Eduardo Mendieta

This article argues that there are three key claims of postphenomenology: first, that there is no immediate access to a phenomena that is not always already embodied; second, that there is no science that is not determined by a technology, and that technologies are instances of certain theoretical assumptions and perspectives; third, that all technoscience is enabled and mediated by the embodied perception that takes place in and through instrumentation, which leads to the insight that all scientific evidence is manufactured perception. There is critical engagement with Ihde’s take on pragmatism and it is argued that he makes too severe a distinction between embodied praxis and communicative action, between practices of embodiment and practices of communicating. The argument is that the technoscientific body is a communicative body. The article closes with the consideration of Ihde’s provocative thesis that we ought to think of philosophical systems as having expiration or obsolesce dates. The author recalls the important work of German-Jewish philosopher Günther Anders in order to think through the sense in which it is not so much our technologies that expire, but our ethical worldviews that are made discrepant and incommensurate with the challenges our technologies throw at us. It is argued that we have to make distinction between obsolesce, on the one hand, and error or failure, on the other.

Seyla Benhabib’s The Claims of Culture: Equality and Diversity in the Global Era (2002), is considered in terms of three main virtues: first, it moves the question of political justice beyond the debate on the priority of recognition over distribution; second, it contributes to the expansion of the notion of communicative freedom and how it relates to rights; and third, it lays down the foundation for a cosmopolitan, post-nationalistic, form of citizenship that would have as its core the rights of association and existence. Three areas of concern and potential disagreement are discussed: first, whether Benhabib could be accused of a type of culturalism that celebrates too quickly postethnic America at the expense of the agenda of racial justice still to be addressed in the United States; second, whether in this work Benhabib has given enough attention to the political claims of memory, especially when these claims are enunciated from colonial pasts; third, in conclusion, how cultural justice, or respect for cultural diversity, can contribute to biodiversity’s preservation in the age of the coming largest extinction of biodiversity

i want to begin by thanking my good friend Richard Hart for the invitation to be part of this wonderful panel in which we are honoring while also being challenged by the work of Charles Johnson to think differently about our discipline. I also want to thank the organizers of SAAP for hosting this important series of lectures, in which we are invited to engage the work of thinkers who challenge us to think differently because they either come to our problems from different disciplines and fields, or teach us to see their problems as ours. From the outset, I must admit my trepidation at engaging Johnson’s work, which spans nearly half a century and a variety of genres. Johnson began as a cartoonist, then became a...

The so-called War on Terror has given rise to a virulent discourse that demonizes all those who allegedly seek to do harm and kill Americans. A veritable bestiary of demonic and bestial creatures has been thus ensembled, constituting what one cannot but call an “imperial bestiary.” Here we do not so much consider the contents of this imperial bestiary, as much as seek to analyze its grammar, that is, the way it operates on certain moral assumptions that have very pernicious moral consequences. Reconstructing the work of some recent critical philosophers, a possible way to dismantle all bestiaries, whether imperial or colonial, is elaborated. The work of Mary Midgley, Jacques Derrida and Donna Haraway are brought together to develop what has been here called a politics beyond monsters, beasts, roguish animals, and infesting vermin that must be at best domesticated, and at worst exterminated

This volume collects a number of important and revealing interviews with Richard Rorty, spanning more than two decades of his public intellectual commentary, engagement, and criticism. In colloquial language, Rorty discusses the relevance and nonrelevance of philosophy to American political and public life. The collection also provides a candid set of insights into Rorty's political beliefs and his commitment to the labor and union traditions in this country. Finally, the interviews reveal Rorty to be a deeply engaged social thinker and observer

Available in English for the first time, this much-anticipated translation of Enrique Dussel's _Ethics of Liberation_ marks a milestone in ethical discourse. Dussel is one of the world's foremost philosophers. This treatise, originally published in 1998, is his masterwork and a cornerstone of the philosophy of liberation, which he helped to found and develop. Throughout his career, Dussel has sought to open a space for articulating new possibilities for humanity out of, and in light of, the suffering, dignity, and creative drive of those who have been excluded from Western Modernity and neoliberal rationalism. Grounded in engagement with the oppressed, his thinking has figured prominently in philosophy, political theory, and liberation movements around the world. In _Ethics of Liberation_, Dussel provides a comprehensive world history of ethics, demonstrating that our most fundamental moral and ethical traditions did not emerge in ancient Greece and develop through modern European and North American thought. The obscured and ignored origins of Modernity lie outside the Western tradition. _Ethics of Liberation_ is a monumental rethinking of the history, origins, and aims of ethics. It is a critical reorientation of ethical theory.

This essay urges us to complement work on the philosophy and social science of race that has focused on the “visual” and “epistemic” dimension of racism with work on affect or what is here called the somatological dimensions of racism. The racist self hears race before he sees it. The racist self is convulsed by race before she experiences it as an epistemic affair. It is argued here that we dwell in the sound house of race. Before racism is chromocratic, it is phonocratic. The technologies of the racist self are the technologies of racializing aurality and phonology. Racism brands us sonically. Race, it will be argued, is a sonic stigmata. More specifically, the focus will be on voice, accent, what here is called the prosody of race. The aim is make those racialized and racializing accents in philosophy resound, echo, and reverberate so that we can hear the prosody of race. The racist does not dwell in the silent chamber of the mind’s “I.” The viscera of racism dwells in the body our racist habits have domesticated

"The essays in this book make it elegantly clear that there is a vigorous and rigorous Latin American philosophy... and that others dismiss it at their peril." —Mario Sáenz The ten essays in this lively anthology move beyond a purely historical consideration of Latin American philosophy to cover recent developments in political and social philosophy as well as innovations in the reception of key philosophical figures from the European Continental tradition. Topics such as indigenous philosophy, multiculturalism, the philosophy of race, democracy, postmodernity, the role of women, and the position of Latin America and Latin Americans in a global age are explored by notable philosophers from the region. An introduction by Eduardo Mendieta examines recent trends and points to the social, political, economic, and cultural conditions that have inspired the discipline. Latin American Philosophy brings English-speaking readers up to date with recent scholarship and points to promising new directions