Linda Martín Alcoff

Mariana Ortega

Philosophers and social theorists of color examine how racism can creep into defensive forms of nationalism.

A Race and Nationalism Reader

Constructing the Nation

Draws from Latina feminism, existential phenomenology, and race theory to explore the concept of selfhood. This original study intertwining Latina feminism, existential phenomenology, and race theory offers a new philosophical approach to understanding selfhood and identity. Focusing on writings by Gloría Anzaldúa, María Lugones, and Linda Martín Alcoff, Mariana Ortega articulates a phenomenology that introduces a conception of selfhood as both multiple and singular. Her Latina feminist phenomenological approach can account for identities belonging simultaneously to different worlds, including immigrants, exiles, and inhabitants of borderlands. Ortega’s project forges new directions not only in Latina feminist thinking on such issues as borders, mestizaje, marginality, resistance, and identity politics, but also connects this analysis to the existential phenomenology of Martin Heidegger and to such concepts as being-in-the-world, authenticity, and intersubjectivity. The pairing of the personal and the political in Ortega’s work is illustrative of the primacy of lived experience in the development of theoretical understandings of who we are. In addition to bringing to light central metaphysical issues regarding the temporality and continuity of the self, Ortega models a practice of philosophy that draws from work in other disciplines and that recognizes the important contributions of Latina feminists and other theorists of color to philosophical pursuits. Mariana Ortega is Professor of Philosophy at John Carroll University and coeditor (with Linda Martín Alcoff) of Constructing the Nation: A Race and Nationalism Reader, also published by SUNY Press.

Latina Feminist Phenomenology, Multiplicity, and the Self

In-Between

Philosophers and social theorists of color examine how racism can creep into defensive forms of nationalism. What does it mean today to be an American when one does not represent or embody the norm of Americanness because of ones race, ethnicity, culture of origin, religion, or some combination of these? What is the norm of Americanness today, how has it changed, and how pluralistic is it in reality?  from the Introduction In this volume philosophers and social theorists of color take up these questions, offering nuanced critiques of race and nationalism in the post-9/11 United States focused around the themes of freedom, unity, and homeland. In particular, the contributors examine how normative concepts of American identity and unity come to be defined and defended along increasingly racialized lines in the face of national trauma, and how nonnormative Americans experience the mistrust that their identities and backgrounds engender in this way. The volume takes an important step in recognizing and challenging the unreflective notions of nationalism that emerge in times of crisis. The idealized and abstract nation-state may be a familiar topic for political investigation, but the actual white nation and its racial state are territory far less explored. This stimulating set of essaysranging from a reading of post-9/11 childrens literature to an analysis of the racialized aesthetic of white nationalismprovides a valuable and eye-opening introduction to the racial construction of the American polity.  Charles W. Mills, author of The Racial Contract A smart and unique set of theoretical reflections on the constitutive role of race and ethnicity in the post-9/11 U.S. American political imaginary, this book should find its place on the bookshelves of everyone interested in questions of citizenship and belonging in a multiracial U.S. polity.  Chandra Talpade Mohanty, author ofFeminism without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity

Mariana Ortega

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