Conflicting Humanities

307 Pages·2016·1.682 MB·English

by  Rosi Braidotti, Paul Gilroy (eds.)

Conflicting
Humanities
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THEORY
Conflicting
Humanities
EDITED BY
ROSI BRAIDOTTI AND
PAUL GILROY
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First published 2016
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ISBN: HB: 9781474237543
PB: 9781474237550
ePDF: 9781474237536
ePub: 9781474237567
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Typeset by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NN
CONTENTS
List of Illustrations vii
List of Contributors viii
Acknowledgements xiii
Series Preface xiv
Introduction 1
Rosi Braidotti and Paul Gilroy
1 The Contested Posthumanities 9
Rosi Braidotti
2 A Borderless World? 47
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
3 Borderless Worlds? 61
Ankhi Mukherjee
4 Humanities and Emancipation: Said’s Politics of Critique
between Interpretation and Interference 75
Jamila M. H. Mascat
5 Not Yet Humanism or the Non-Jewish Jew Becomes the
Non-Humanistic Humanist 95
Paul Gilroy
6 The Political Enlightenment: A View from the South 109
Akeel Bilgrami
vi CONTENTS
7 ‘We Belong to Palestine Still’: Edward Said and the
Challenge of Representation 129
Robert J. C. Young
8 ‘Where Am I Supposed To Go Now?’ 143
Ariella Azoulay
9 The Missing Homeland of Edward Said 165
Aamir R. Mufti
10 Versions of Binationalism in Said and Buber 185
Judith Butler
11 Further Reflections on Exile: War and Translation 211
Étienne Balibar
12 We, the Non-Europeans 229
Engin F. Isin
13 Musical Dis-Possessions 245
Stathis Gourgouris
14 In the Time of Not Yet: On the Imaginary of
Edward Said 267
Marina Warner
Index 277
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Cover image: Natasha Unkart
Fig. 8.1 Jean Mohr, ‘New York, Nearly empty room at United Nations Day
with the Palestinian People, November 29, 1983’ 149
Fig. 8.2 British Passport – Palestine, Mr Y. Lebel 153
Fig. 8.3 The archive From Palestine to Israel: A Photographic Record of
Destruction and State Formation, 1947–1950 154
Fig. 8.4 Still from Civil Alliances, Palestine 47–48, a documentary
by Ariella Azoulay, 2012, 48 min (see: https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=lqi4X_ptwW) 158
Fig. 13.1 Possessed object of gaze. Still from Elia Suleiman’s film Divine
Intervention, 2002, produced by Elia Suleiman and Humbert Balsan 249
Fig. 13.2 Spell-binding gaze of dis-possession. Still from Elia Suleiman’s
film Divine Intervention, 2002, produced by Elia Suleiman and Humbert
Balsan 250
Fig. 13.3 Photos of performances of Mazen Kerbaj 254
Fig. 13.4 How can I show sound in a drawing? Artwork by Mazen
Kerbaj 257
Fig. 13.5 Artwork by Mazen Kerbaj 258
Fig. 13.6 In each poet two eyes in each eye, by Mazen Kerbaj 259
Fig. 13.7 Day after day I am smoking myself, by Mazen Kerbaj 260
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
Ariella Azoulay is a professor at Brown University, curator and documentary
filmmaker. Among her recent books: From Palestine to Israel: A Photographic
Record of Destruction and State Formation, 1947–1950 (Pluto Press,
2011); Civil Imagination: The Political Ontology of Photography (Verso,
August 2012) and The Civil Contract of Photography (Zone Books,
2008). She is curator of Potential History (2012, Stuk/Artefact, Louven);
Untaken Photographs (2010, Igor Zabel Award, The Moderna galerija,
Ljubljana; Zochrot, Tel Aviv); Architecture of Destruction (Zochrot, Tel
Aviv); Everything Could Be Seen (Um El Fahem Gallery of Art). Director
of documentary films, among which are: Civil Alliances, Palestine, 47–48
(2012), I Also Dwell Among Your Own People: Conversations with Azmi
Bishara (2004) and The Food Chain (2004).
Étienne Balibar was born in Avallon (France) in 1942. He graduated at the
École Normale Supérieure and the Sorbonne in Paris, later took his PhD
at the University of Nijmegen (Netherlands) and has an Habilitation from
Université de Paris I. He has been teaching at the Universities of Algiers,
Sorbonne, Leiden, Nanterre, UC Irvine. He is Professor of Philosophy
at Kingston University London, and Visiting Professor of French and
Comparative Literature at Columbia University, New York. His books
include: Reading Capital (with Louis Althusser) (New Left Books, 1970)
(1965); On the Dictatorship of the Proletariat (François Maspero, 1976);
Race, Nation, Class. Ambiguous Identities (with Immanuel Wallerstein)
(Verso, 1991); Masses, Classes, Ideas (Routledge, 1994); The Philosophy
of Marx (Verso, 1995); Spinoza and Politics (Verso, 1998); Politics and
the Other Scene (Verso, 2002), and We, the People of Europe? Reflections
on Transnational Citizenship (Princeton, 2004). Forthcoming are The
Proposition of Equaliberty, Violence and Civility, and Citizen Subject,
Essays of Philosophical Anthropology.
Akeel Bilgrami is the Johnsonian Professor of Philosophy and Global
Thought at Columbia University. He earned his first degree from Bombay
University in English Literature and then went as a Rhodes Scholar to read
Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at Oxford University. He is the author
of Belief and Meaning (Blackwell, 1992); Self-Knowledge and Resentment
(Harvard University Press, 2006) and Politics and the Moral Psychology of
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS ix
Identity (Harvard University Press, 2013). His two short books Gandhi’s
Integrity (Columbia University Press) and What is a Muslim? (Princeton
University Press) are forthcoming. His current large project is on Practical
Reason and its Relevance to Politics.
Rosi Braidotti (BA Hons, Australian National University, 1978; PhD,
Université de Paris, Panthéon-Sorbonne, 1981; Honorary Degrees Helsinki,
2007 and Linkoping, 2013; Fellow of the Australian Academy of the
Humanities (FAHA), 2009; Member of the Academia Europaea (MAE),
2014; Distinguished University Professor and founding Director of the
Centre for the Humanities at Utrecht University. Her latest books are: The
Posthuman (Polity Press, 2013); Nomadic Subjects (Columbia University
Press, 2011a) and Nomadic Theory. The Portable Rosi Braidotti (Columbia
University Press, 2011b). www.rosibraidotti.com
Judith Butler is Maxine Elliot Professor in the Departments of Rhetoric
and Comparative Literature and the Co-director of the Program of Critical
Theory at the University of California, Berkeley. She is active in gender
and sexual politics and human rights, anti-war politics, and Jewish Voice
for Peace. She is presently the recipient of the Andrew Mellon Award for
Distinguished Academic Achievement in the Humanities. Her most recent
publications include: Antigone’s Claim: Kinship Between Life and Death
(Columbia University Press, 2000); Precarious Life: Powers of Violence and
Mourning (Verso, 2004); Undoing Gender (Routledge, 2004); Who Sings
the Nation-State?: Language, Politics, Belonging (Seagull Books, 2008,
with Gayatri Spivak); Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? (Verso,
2009); and two co-authored volumes: Is Critique Secular? (Fordham
University Press, 2009) and The Power of Religion in Public Life (Columbia
University Press, 2011).
Paul Gilroy teaches American and English literature at King’s College
London. Before that he was the first holder of the Anthony Giddens
Professorship in Social Theory at the London School of Economics and
Political Science. He is well known for his critical explorations into the
legacy of colonialism, the rich promises of culturally and ethnically diverse
societies and the ideal of ‘cosmopolitanism from below’. Gilroy taught at
Yale University in the USA for some years and has been active in the artistic
and cultural life of London, his home city, where he worked for the GLC
between 1982 and 1986. Gilroy is a specialist in the field of musical culture.
His most recent books include Kuroi Taiseiyo to Chishikijin no Genzai (The
Black Atlantic and Intellectuals Today) (Shoraisha, 2009, co-author) and
Darker Than Blue (Harvard University Press, 2010).
Stathis Gourgouris is Professor of Classics, English, and Comparative
Literature and Society and Director of the Institute of Comparative