to which we are accountable. The history of colonial and neo-colonial co…
Visible identities: Race, Gender, and the Self
In the heated debates over identity politics, few theorists have looked carefully at the conceptualizations of identity assumed by all sides. Visible Identities fills this gap. Drawing on both philosophical sources as well as theories and empirical studies in the social sciences, Martmn Alcoff makes a strong case that identities are not like special interests, nor are they doomed to oppositional politics, nor do they inevitably lead to conformism…
The Unassimilated Theorist
Gloria Anzaldúa's work invites us to reach beyond the usual conventions of academic writing to make visible the relations between self and world, feeling and thinking, personal experience and theory. As a philosopher, I read her for her insights about and analyses of multiple oppression, mixed identities, and alternative epistemologies. But as another Latina trying to write theory, I read her as one dying for thirst chokes on the first gulp of wa…
Reconsidering Identity Politics: An Introduction
Just a few years ago, the great political movements that profoundly trans-formed American society the — movements demanding voting rights, civil rights, and equality for various disenfranchised groups — were generally viewed as the natural extension of liberal ideals. These identity-based liberation movements were viewed by many Americans as confirming rather than challenging democratic institutions, and expanding rather than threatening popular …
Fraser on Redistribution, Recognition, and Identity
This article analyzes Nancy Fraser's account of the contrasting social movements for recognition versus those for redistribution. In her most recent analysis, only those forms of recognition struggles that she equates with identity politics are subject to critique. I argue that identity politics does not have an inevitable logic to it that destines it to fracture, border patrol, internal conservatism, etc., and further that the very redistributio…
Mignolo's Epistemology of Coloniality
Mignolo's Epistemology of Coloniality Linda Martín Alcoff Walter Mignolo's epistemological claims about subaltern knowledge owe much for their inspiration to the work of Michel Foucault. Thus it is little wonder that, in some important respects, Mignolo bears a similar relationship as Foucault to the discipline of philosophy, and to epistemology in particular. Even though the entirety of Foucault's theoretical writings concerned knowledge in the …
Gender and Reproduction
What is the role of reproduction in formulating the categories of sex, gender, or of sexual difference? If Judith Butler is right that gender and sex cannot be neatly disentangled from the realm of affects, “sensation, acts, and sexual practice,” then it is equally doubtful that the realm of biological reproduction can be disentangled. There is a danger, however, of re-inscribing heterosexism or heteronormativity. Clearly, reproduction has histor…
Latinos beyond the Binary
Cluster: The Myths of Maternity – Editor's Introduction
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Sociology (34 works) · Political science (26 works) · Philosophy (25 works) · Epistemology (24 works) · Law (23 works) · Politics (21 works) · Gender Studies (17 works) · Law (14 works) · Philosophy (12 works) · Psychology (11 works)