2019 WiD Bibliography

A Report on Identity Theories WiD 2018-2019 / Harvard Graduate School of Design

Credits

2018 Fall Editorial Team: Proey Liao (MArch II + MDes HPDM 2021), Fiona Kenney (MDes HPDM 2020), Ryan Beitz (MDes HPDM 2019), and Christin Hu (MLA I AP 2019), Carrie Bly (MDes HPDM 2019).

Authors: Proey Liao, Fiona Kenney, Carrie Bly

2019 Spring Editorial Team & Authors: Proey Liao, Fiona Kenney, Carrie Bly, Anirudh Gurumoorthy (MDes HPDM 2020), Yashada Wagle (MDes HPDM 2020), Shira Grosman (MLA I AP 2020), Géraud Bablon (MUP 2021), Kari Roynesdal (MLA I AP 2020), and Polly Sinclair (MLA I 2021).

Graphic Design of Limited Print Special Edition: Edward Wang (MArch I AP 2021)

2018 - 2019 2018-2019 Senior Editor: Carrie Bly 2018-2019 Web Publishing: Fiona Kenney With generous support from the Womxn in Design leadership team, Adelle York, Cynthia Deng and Sarah Diamond.

Series Notes

This pdf edition of the 2018-19 WiD Bib is text only, optimized for regular printing. 50 copies of a special edition (designed by Edward Wang) print, using the content of this pdf, were distributed to faculty and students of Harvard Graduate School of Design in May 2019. This special edition is available for view online and in the Frances Loeb Library at Harvard Graduate School of Design.

CC 2019

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Index

Part 1 // Introduction

4

A Message from the Co-Chairs

4

A Message from the Editors

5

Part 2 // Discussion Questions of Identities Part 3 // Bibliography of Identity Theories Feminist Theories

7 7 8 8

Cyberfeminist Theories

12

Post-Humanist Theories

14

Critical Indigenous Theories

16

National Identity Theories

18

Intersectionalist Theories

20

Class Theories

22

Critical Race Theories

24

Postcolonialist Theories

26

Queer Theories

28

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Part 1 // Introduction

A Message from the Co-Chairs Dear GSD Community,

As the 2018-2019 co-chairs of Womxn in Design, we commissioned the bibliography project as part of this year’s body of work interrogating the relationship between identity and design.

The WiD Bibliography project is intended to acknowledge, collect, and synthesize the legacy and tremendous intellectual labor of the many thinkers and designers before us. Previous cohorts of WiD members have worked on supplementing history and theory lectures with alternate syllabi and compiled works of womxn designers. At this year’s Convergence, attending scholars, practitioners, and students called for a transformation of the ways we teach, the ways we practice, and the ways we construct the canons of design.

The required history and theory courses rarely if ever engage the critical works of identity theories.

Compounding this is the lack of space in design pedagogy for reflecting on personal background and identity, or on the manner in which our identities invariably shape the way we design and experience the built environment.

Engaging with differing experiences of moving through the world is a fundamental part of any design practice. As designers who design for people other than ourselves, it is crucial to acknowledge, embrace, and learn about the spectrum of identities and bodies.

Lastly, we acknowledge the incredible work of the WiD Bibliography Team who spent many hours on this labor of love, fueled by donuts, coffee, and pizza. Very special thanks are due to the team leads and editors, without whom this essential project would not have been possible. We hope the efforts of this group will encourage all of us at the GSD to be more critical of what and how we learn, become aware of our own biases and blind spots, and demand a broader range of perspectives in our pedagogy. For all of this, we are thankful.

Sincerely,

Womxn in Design Co-Chairs 2018-2019 Adelle York, MDes 2019 Cynthia Deng, M. Arch I / MUP 2020 Sarah Diamond, MLA I 2019

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A Message from the Editors Dear Harvard GSD Colleagues,

For your use, we offer the beginnings of an annotated bibliography on identity theories. In addition to last semester’s installment on Intersectional Theory, Critical Race Theory, Queer Theory, and Class Theory, this semester we add: Feminism, Post humanism, Cyberfeminism, Critical Indigenous Theory, and National Identity. We also offer expanded bibliographies for Feminism and Queer Theory, suggesting texts that tackle how and why they engage with design.

This report consists of three parts. First, this introduction: a disclaimer to our work and its limits. Second, a discussion on the relationship between identity theories and the dimensions of identity they aim to elucidate, contest, and contextualize. Part Three is the heart of the matter: a bibliography of briefly annotated articles or chapters, organized by the identity topics listed above. We have done our best to select a few ​short texts​ which contextualize the making of each theory, rather than canonical texts by the most prominent authors. These selected texts serve as a reference point to guide exploration of each theory with reference to its historically situated context. Further readings can always be found by reviewing the works cited list of each framework text.

As you review this bibliography we ask you to consider your own stance on how, or in what ways, identity theories engage with design. At the end of a year's worth of work, we offer three ideas. First, viewing design - its objects, subjects and practices - through the multifaceted lenses of identity theories may help us to take new perspectives on the work of design at hand, and work that has already been done. Second, in mutual symbiosis, identity theories gain specificity and influence when grounded within the material embedded practices of design. And last, while practices of design have facilitated and participated in systems of oppression, they may also be able to contribute to the reconfiguration of power structures and help address social and political injustices which underlie our materially embedded world. To hold the door open for further discussion on these thoughts, at the end of this introduction we share with you an annotation and quote from Leonie Sandercock’s 1997 ​Towards Cosmopolis​.

This report was commissioned by Womxn in Design at the end of Summer 2018 with the intention of providing scholarly sources on identity for student work, and to broaden GSD syllabi and curricula. This is an ongoing volunteer project. Our work last semester has laid a foundation for this and forthcoming installments. We acknowledge that the creation, selection, and decisions at every step of this process make this a political project and acknowledge the small sliver of global perspectives included at present in this bibliography. We invite discussion, feedback, and future collaboration. Next semester we hope to expand the editorial team; please contact Womxn in Design if you would like to be involved.

Sincerely,

The 2019 Spring WiD Bibliography Editorial Team

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Sandercock, Leonie. “Chapter 3: Exploring Planning’s Knowledges.” In ​Towards Cosmopolis: Planning for Multicultural Cities.​ 1​st​ ed. Chichester: Wiley, 1998.

Annotation: Sandercock’s 1997 ​Towards Cosmopolis​ breaks down hegemonic modernist traditions of urban planning, to propose post-modern planning paradigms centered in multiplicitous understandings of community and experience. In this chapter, she provides a history of epistemology in urban planning, beginning with a detailed explanation of the universalist knowledge and positivist, techno-rational practices based on scientific enquiry as they arose in Enlightenment discourse. She then chronicles the rebukes of enlightenment epistemology - including Marx and the Frankfurt School, waves of feminist, postmodern, and postcolonial critiques, as well as late-20​th​-century knowledge practices in radical planning. Sandercock closes the chapter by proposing five forms of knowledge that should inform critical planning practice. This “epistemology of multiplicity” includes knowing through dialogue, knowing from experience, learning from local knowledge, learning to read symbolic and non-verbal evidence, and learning through contemplative or appreciative knowledge.

Quote: “There’s nothing more political than epistemological struggles. From the debates about how best to arrive at truth to all of the critiques of Enlightenment epistemology, the wars of words and philosophies have enormous practical consequences. They are debates about what counts as knowledge and who counts as a knower” (Page 74).

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Part 2 // Discussion

Questions of Identities This section aims to situate ​theories,​ as framed in Part Three (Intersectional Theory, Critical Race Theory, etc…),​ ​within a view of how they might operate together. We have created a diagrammatic outline to call your attention to the differences between ​theories​, the ​dimensions of identity​ around which they move, and the ways in which they move (​modes of interaction​).

Theories​ are methods which look at and organize dimensions of identity. They are historically situated and may be variegated. For example, feminism is typically variegated in waves. First wave feminism is moved by different questions and assumptions than third wave feminism. These waves arose in specific spatio-temporal contexts.

Dimensions ​of identity are the many faces that identity can take. They are what methods in Part Three aim to elucidate, contest, and contextualize. They include, but are not limited to: gender, race, class, sexuality, ability, age. For example, feminist theory, under its third wave, focuses on the intersection of dimensions of gender and race.

Modes of interaction​ are the ways that dimensions interact as described by a particular theory. While these theories do not necessarily explicate every dimension they describe, they do take a stance on how the dimensions interact with one another or identity in general. For example, the degree of interconnectedness​ between multiple dimensions of identity (race, class, age, etc) varies between Class Theory, Critical Race Theory, Intersectionalist Theory, and other methods. Likewise, the degree of ​flexibility between multiple dimensions also varies from method to method. For example, in Class Theory an individual’s ability to change their class status is dependent upon a social position, making class a relatively inflexible dimension. In some versions of Queer Theory an individual’s gender is as flexible as an individual might want it to be.

Image 1. Diagram of bibliography keywords

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Part 3 // Bibliography of Identity Theories

Feminist Theories Key Questions / Overview

Feminist theory strives to extend principles of gender equality into discourses of theory, history, and philosophy discourses. Western feminism is broadly separated into three waves: first, advocating for women’s rights during the 19th century; second, concerned with equality beyond rights; and third, investigating issues of intersectionality and diverse experiences. It also involves multiple other, smaller movements or frameworks, like fourth wave and post-feminism. Feminist theorists are concerned with the embracing of diverse perspectives, interdisciplinarity, and post-binary ideologies.

Theories merging design and feminism largely began as a critical discourse in the 1970s. Designers of the built environment working with feminist frameworks often work to challenge men as the hegemonic subject or frame of reference, to subvert the prevailing practice of deploying the female body as object or sign, or/and to reframe the organization of space in pursuit of changing gender roles in society. This discourse is focused largely on Western feminism and design.

Selected Framework Texts

Ferguson, Kathy E. 2017. “Feminist Theory Today.” ​Annual Review of Political Science ​(20): 269-286.

Annotation: This text discusses the engagement of feminist theory with critical international perspectives, along three main lines of questioning: a) subjectivity, narrative, and materiality; b) global neoliberal geopolitics; and c) global ecologies. Ferguson discusses feminism’s opposition to dualistic or binary thinking, its embrace of process thinking, and its commitment to social change and reflection. This text provides the reader with an introduction to analytic tools like intersectionality, interdisciplinarity, and scholarship and activism, as they relate to modern feminist theory.

Quote: “First, feminist theory is reliably suspicious of dualistic thinking: Any effort to divide the complex world into two dichotomous, opposing variables (such as reason and emotion, mind and body, or male and female) inevitably simplifies a complex field and posits clear-cut boundaries rather than porous and overlapping relations. Dualistic thinking also generates hierarchies, as one factor in the stand-off achieves dominance over the other, naturalizing prevailing power relationships and making them more difficult to challenge. Second, feminist thinking is generally oriented toward fluid processes of emergence rather than static entities in one-way cause-and-effect relationships...Like hierarchies, essentialism tends to naturalize familiar power arrangements by attributing them to timeless essences rather than historical processes.

Process thinking, in contrast, asks how things come to be, requiring that we historicize our thinking and recognize dynamic and changing relationships rather than static entities. Third, feminist theory is a political as well as an intellectual enterprise. It is rooted in and responsible to movements for equality, freedom, and justice” (Page 271).

Sanford, Stella. 2015. “Contradiction of Terms: Feminist Theory, Philosophy, and Transdisciplinarity.”

Theory, Culture & Society​ 32 (5-6): 159-182.

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Annotation: This article investigates the situating of feminist theory within, outside of, and by other disciplines like philosophy and critical theory. Sanford argues that the tendency of philosophy as a discipline to reject feminist theory is valid, because of the ways in which the two main features of feminist theory​—​ its transdisciplinarity and its political agenda for social change​—​ necessarily pose a threat to philosophy’s own disciplinarity. She also examines the relationship between feminist theory and feminist philosophy, and how one might incorporate the other.

Quote: “If feminist theory is feminist critique this means that ‘feminist philosophy’ is, in a sense – just as those anti-feminist philosophers always suspected – something of a contradiction in terms, ​but for completely different reasons than they thought.​ Feminist philosophy is a contradiction not because, as feminist, it fails to live up to or to conform to some ideal of philosophy. On the contrary, it is contradictory precisely because it succeeds in being philosophy. The rich traditions of feminist epistemology, feminist metaphysics, feminist phenomenology, feminist philosophy of science and so on, as well as the fully-fledged feminist philosophy of sex and gender, amply demonstrate this. But feminist philosophy remains contradictory because, with its roots in feminist theory as a transdisciplinary practice of critique, it is the demand for the overcoming of philosophy, in Marx’s sense; that is, as we might put it now, the initial demand that it become – like feminist theory itself – critical theory.” (Page 175).

Crenshaw, Kimberlé. 1989. “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics." ​University of Chicago Legal Forum​: Vol. 1989: (Issue 1, Article 8): 139-167.

Annotation: Using the title of the book ​All the Women are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us are Brave,​ as a point of entry, Crenshaw builds up her criticism of white feminism. Drawing attention to the marginalization of Black women in feminist theory and antiracist politics, she uses the framing and interpretation of Black women plaintiffs in courts of law as case studies. Further on, she discusses the feminist critique of rape and of separate spheres ideology, and the public policy debates concerning female-headed households within the Black community. She points out that the conventional analytical structure, which treats race and gender as mutually exclusive categories of experience, is incompetent to grapple with the problems of intersectional exclusion.

Quote: “If any real efforts are to be made to free Black people of the constraints and conditions that characterize racial subordination, then theories and strategies purporting to reflect the Black community's needs must include an analysis of sexism and patriarchy. Similarly, feminism must include an analysis of race if it hopes to express the aspirations of non-white women. Neither Black liberationist politics nor feminist theory can ignore the intersectional experiences of those whom the movements claim as their respective constituents. In order to include Black women, both movements must distance themselves from earlier approaches in which experiences are relevant only when they are related to certain clearly identifiable causes (for example, the oppression of Blacks is significant when based on race, of women when based on gender). The praxis of both should be centered on the life chances and life situations of people who should be cared about without regard to the source of their difficulties.” (Page 166).

Feminist Theory in Design

Fainstein, Susan S., and Lisa J. Servon. 2005. “Introduction.” In ​Gender and Planning : A Reader​, edited by Susan Fainstein and Lisa J. Servon, 1-12. Rutgers University Press.

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Annotation: This text argues that the inclusion of gender into planning theory must go beyond the inclusion of historical women figures, by also incorporating the methodology of feminist theory in order to expand the approach of planning theory. This inclusion began in the context of second wave feminism, which expanded the perspectives through which planners understood gender-governed conditions in space and society. The inclusion of a feminist approach to knowledge in planning encourages the voices of different publics in both academia and practice and facilitates connectivity between otherwise siloed ideas. In dis-placing the male figure as the primary subject in planning work, planning expands its reach into subjects that arise only within the context of other genders. The authors make a point to clarify the role of the term “gender” in this context; ​gender i​ s understood not as a reflection of biology, but of a set of associations and differentials of power that are socially constructed. This text sees feminist theory as a lens through which pre-existing insights in planning can be upended, and new insights revealed.

Quote: “Within the planning apparatus, the reality of geographical separations combines with perceptions of appropriate activities and interventions. Residential zoning exacerbates the division of home from work emblematic of large scale capitalism… [and] reiterates and reinforces the familiar distinctions between the male and female spheres.” (Page 5).

Hayden, Dolores. 1999 [1985]. “What Would a Non-sexist City Be Like? Speculations on Housing, Urban Design and Human Work.” In ​Gender, Space, Architecture: an Interdisciplinary Introduction​, edited by Jane Rendell, Barbara Penner, and Iain Borden, 266-281. Routledge.

Annotation: The author asserts that the design of the built environment, with particular emphasis on the suburban condition of single family homes, exemplifies and enforces the gendered division of labor. This is reflected in multiple scales: in the spatial organization of a home, the organization of neighborhood services, and the general shift toward privatization of lifestyles. In setting up this position, the author then seeks to theorize a new form for the urban; one that would support a family structure in which all adults in a home are employed. Hayden argues for the spatial reallocation of program necessary to eliminate the role of homemaker from a functioning home, citing the programs of childcare, the supermarket, and workplace.

Critical in the nonsexist city is the blurring of the private and public spheres, long segregated in the suburban condition. ​Hayden’s work is valuable for its direct translation of theory to planning. However, it should be noted that her approach has been criticized for ignoring the race and class implications latent in the examples she provides of a non-sexist city.

Quote: “Therefore a program to achieve economic and environmental justice for women requires, by definition, a solution which overcomes the traditional divisions between the household and the market economy, the private dwelling and the workplace. One must transform the economic condition of the traditional homemaker whose skilled labor has been unpaid, but economically and socially necessary to society; one must also transform the domestic situation of the employed woman.” (Page 270).

Bondi, Liz. 1992. “Gender symbols and urban landscapes” ​Progress in Human Geography​ (16/2): 157-170.

Annotation: The author frames the role of ‘gender reading’ within postmodern architectural discourse. The symbol has historically been used as a signifier for both gender and architecture, and through the postmodernization of discourse, the symbolism of gender and architecture gains fluidity. Through the example of Charles Jenck’s ​Describing Architectural Styles d ​ iagram, framing the use of gender in architecture as oppositional, Bondi challenges the notion that postmodern architectural discourse has A Report on Identity Theories / GSD WiD / Spring 2019 / 10

embraced gender fluidity. This is evident in the reductionist and biological use of gender to code architecture, commonly thoroughly language associated with the female figure. The author then seeks to connect gentrification to the changing gender roles in Western society, though it does not tie back into the discussion of the role of the gender as symbol in architecture.

Quote: “Postmodern representations of femininity and masculinity contribute to a ‘redifferentiation’ of gender interests. The arises because of the radical differentiation between the symbolic and the sociological within postmodernism, a separation that has the effect of denying the importance of power relations in the interpretation of gender imagery… whatever the emancipatory potentialities of the postmodern harnessing of the symbolic and the sociological, within a framework of gender inequality and female subordination, androcentric constructions of femininity and masculinity remain dominant.” (Page 11).

Way, Thaïsa. 2016. “Urban ecological design as feminist practice.” in Orff, Kate. ​Toward an urban ecology​. 132-138. First American ed., The Monacelli Press, 2016.

Annotation: Thaïsa Way’s research investigates feminist histories and practices in landscape architecture.

In this short essay, an invited chapter in practitioner Kate Orff’s ​Toward an Urban Ecology​, Way proposes that radical feminist practice centers collaboration, community engagement and collective knowledge-building in opposition to the “single gesture” design tradition. She provides a women’s history of “urban ecological design”, which seeks to reconcile the “human construct of relationships in the build environment” (the urban) with “natural processes and systems” (the ecological) through intentional practice.

From its genesis, the practice of landscape design emphasized concerns (stewarding the environment) and epistemologies (the body as a way of knowing about the world) perceived as feminine, and women rose as leaders in the profession in the 19​th​ and 20​th​ centuries. The environment and social and cultural life of cities at the center of urban ecology have been a field of practice and investigation for women, from Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr’s founding of Hull House in the 19​th​ century as integrated communities to enormously influential studies in the 1960s by Rachel Carson and Jane Jacobs.

Quote: “A feminist approach builds on descriptions of complex and dynamic relationships that catalyze new connections and affiliations. A feminist framework does not seek to merely replace a patriarchal hierarchy, but rather to replace a dualistic and hierarchical view with a fluidity of bonds and associations and webs. It is a wickedly democratic structure that is always becoming and without the distinctions between art and science.” (Page 134).

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Cyberfeminist Theories Key Questions / Overview

Cyberfeminism arose in the context of third wave feminism circa 1980s. Cyberfeminist theories consider questions of personal identity as they intersect with feminism, cybernetic, and posthuman theories and practices. Cyberfeminist approaches are interested in the non-binary, extra-human forms of identity and representation. They question the construction of positivist objectifications such as “man,” “organic” and “technology”. Donna Haraway’s essay “A Cyborg Manifesto” published in 1985 has become an exemplifier of this genre and culture, as have the works of Sadie Plant and Katherine Hayles. For a bibliography of canonical texts see: Matrix, Sidney. 2001. “Cyberfeminism and Technoculture Studies: An Annotated Bibliography.” ​Women’s Studies Quarterly​ 29 (3/4): 231–49.

Selected Framework Texts

Gillis, Stacy. 2007. “Neither Cyborg Nor Goddess The (Im)Possibilities of Cyberfeminism.” In ​Third Wave Feminism : A Critical Exploration​, edited by Stacy Gillis, Gillian Howie, and Rebecca Munford, 168–81. Palgrave Macmillan.

Annotation: This text discusses the rise of cyberfeminist narratives in the contexts of second and third wave feminism, giving some attention to Donna Haraway, Sadie Plant, digital art collectives, grrrl movements, cybernetics and global politics. Through careful consideration of cyberfeminist promises to dissolve boundaries between body and technology, Gillis offers both a critique of cyberfeminism and insight into its possibilities. She calls for cyberfeminism to engage with history and politics IRL. This text provokes the reader to consider how cyberfeminist approaches to identity (and perhaps other identity narratives) are embedded in a material and political world, and how such materiality and politics can result in exclusionary practices and affirm gender biases when not directly addressed.

Quote: “Why are we so keen to believe the internet appears to provide a space in which feminist politics and praxis can take place outside the patriarchal hegemony?” (Page 173).

Loon, Joost van. 2008. “Media as Extensions of Wo/Man: Feminist Perspectives on Mediation and Technological Embodiment” In ​Media Technology : Critical Perspectives.​ Pages 80-101. Issues in Cultural and Media Studies. Maidenhead: McGraw-Hill/Open University Press.

Annotation: Author Joost van Loon considers the works of feminist scholars Donna Haraway, Sadie Plant, and Katherine Hayles in conversation with media theorist Marshall McLuhan in order to advocate for a “technologically embedded” analysis of mediation. However, this chapter is primarily worth reading for van Loon’s sensitive distinctions between two types of feminism, as they engage with studies of media and technology: (i) political feminism that is built on politically motivated, ideological, critique of patriarchy (“modernist”); (ii) philosophical feminism that considers the construction of linkages between materiality and discourse in order to understand structures of patriarchy (“post-modernist”). In advocating for a “technologically embedded” analysis of mediation, Van Loon seeks to offer a hybrid of both camps. To make this argument, the author offers a brief historical review of western feminist critiques of pornography, domestication, and ‘the Feminine’ in the marketing of personal computers from both types of feminism. The chapter closes with explications of the works of Haraway, Plant, and Hayles as they contribute to media theory, and a “technologically embedded” analysis. Note: Van Loon also speaks to the similarities and A Report on Identity Theories / GSD WiD / Spring 2019 / 12

differences between cyberfeminism and posthumanism (95-96), and provides not only a bibliography rich in contemporary GSD faves (Latour and Foucault among them), but also a suggested reading list with brief descriptions.

Quote: “The gendered body is always already differentiated and this fundamentally upsets any ‘homological’ approach to understanding media as ‘extensions of “man”’. Instead, the difference within enables us to consider the body not as a self-enclosed, self-contained ‘unit’ of action, but as unfinished, open, contested, dependent, vulnerable” (Page 80).

Braidotti, Rosi. 2002. “The cyber-monsters of late postmodernity” in Chapter 4 “Cyber-teratologies” in Metamorphoses: Towards a Materialist Theory of Becoming.​ Pages 174-181. Cambridge, UK : Malden, MA: Polity ; Blackwell.

Annotation: “The cyber-monsters of late postmodernity” is part of a chapter called “Cyber-teratologies” in Braidotti’s book ​Metamorphosis​. In this segment, Braidotti offers a study of deformations (“teratology”) in post-modern figures - the “others” which arose in repudiation of modernist binaries. Braidotti refers to these figures as “monsters” since they challenge the epistemic, aesthetic, and political norms of modernism. She situates them in the capitalist, institutional, and academic sites of their becoming.

Cyber-feminism is used as an exemplar of the culture involved with these monsters. While cyber-feminism is not the main topic in this text, Braidotti’s work is worth a read for her insight into the transect of popular and intellectual cultures which form cyber-feminist discourse. Her approach to the topic is philosophical (Foucauldian and Deleuzian), with reference to many contemporary works which feed and exemplify her argument: Lara Croft of ​Tomb Raider​, Barbarella, ​Cats​, David Bowie, Donna Haraway and Mary Russo are just a few of the figures which appear. Note that the small segment recommended in this bibliography makes light reference to themes and concepts Braidotti is working with in the larger book: Gothic, figure, cartography. A quick trip to the index can locate additional starting points in the book to connect with these topics as desired.

Quote: “Cyber-feminists play with body-boundaries and the contours of the corporeal, presenting graphical surfaces where theoretical questions mingle with visual montages that re-assemble familiar images into monstrously unfamiliar forms” (page 179).

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Post-Humanist Theories Key Questions / Overview

Posthumanism as an identity theory refers to a critique of humanism, emphasizing in particular a change in the wake of technology, our understanding of the self, and its relationship to the world. This does not refer to Transhumanism, which by contrast is a vision of how we might use technology and other means to realize a greater potential of existence. Posthumanistic discourse aims to open up spaces to examine what it means to be human and critically question the concept of "the human." For a bibliography of canonical texts related to Posthumanism, see: Braidotti, Rossi; Hlavajova, Maria. 2018. Posthuman Glossary.

Bloomsbury.

Selected Framework Texts

Wolfe, Cary. 2009. ​What is Posthumanism?.​ Minnesota USA ; University of Minnesota Press.

Annotation: This text attempts to explore the redefinition of the human’s place in the world by way of technology and the biological. Wolfe’s work ranges across multiple disciplines—bioethics, cognitive science, animal ethics, gender, and disability—to develop a theoretical and philosophical approach responsive to the changing understanding of the self and therefore the world. Wolfe analyses the current discourse around the ‘transformation’ of the human, and, especially in the introduction, attempts to push the analysis of the human beyond existing anthropocentrism. This text mentions the philosophical beginnings of posthumanism through works by Jacques Derrida (more so than others), Gilles Deleuze, Donna Haraway, Judith Butler, Etienne Balibar, and Michel Foucault. This text attempts to re-imagine the notion of subjectivity as something that is solely exclusive to the human condition, in a means to answer the question of what posthumanism is.

Quote: “My sense of posthumanism is thus analogous to Jean-François Lyotard’s paradoxical rendering of the postmodern: it comes both before and after humanism: before in the sense that it names the embodiment and embeddedness of the human being in not just its biological but also its technological world, the prosthetic coevolution of the human animal with the technicity of tools and external archival mechanisms (such as language and culture) of which Bernard Stiegler probably remains our most compelling and ambitious theorist—and all of which comes before that historically specific thing called “the human” that Foucault’s archaeology excavates.” (Page XV).

Quote: “What this means is that when we talk about posthumanism, we are not just talking about a thematics of the decentering of the human in relation to either evolutionary, ecological, or technological coordinates (though that is where the conversation usually begins and, all too often, ends); rather, I will insist that we are also talking about how thinking confronts that thematics, what thought has to become in the face of those challenges.” (Page XVI).

Badmington, Neil. 2003. “Theorizing Posthumanism” ​Cultural Critique, ​ No. 53, Posthumanism (Winter, 2003), pp. 10-27.

Annotation: This text attempts to mark the importance of theory in the definition and understanding of the posthumanist condition. With the ideas put forth by Jacques Derrida in the form of the post-structural the A Report on Identity Theories / GSD WiD / Spring 2019 / 14

text speaks of how Posthumanism imperatively needs theory (needs theorizing) to reconsider the what was the prevalent with the notion of the end of “Man” (What Jacques Derrida calls “apocalyptic tone”). Notions of ‘deconstruction’ are used to understand and theorize Posthumanism. This text also references ideas and theories by Jean-Francois Lyotard and Descartes that allude to historical accounts of Posthumanism in trying to develop a contemporary notion.

Quote: “The writing of the posthumanist condition should not seek to fashion "scriptural tombs" for humanism, but must, rather, take the form of a critical practice that occurs inside human- ism, consisting not of the wake but the working-through of humanist discourse.” (Page 22).

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Critical Indigenous Theories Key Questions / Overview

Critical Indigenous Theories consider the construction and definition of indigenous identity, and inextricable ties to colonialism, institutional authority and bureaucratic processes. Legal frameworks, political history, and clashing concepts of personhood further complicate the geographic, ethnic, and cultural elements of indigenous identity. Contemporary and historical normalization of racism in social discourse underscores the necessity and importance of scholarship coming from within indigenous communities. To this end, the following selected texts provide critical perspectives from self-identifying indigenous activists and scholars on historical, contemporary, North American, and universal theories of indigenous identity.

Selected Framework Texts

Weaver, Hilary N. 2001. "Indigenous Identity: What Is It, and Who Really Has It?" ​American Indian Quarterly​ 25, no. 2: 240-55.

Annotation: Weaver surfaces and discusses some inherent contradictions and complications in defining individual and community contemporary indigenous identities in the United States. Her analysis engages with the mutable nature of cultural identity, the multiplicity of facets that encompass community identity (such as ancestral homelands and shared traditions), and the role of the federal government in shaping concepts of indigenous identity. To illustrate her case, Weaver breaks down federal policies that have constricted indigenous identity, and poses questions regarding institutional power structures and the quantification of cultural authenticity. Weaver also examines cultural appropriation of indigenous identity, and discusses internalized oppression and community fragmentation as a byproduct of colonization.

Weaver acknowledges her own subjectivity as an author, writing as a self-identifying Lakota woman.

Quote: “The facets of identify interact with and sometimes reinforce or challenge each other. Given the strong emphasis on the collectivity in indigenous cultures, it is problematic to have an individual who self-identifies as indigenous yet has no community sanction or validation of that identity. Historical circumstances, however, led to thousands of Native people being taken from their communities and raised without community connections through mechanisms such as interracial adoption, foster care, and boarding schools. Indeed, there are many indigenous people with tenuous community connections at best, and some of them try to reassert an indigenous identity and find their way home to their cultures.” (248)

Cunningham, M. 2006. “Indigenous Women’s Visions of an Inclusive Feminism” ​Development​ 49: 55.

Annotation: Cunningham situates female indigenous identity as peripheral to the contemporary dominant feminist paradigm. Drawing on personal experiences and conversations with indigenous women, she challenges there being a picture of women’s oppression and liberation that looks the same for diverse and distinct groups of women. She examines ethnic, gender, and economic discrimination among indigenous communities, and argues for active and collaborative reparations of imposed patriarchal systems that have been catalyzed by colonialism. Cunningham self identifies as an indigenous and women’s rights activist from Nicaragua. For further resources related to institutional “gendering” and intersections of sovereignty and gender from an indigenous woman’s standpoint, see: Suzack, Cheryl. "Indigenous Women and

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Transnational Feminist Struggle: Theorizing the Politics of Compromise and Care." ​CR: The New Centennial Review​ 10, no. 1 (2010): 179-93.

Quote: “The process of articulating an Indigenous women's standpoint requires synthesizing our collective identity as a People and our individual identities as women. For Indigenous Peoples and Indigenous women, exercising our rights – both as Indigenous People and as women – depends on securing legal recognition of our collective ancestral territories. Our territories are the basis of our identities, our cultures, our economies, and our traditions. Indigenous rights include the right to full recognition as Peoples with our own worldview and traditions, our own territories, and our own modes of organization within nation-states; the right to self-determination through our own systems of autonomy or self-government based on a communal property framework; and the right to control, develop, and utilize our own natural resources.

Indigenous Peoples are entitled to these rights ​in addition​ to the rights guaranteed to all individuals by the full body of internationally agreed-upon human rights laws and standards.” (57)

Corntassel, Jeff. 2003. “Who is indigenous? ‘Peoplehood’ and ethnonationalist approaches to rearticulating indigenous identity, Nationalism and Ethnic Politics” 9:1, 75-100.

Annotation: Corntassel employs a rigorous approach to analyzing and contrasting the language and components of indigenous identity frameworks originating in international legislation, indigenous organizations, and academic disciplines. He addresses multiple scales of indigenous identity and poses critical questions concerning semantics and definitional issues. Corntassel concludes with his own proposition for “a modified personhood approach” to indigenous identity; one which would provide spatial and temporal flexibility. In particular, he seeks to highlight components of indigenous identity neglected or subcategorized in other legislative and academic models, such as ceremonial cycles, sacred history, and language. Jeff Corntassel is a Cherokee scholar.

Quote: “On the one hand, requiring strict, definitional standards could exclude some indigenous groups from the very protections they need and would also conform to state-centric, bureaucratic decision-making practices, which are antithetical to most indigenous belief systems” (76).

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National Identity Theories Key Questions / Overview

The overlapping definitions of nations and states draw often contested political lines which divide, define, and challenge notions of shared political identity--commonly categorized as a person’s “national identity.”

Theories which consider the construction and consequences of national identities face not only questions of ethics and justice as they have arisen in physical and governmental conflicts, but also questions that have arisen from the isomorphic, divergent or compartmentalized relationships national identity takes with other methods and forms of personal identification. These questions include: How has the various forms of nationhood transformed our understanding of personal identity? What causes diverse understandings of the same national identity (i.e., what does it mean to be “American”?)? For migrants, indigenous peoples, the exiled, and any “others,” what are the consequences of existing without a national identity? Why might we be coerced into aligning with one (or many?) even if we are territorially displaced from it? Though the nation-state is the predominate institutionalized unit of identity on a global scale, is it a viable means of defining identity on a personal scale? The following texts barely brush the surface of unpacking this vast topic, but offer insights into national identity and its relationship with ethnicity, [de]-territorialization, and governance.

Selected Framework Texts

Ely, John. 1997. "Community and the Politics of Identity: Toward the Genealogy of a Nation-State Concept." ​Stanford Humanities Review​ 5, no. 2 (1997): 70-95.

Annotation: Ely’s article places national identity within a philosophical framework of personal identity and a governance state. To him, the idea of identity is itself encapsulated in a nationalist political discourse; Western definitions of identity have largely arisen from Enlightenment thinkers that inexorably tie their work to the political milieu of their nation. Ely questions how nations were constructed, not just politically, but as a state of mind--a political group based on “unit solidarity or camaraderie,” in fact arguing that this nationality is borne out of a need for martial categorization, and that multicultural nations merely reinforce the disparity between other forms of personal identity and national identity, due to its necessary blanket government.

Quote: “A genealogy of the term identity reveals that the two most important sources of the term’s meanings are perspectives that generally stand opposed to both communitarianism and multiculturalism.

The term has less to do with a civic, humanist orientation, such as one ought to expect from communitarianism, than with the juridical subject philosophies most typically associated with liberalism. In this sense, the term is part of the state-building project of nationalism insofar as this utilizes ascriptive definitions of human beings strengthened and increasingly influential as the modern nation-state expands” (Page 74).

Rex, John. 1995. “Ethnic Identity and the Nation State: The Political Sociology of Multi-Cultural Societies.” ​Social Identities​ 1 (1): 21-35.

Annotation: This journal article focuses on the sociological relationship between ethnic groups, which are often co-opted by the more modern production of a national group, or nation-states. Rex contends that because ethnicity is not the primary source of politico-territorial groupings it causes ethnically-based A Report on Identity Theories / GSD WiD / Spring 2019 / 18

diaspora, and in a more recent post-modern society, an eventual multiculturalism within nations that integrate immigrants and displaced groups into an already established political institution, oftentimes without integrating them in a social dimension. The author advocates for a continued empirical approach to the topic, rather than perspectivism that fragments identities into singular, personal ones.

Quote: “... what are often called nations do not emerge in this way. In the history of European nationalism, the nation is seen as part of a modernizing project. It is based, not upon an appeal to ethnicity or to emotional feelings of belonging, but, in the first place, upon rationalistic notions like citizenship or participation in a market. Nations of this kind belong primarily in the world of Tonnies' gesellschaft.

Particularistic ethnic ties have no place in a nation of this kind, and commonly it sets out to erode ethnicity where it exists” (Page 27).

Taylor, Graham. 2010. “Glocalized Identities: Political Culture between Place and Space.” In ​The New Political Sociology: Power, Ideology and Identity in an Age of Complexity​, edited by Graham Taylor, 80–102. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK.

Annotation: In this book chapter, the author references various “scapes” (see quote below) of global cultural flow Arjun Appadurai, a prominent globalization scholar, as replacements for territory based identity. Deterritorialization is taken to mean the conditions where a place-based identity is suddenly removed from a place. Taylor questions the viability of the “nation-state” construct, and suggests it is past its time in the present post-modern world. He finds the personal, the local, and the global as participating in a non-hierarchical assemblage that feeds one another, and the idea of identity within this assemblage is constantly transforming. Statehood has delaminated from territory and pervades “glocal” locations, creating systems of hegemony that no longer align to the single center of the nation-state.

Quote: “De-territorialization is, therefore, both a seedbed for the emergence of global fundamentalism and the basis of new markets through which media companies and travel agencies are able to exploit the need for de-territorialized communities to have contact with their homelands. The process of de-territorialization is the basis for the fractured and fragmented nature of mediascapes and ideoscapes. The disjunctive nature of the global cultural economy and the dynamic of de-territorialization have resulted in the increasing disarticulation between 'state' and 'nation'. In many places, nations or groups with ideas about nationhood seek to capture or co-opt state power, while existing states seek to capture and monopolize ideas about nationhood (Baruah, 1986). Imagined communities such as Sikhs, Tamils, Basques and Quebecois constitute nations in search of a state. Existing states seek to monopolize the moral resources of community either by maintaining the alignment of 'state' and 'nation' or through forms of 'heritage politics' that serve to 'museumize' the origins of nationhood” (Page 96).

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Intersectionalist Theories Key Questions / Overview

Intersectionalist Theory explicitly acknowledges the interconnectedness of many dimensions of identity (such as race, class, gender, sexuality) in order to ask how these dimensions might work together, influence each other, and organize or reorganize networks of power.

Selected Framework Texts

Carastathis, Anna. 2016. ​Intersectionality: Origins, Contestations, Horizons. Expanding Frontiers.

Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

Annotation: The author unpacks intersectionality as a buzz word and a historical concept with two aims: (i) “to challenge the triumphal narrative of “political completion” (Wiegman 2012) that surrounds intersectionality as the way to theorize the relationship among systems of oppression”; and (ii) to use the concept in order to “confront the challenge to cognitive and perceptual habits that intersectionality advances” (4). Carastathis uses intersectionality as a method of critique to identity politics—rather than as a form of identity construction on its own (6).

Quote: “We find ourselves at a juncture between skeptics who declare ‘intersectionality fatigue’ and celebrants who declare ‘intersectionality’s arrival.’ If we could articulate what is wrong with each of these positions, could we reinterpret intersectionality without taking for granted, as self-evident or as truism, the meaning of categorial ‘intersection’ but rather using the intersection to reveal and contest categorical exclusions that are deeply entrenched in our perceptual, cognitive, and political lives?” (12)

Reynolds, Amy L., and Raechele L. Pope. 1991. “The Complexities of Diversity: Exploring Multiple Oppressions.” ​Journal of Counseling and Development​ 70: 174-180.

Annotation: The authors provide a history of identity development models, from a focus on Black identity post-1960s to feminist and LGBTQ identity in the 70s and 80s. They approach this conversation from the angle of oppression (ie what oppressions are possible under what model of identity development/construction?) and demonstrate an intense focus on intersection, history, and individual and social construction.

Quote: “Western culture...supports the notion that knowledge occurs outside of us and that we are inherently separate from all others...As such, it is difficult for individuals to embrace all of who they are when they internalize a worldview based on fragmentation and dichotomization. Therefore, science, in which psychology is based, views individuals in one-dimensional ways, thus making the notion of multiple identities and multiple realities inconceivable.” (177)

Collins, P. H. 2015. “Intersectionality’s Definitional Dilemmas.” ​Annual Review of Sociology​, 41: 1–20.

Annotation: Collins begins by posing the question what is intersectionality? How does it differ from theories of identity which intersect? In a brief survey of intersectionalist literature and publication methods which qualify such literature as intersectionalist, the author explores how the concept emerged, what conditions A Report on Identity Theories / GSD WiD / Spring 2019 / 20

and forces have shaped it, in what domains it is used (i.e. human rights activism, scholarship on violence, etc) and the uses towards which it is directed—readers who are familiar with intersectionality may find this work interesting particularly for its deconstruction of Crenshaw as the “foremother” of intersectionality.

Collins suggests the concept of intersectionality is focused and shaped in three ways: (i) intersectionality as an academic object/domain; (ii) intersectionality as analytical strategy; (iii) intersectionality as critical praxis.

Going beyond instrumentalization of the term, Collins shows how intersectionality itself is a knowledge project under construction in complex networks of power and practice.

Quote: “Intersectionality faces a particular definitional dilemma—it participates in the very power relations that it examines and, as a result, must pay special attention to the conditions that make its knowledge claims comprehensible” (3).

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Class Theories Key Questions / Overview

Class is the stratification of population related to labor, occupation, consumption, and/or property within a specific system of production and reproduction. It is suggested that class identification shapes norms of public spheres, social experience, and forms of inequality which permeate everyday life. Class theory asks how a person’s identity and equality are charged by the socio-economic situation of the society by which they are measured.

Selected Framework Texts

Williams, Raymond. (1976) 2015. “Class” in Keywords : ​A Vocabulary of Culture and Society.​ Rev. ed.

(1985): 26-34. New York: Oxford University Press.

Annotation: Raymond Williams’ ​Keywords​ collection is a reference work for the philology of 109 words (such as “Class” or “City” or Culture”) which have taken on cultural significance even as their sense of meaning has changed over time. Williams traces a history of “class” used to stratify groups of people, and touches on its relationship to “classic,” “classification,” and “culture.” Raymond Williams wrote on capitalism, cultural production, Marxism, and historical changes to culture.

Quote: “The essential history of the introduction of class, as a word which would supersede older names for social divisions, relates to the increasing consciousness that social position is made rather than merely inherited. […] What was changing consciousness was not only increased individual mobility [...] but the new sense of a society or a particular social system which actually created social divisions, including new kinds of divisions” (Page 27).

Wright, Erik Olin. 2005. “If Class is the answer, what is the question?” In ​Approaches to Class Analysis.

Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press.

Annotation: The essay “If Class is the answer, what is the question?” is the conclusion to Erik Olin Wright’s 2005 compilation of class analysis essays. The full scope of Wright’s compilation aims to explicate the theoretical foundations (assumptions, targets and limits) for an array of class analysis traditions through a series of self-reflective essays by contemporary authors. These authors reflect on their methods, as inherited from canonical figures in class analysis such as Marx or Bourdieu, and in the ways they depart from these figures. Wright’s conclusive essay queries the questions posed by each author, and pulls out 6 major themes (transposed in a simple chart). These are the questions, he suggests, that theories of class attempt to address. Such questions make visible the differences between a Marxist vs Bourdieuian, or Neo-Weberian vs neo-Durkheimian approach. Erik Olin Wright is a scholar in Sociology, currently teaching at the University of Wisconsin.

Quote: “[Theoretical frameworks] help pose questions. Questions are not generated simply by curiosity and imagination encountering the empirical world; they are generated by curiosity and imagination, organized by theoretical assumptions and animated by normative concerns, encountering the empirical world. These assumptions and concerns are what give specific questions salience and demarcate the tasks that the concept of lass is called upon to accomplish” (Page 180).

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Waters, Malcolm. 1991. “Collapse and Convergence in Class Theory.” ​Theory and Society​ 20 (2): 141–72.

Annotation: Waters reviews the construction of class strata according to several canonical class theories (Marx, Weber, with reference to the work of Wright, Offe, Giddens and more). A key question Waters asks throughout his analysis is whether class stratifications as described in the 19th century can still be used today. His assessment is not neutral; Waters aims to reveals weakness of class stratification and then propose how such problems might be resolved. You might find Waters’ assessment useful as an example of class theory explication with respect to variables of state, market and consumption, as well as for his descriptive models.

Quote: “Thus a Marxist analysis of the class structure may well be perfectly adequate to nineteenth-century capitalism, and a simple Weberian analysis may perhaps be appropriate to fin de siecle developments. But a conceptualization of the class structure that is adequate to contemporary social conditions must take account of at least the following emergent patterns: [Monopoly Capitalism, Statism, Credentialism, Extended Viriarchy]” (Page 159).

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Critical Race Theories Key Questions / Overview

Critical Race Theory asks: how/why did “race” emerge as a classification system for identity? Does race exist beyond institutionalized oppression? How important is race to your identity? Is there such thing as racial unity?

Critical Race Theory sees racism as an unavoidable occurrence in the lives of people of color, as opposed to color blindness, in which race can (ideally) be overlooked and rendered insignificant. Race is thus a constructed social categorization that is largely based on physical appearance, and which has been a crux of power in American politics/society.

A critique of Critical Race Theory is that it bifurcates a diverse issue (where white/black transformed into white/colored), or with the often narrative-driven discussion of nuanced racial groups. Topics related to design/space/race/identity include: (i) Gerrymandering / Fair Housing Act; (ii) The right to monument (i.e., Confederate statues).

Selected Framework Texts

Crenshaw, Kimberlé, ed. ​Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed the Movement​. New York: New Press : Distributed by W.W. Norton & Co, 1995.

Annotation: Crenshaw’s book is an anthology of essays that gave form to Critical Race Theory’s use largely in legal settings. The essays explore the legal experience of the Civil Rights Movement, both in its ideation of race in America and its imperative to enact change to systemic oppression in law. An important addition within these essays include the notion of “rights,” and the legal divisions of people in America that result from such a distinction.

Quote: “The task of Critical Race Theory is to remind its readers how deeply issues of racial ideology and power continue to matter in American life. Questioning regnant visions of racial meaning and racial power, critical race theorists seek to fashion a set of tools for thinking about race that avoids the traps of racial thinking.” (xxxii, Introduction)

Delgado, Richard, and Jean Stefancic. 2012. ​Critical Race Theory : An Introduction​, Second Edition. Vol. Second edition. Critical America. New York: NYU Press.

Annotation: Richard Delgado outlines Critical Race Theory in the following parts: its theoretical underpinnings, the stories and narratives that express the tension of voices between people of color and their revisionist counterparts, and its evolution and presence in media and scholarship today. Delgado writes and presents this information in an easily digestible manner. His short overview explores the notion of race as a blanket statement of identity, and collects criticisms from both liberal and conservative perspectives of the use of this Theory as a critical approach to civil rights.

Quote: “By contrast, many critical race theorists and social scientists hold that racism is pervasive, systemic, an deeply ingrained. If we take this perspective, then no white member of society seems quite so innocent.

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The interplay of meanings that one attaches to race, the stereotypes one holds of other people, and the need to guard one’s own position all powerfully determine one’s perspective.” (pp. 44-45)

Saperstein, Aliya, Andrew M. Penner, and Ryan Light. 2013. “Racial Formation in Perspective: Connecting Individuals, Institutions, and Power Relations.” ​Annual Review of Sociology ​39, no. 1 (July 30, 2013): 359–78.

Annotation: This sociological perspective on the social construction of race talks less about the legal underpinnings of racial constructs and more of the social dynamics that allow categories of race to be formed, though still embodying the spirit of Critical Race Theory without naming it outright. The authors outline several texts that could be read based on scale (referred to as the macro-, micro-, and meso-) and conclude that race is an interdisciplinary subject of study.

Quote: “It is well established that Americans categorize each other by race almost automatically (Eberhardt 2005), and studies suggest that children do so as early as age three (Van Ausdale & Feagin 1996).

Furthermore, before the 1970s, most racial data in the United States was collected by observation, as recorded by census enumerators and survey interviewers. Yet there are few systematic, sociological studies of the racial perceptions of others that explicitly examine how people get assigned to different racial or ethnic categories in everyday interactions.” (pp. 366)

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Postcolonialist Theories Key Questions / Overview

Post Colonial Theory asks: Given the different experiences of colonized peoples across the world, how can theorists work to acknowledge multiplicity within the postcolonial experience? How can post colonialists appropriate colonial languages to change power structures?

Post Colonial Theory is built around conceptions of otherness, power, and resistance. It works to deconstruct the colonial way of thinking: “the symbolic forms and representations underpinning the imperial project.” (Achille Mbembe, Eurozine, 2008). There a number of different positions here—some postcolonial thinkers are very against what the term “postcolonial theory” has come to mean. In ​The Limits of Postcolonial Criticism, E ​ . San Juan Jr states that “postcolonialism is guilty of what it claims to repudiate: mystification and moralism.” (1998). Critics argue that postcolonial studies depict cultures as unchanging, static entities, and implies or assumes that cultures globally cannot bridge gaps and that all theorists (can) do is attempt to minimize the negative impact of multiculturalism. The discipline is also criticized for positioning nationality as the only or most important facet of identity, ignoring questions of gender identity, sexuality, or socioeconomic status.

Selected Framework Texts

Lazarus, Neil. 1993. “Disavowing Decolonization: Fanon, Nationalism, and the Problematic of Representation in Current Theories of Colonial Discourse.” Research in African Literatures 24 (4): 69-98.

Annotation: Neil Lazarus’ Disavowing Decolonization explores the relationship between Western scholarship, nationalism, and representation. Lazarus draws attention to the tendency of researchers to present “radical intellectualism” as irreducible, uncomparable contributions to anti-imperialist movements.

He references Edward Said: intellectuals have constituted themselves as “agent[s] of illumination within the realm of the colonised.” This is problematic, he argues, because of the narrative it constructs when presented as specifically Western radical intellectualism.

Quote: “For radical Western-based scholars today, opposed to the smugly ‘First Worldist’ quality of much of the prevailing scholarship, the question of how to think differently about nationalism—above all in the ongoing context of anti-imperialist struggle—is proving to be a vexed one.” (Page 70).

Parry, Benita. 2004. Postcolonial Studies: A Materialist Critique. New York: Routledge.

Annotation: Postcolonial Studies, an anthology of essays, argues for a deeper and more thorough acknowledgement of the role of historical and socio-material conditions in postcolonial studies. Parry suggests that colonialism largely involves material impacts such as “appropriation of resources,” “exploitation of labor,” and “institutional repression” are not sufficiently incorporated into the discipline, resulting in a lack of understanding of the role of the socio-material in the theory of postcolonialism. Parry is Professor Emeritus in English and Comparative Literary Studies at the University of Warwick, and researches the literature of colonialism and imperialism.

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Quote: “Recent as the field is, postcolonial studies quickly moved from its beginnings in colonial discourse analysis, which itself was part of the larger investigation undertaken during the 1980s, into systems of representation designed to validate institutional subordination and silence the voices of competitors. All had recourse to the same range of critical paradigms.” (Page 6).

Said, Edward W. 1978. Orientalism. London: Routledge.

Annotation: Orientalism is recognized as a foundational text of postcolonial studies and provides an overview of Western understandings of the East—specifically the Islamic world. Said explores processes of ‘othering’ and grapples with history, power, and ideas. With a method that has changed research methods in literary criticism and theory, Said performs textual analysis to unpack cultural representations that lead to Orientalism. Said was a founder of postcolonial studies as academic discipline and was Professor of Literature at Columbia University.

Quote: “It is better not to risk generalizations about so vague and yet so important a notion as cultural strength until a good deal of material has been analyzed first. But at the outset one can say that so far as the West was concerned during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, an assumption had been made that the Orient and everything in it was, if not patently inferior to, then in need of corrective study by the West. The Orient was viewed as if framed by the classroom, the criminal court, the prison, the illustrated manual. Orientalism, then, is knowledge of the Orient that places things Oriental in class, court, prison, or manual for scrutiny, study, judgement, discipline, or governing.” (Page 40-41).

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Queer Theories Key Questions / Overview

Queer theory works to amalgamate politics and feelings: it reveals the social context of identity, and how feelings are culturally produced. ​The word ‘queer’ is intentionally a transitory term, allowing for diverse makings of meaning that change over time and according to individual understanding. Much of the work referenced below involves a deep commitment to intersectionality, using ‘queer’ as almost an antonym for the identities most visibly produced in culture.

Key questions in Queer Theory include: how is queerness commodified and what are the effects of this commodification? In what ways are identities relationally constituted (considering queer theory in relation to other theories)? What are categories of gender/sexuality, and in what way are they important? What is the political utility of establishing a queer theoretical framework?

Selected Framework Texts

Berlant, Lauren, and Michael Warner. 1995. “What Does Queer Theory Teach Us About X?” PMLA 110 (3): 343-49.

Annotation: A self-described “anti-encyclopedia entry” for ‘queer theory,’ Laurent and Warner argue instead in this article for the use of queer commentary, which “takes on varied shapes, risks, ambitions, and ambivalences in various contexts.” To use queer theory is to “make its queer and nonqueer audiences forget these differences and imagine a context (theory) in which queer has a stable referential context and pragmatic force.” The article also discusses the acceptance of queer studies into academia, and the impact of this integration by way of disproportionately forcing certain groups of people to ‘translate themselves.’

Quote: “When a new thing emerges, people want to know how it is going to solve problems. When it is called theory, it is expected to produce a program, and when the theory addresses the broad issue of queerness, the program is expected to explain queer life. But queer theory has not yet undertaken the kind of general description of the world that would allow it to produce practical solutions.” (Page 348).

Butler, Judith. 1990. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge.

Annotation: In a text foundational to queer and feminist theory, Butler argues that gender is but an improvised theatrical performance, and that sex and gender are culturally constructed. These performances, she argues, not only reflect the hegemonic understanding of gender but themselves constitute it. Thus, if gender is only as real to the extent that it is performed, sex and gender are social constructions reinforced by repetitive acts that mimic societal understandings of gender. Butler is a gender theorist and philosopher and is Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of California at Berkeley.

Quote: “Is the construction of the category of women as a coherent and stable subject an unwitting regulation and reification of gender relations? And is not such a reification precisely contrary to feminist aims? To what extent does the category of women achieve stability and coherence only in the context of the heterosexual matrix? If a stable notion of gender no longer proves to be the foundational premise of feminist politics, perhaps a new sort of feminist politics is now desirable to contest the very reifications of A Report on Identity Theories / GSD WiD / Spring 2019 / 28

gender and identity, one that will take the variable construction of identity as both a methodological and normative prerequisite, if not a political goal.” (Page 8).

Howard Chiang & Alvin K. Wong (2017) “Asia is burning: Queer Asia as critique.” Culture, Theory and Critique, 58:2, 121-126.

Annotation: In this text, Howard Chiang and Alvin K. Wong discuss the relationship between queer theory and Asian studies, and critique the Eurocentric pedagogy of queer theory that dominates academia.

Through an intersectional model of queer studies, this text proposes that queerness is structured and transformed by formations of race, class, and gender. The authors propose that the future of queer critique can be redirected towards questions of colonial history and a new political imaginary within Asia that can work to overcome Westernized definitions of queer liberalism.

Quote: “If queer theory needs Asian studies in order to overcome its Euro-American metropolitanism and continual Orientalist selective inclusion of Asia and the non-West into its self-critique, so too can Asian studies revitalise itself through the queer disentanglement of the older version of ‘area studies’ and its complicity with the nation-state form. Here, we acknowledge the perverse and indeed powerful intervention in queering Asian studies through the invocation of pairing ‘area studies’ with the ethic of ‘impossibility’, which approaches both queerness and area studies as ‘a placeholder that might partly express a promiscuous or incoherent desire or a desire whose content continues to be under erasure.”

(Page 122).

Watson, Katherine. 2005. “Queer Theory.” Group Analysis 38 (1): 67-81.

Annotation: Watson outlines the “key elements that shape this body of work” and discusses intersectionality and commodification as they pertain to queerness. Like Butler’s, this article explores identity construction, gender performance, and the “historical and cultural positioning of the unified ‘self’.”

Watson is a lecturer of Health Care Studies at Manchester Metropolitan University and researches the role of science in the discursive construction of identities and bodies.

Quote: “The strength of queer theorizing...lies in its potential application to relational fields, as a framework for understanding the constitution of identities; as a revisioning of fields of the erotic and the flow of desire, and as a method to disturb the heteronormative, taken-for-granted positions/assumptions about sex, gender and sexuality in which lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and transgendered persons are rendered as problematical against a stable heterosexual norm.” (Page 79).

Key questions to Queer Theory in Design

Queer theory has been applied to critical discourses in design, where the concept of queering can work to break down binaries found within the built environment. How can a queer theoretical framework influence socio spatial relationships and allow for multiple understandings of identity? Additionally, how can queer theoretical frameworks be expanded to the fields of ecology and urbanism to challenge normalizing and dominant power structures embedded within the design of urban environments?

Selected Framework Texts

Reed, Christopher. 1996. “Queer Space in the Built Environment” ​Art Journal​ Vol. 55, (Issue 4: We’re Here: Gay and Lesbian Presence in Art and Art History): 64-70.

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Annotation: In this article, Christopher Reed discusses the the transitory nature of queer space, that allows for varied understandings of meaning that change according to an individual’s understanding and use of a space. While there are more visible signs of queer spaces in the forms of symbols or signage throughout urban life, other signs are subtler and respond to specific social forms of queer culture. Reed proposes the idea of an invisible queerness that always exists but is imminent, ready to claim space in a way that is up to interpretation of the user at a specific place in time.

Quote: “In short, no space is totally queer or completely unqueerable, but some spaces are queerer than others. The term I propose for queer space is imminent: rooted in the Latin imminere, to loom over or threaten, it means ready to take place. For both advocates and opponents, the notion of queerness is threatening indeed. More fundamentally, queer space is space in the process of, literally, taking place, of claiming territory.” (Page 64).

Patrick, Darren J. “Of Success and Succession: A Queer Urban Ecology of the High Line” in Deconstructing the High Line​ (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2017), 141-163.

Annotation: In this text, Darren J. Patrick approaches the High Line from the lens of queer ecological critique. He advocates for the notion of responsibility to abandoned urban space and the agency of emergent “invasive” species. In this text, Patrick argues that redevelopment of the High Line as a mode of urban spatial capitalism erased both human and non-human queer spatial histories, reducing queers and plants as commodities for the benefit of re-development. Questioning the term “invasive” as it is applied to a specific plant, ​A. altissima​, Patrick challenges the consequences of normalizing planting strategies, where undesirable ecologies are replaced with more palatable, highly managed landscapes. Through a lens of queer ecology, and the development of an ethics that links sexuality and ecology, come figures of resistance that can work to oppose spatial injustices of gentrification and consider the cultural impact of the normalization of public space.

Quote: “Bringing a notion of responsibility to bear on the redevelopment of the High Line invites a return to the abandoned ecology of the space. FHL’s own initial attachment to the space was ironically predicated on the charismatic assemblage of queers and plants, now replaced by a highly managed, labor-intensive ecosystem in which basic interactions between humans and plants are circumscribed. Whereas the abandoned ecology of the High Line offered a space for less scripted interspecies interactions—sex “behind the bushes,” for example—FHL’s emphasis on management, development, and economic success demands both more social and ecological control over the space. FHL rewrites the ecology of the High Line into dominant discourses and practices of gentrification and urban development, rendering plants as inert objects and queers as normative subjects whose “excessive” desires always risk capture by an urban capitalism incapable of producing its own surpluses.” (Page 154)

Rothenberg, Tamar. “‘And She Told Two Friends: Lesbians Creating Urban Social Space” in ​Mapping Desire: Geographies of Sexualities​ edited by David Bell and Gill Valentine, 150-164. New York: Routledge, 1995.

Annotation: This article considers the formation of lesbian social space in the urban environment.

Rothenberg discusses the differing spatial patterns of gay men and lesbian women, and the tendency that gay men have to express themselves spatially through the claiming of territory and highly visible gay bars and clubs. Lesbian subculture is more hidden than that of gay male culture; Rothenberg discusses that it is not the number of gay bars that lure women to a lesbian neighborhood, but the understanding of A Report on Identity Theories / GSD WiD / Spring 2019 / 30

community passed down through word-of-mouth, tales of personal experience walking through urban spaces, and how those urban spaces feel, both in terms of safety and public acceptance of identity.

Quote: “Electoral politics notwithstanding, perceptions and ‘common knowledge’, while lacking exactitude, may actually be more beneficial to the users of gay spaces. Word-of-mouth, not statistical information, is what lures women to a ‘lesbian neighbourhood’. What matters to the people who live in a community is their experience of the place, how they feel walking down the street, the services available to them.” (Page 154).

Sanders, Joel. 2017. “From Stud to Stalled! Architecture in Transition” ​Log​ (41): 145-154.

Annotation: In this text, Joel Sanders considers binary distinctions in the design of the built environment, and questions why the architectural types we inhabit everyday do not reflect multiple understandings of identity. Sanders approaches the roles that typology and materiality have in the formation of identity, and proposes that a trans-inclusive approach enables us to move away from binaries and cisgender-centric design, towards hybrid environments that reveal multiple interpretations of identity. Stalled!, a research team that works to challenge the gender-segregated restroom, proposes an alternative model that treats the public restroom as mixed-use public space composed of multiple “activity zones” of grooming, washing, and privacy. This approach in Stalled! encourages us to re-consider the social configuration of everyday spaces, towards a more inclusive approach that allows a spectrum of identities to exist in the built environment.

Quote: “If queer theory spawned design projects that reconfigured architectural tropes to address a gay male subculture, then trans theory suggests that we move away from cisgender-centric design. Eliding binary distinctions between male and female, interior and exterior, natural and synthetic, human and machine, trans [theory] inspires us to create hybrid environments that mix materials with polyvalent cultural references. In addition, trans theory underscores the need to abolish sex-segregated spaces altogether - not only restrooms but also dormitories, prisons, fire stations, and military compounds - architectural types that define human identity through gender and thus dictate configurations of everyday space.” (Page 154).

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