Boundary Lines: Philosophy and Postcolonialism

176 Pages·2019·1.001 MB·English

by  Emanuela Fornari, Iain Halliday (transl.), Etienne Balibar (foreword)

Boundary Lines
SUNY series in Contemporary Italian Philosophy
—————
Silvia Benso and Brian Schroeder, editors
Boundary Lines
Philosophy and Postcolonialism
Emanuela Fornari
Translated by
Iain Halliday
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
Linee di confine. Filosofia e postcolonialismo by Emanuela Fornari © 2011,
Bollati Boringhieri editore, Torino
English translation © 2019 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever
without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval
system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic,
electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise
without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Fornari, Emanuela, author.
Title: Boundary lines : philosophy and postcolonialism / Emanuela Fornari :
translated by Iain Halliday.
Other titles: Linee di confine. English
Description: Albany : State University of New York, 2019. | Series: SUNY
series in contemporary Italian philosophy | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018027700 | ISBN 9781438474113 (hardcover : alk.
paper) | ISBN 9781438474137 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Hermeneutics—History—20th century. | Postcolonialism—
Philosophy. | Cultural relations.
Classification: LCC BD241 .F64713 2019 | DDC 325/.301—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018027700
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For my father,
to his unforgettable smile

Contents
Foreword ix
Étienne Balibar
Introduction 1
Part One
Time, History, Writing
1. The Margins of History 11
1.1. World-History: The End of “Outside” 11
1.2. Temporalization and Anachrony 18
1.3. The Ambiguous Border: Exception and Liberation 24
2. Writing, Narrations 35
2.1. Counter-Histories 35
2.2. Archives of Silence 40
2.3. Narratives of the Possible 46
3. Aporias of Memory 51
3.1. The Law of the Past: Ruins and Other Remains 51
3.2. Historical Sublime and Narrative 57
Part Two
Maps, Subjects, Translation
4. Translation and Transition 65
4.1. Writing Machines 65
4.2. Global Capital and “Historical Difference” 75
viii Contents
5. Politics of Translation 83
5.1. Cultural Identity and Ambivalence 83
5.2. Language and Minorities 87
5.3. Logic, Rhetoric, Silence 93
6. Political Subjects 103
6.1. Geography of Dominion, Cartographies of
Subalternity 103
6.2. The Political Word 110
6.3. Difference and Position: Alliances Located 117
Notes 127
Bibliography 135
Index of Names 151
Foreword
Étienne Balibar
Emanuela Fornari’s book is magnificent in its clarity, precision,
and depth. And the fact that the author has chosen to cite, in the
course of her arguments, essays or works in which I myself have
touched on some of the issues she deals with, will not prevent me
in any way from singing her praises: this because, as with all her
other sources, the use she makes of them is entirely original. For
me it is an honor to present her book to its Italian readership (as
I hope I will present it to further readers). This provides me with
an occasion to measure the progress made by a new generation of
philosophers whose qualities of reflection, information, and provo-
cation are brilliantly illustrated by the author. It is thanks to them
if we are all now able—and if we will be able in the future—to
continue our work without repeating ourselves too much.
In the title of Emanuela Fornari’s book, the two lemmas that
thematically delimit the field—“philosophy” and “postcolonial-
ism”—bear equal significance: consequently the meaning of the
conjunction that binds them must be carefully pondered. This is
not a simple work of history of ideas or of documentation, like
the various and extremely useful existing contributions (mostly in
English) that we find dutifully “inventoried” and consulted, but
rather it is a conceptual problematization that takes the risk of gen-
eralizing and assessing the formulations of “postcolonial” authors so
ix