Visible Identities: Race, Gender, and the Self

by Linda Martín Alcoff

In the heated debates over identity politics, few theorists have looked carefully at the conceptualizations of identity assumed by all sides. Visible Identities fills this gap. Drawing on both philosophical sources as well as theories and empirical studies in the social sciences, Martín Alcoff
makes a strong case that identities are not like special interests, nor are they doomed to oppositional politics, nor do they inevitably lead to conformism, essentialism, or reductive approaches to judging others. Identities are historical formations and their political implications are open to
interpretation. But identities such as race and gender also have a powerful visual and material aspect that eliminativists and social constructionists often underestimate.

Visible Identities offers a careful analysis of the political and philosophical worries about identity and argues that these worries are neither supported by the empirical data nor grounded in realistic understandings of what identities are. Martín Alcoff develops a more realistic characterization
of identity in general through combining phenomenological approaches to embodiment with hermeneutic concepts of the interpretive horizon. Besides addressing the general contours of social identity, Martín Alcoff develops an account of the material infrastructure of gendered identity, compares and
contrasts gender identities with racialized ones, and explores the experiential aspects of racial subjectivity for both whites and non-whites. In several chapters she looks specifically at Latino identity as well, including its relationship to concepts of race, the specific forms of anti-Latino
racism, and the politics of mestizo or hybrid identity.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Race, Feminism, Gender Studies, Academic, Gender

326 pages, Paperback

First published December 22, 2005

About the author

Linda Martín Alcoff (born July 25, 1955 in Panama) is a philosopher at the City University of New York who specializes in epistemology, feminism, race theory and existentialism. From 2012 to 2013, she served as president of the American Philosophical Association (APA), Eastern Division. Alcoff has called for greater inclusion of historically under represented groups in philosophy and notes that philosophers from these groups have created new fields of inquiry, including feminist philosophy, critical race theory, and LGBTQ philosophy. To help address these issues, with Paul Taylor and William Wilkerson, she started the Pluralist Guide to Philosophy. She earned her PhD in Philosophy from Brown University. She was recognized as the distinguished Woman Philosopher of 2005 by the Society for Women in Philosophy and the APA. She began teaching at Hunter College and the City University of New York Graduate Center in early 2009, after teaching for many years at Syracuse University.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Ayanna Miller]

truly painful and exhausting to get through, she also pretends trans people don’t exist, but she also says many things i agree with in terms of race. hated every second i had to read it but objectively a good philosophy book so i’m not giving this a rating.

[Charles · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alcoff's writing is dense and academic. A good read for getting started with understanding racialized identity theory. Her work serves as a difficult but much needed dive into the understanding of identity from a historically marginalized perspective. After getting through and discussing this work I have had a more open perspective and was ready to learn and open up about race, gender in regards to the self.

[Stacey Rice · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although I was only required to read chapters 6 and 7, Alcoff has some interesting perspectives on gender and sexual differences, and racial embodiment. A worthwhile read, I'll come back to this and read more later.

[Sara G · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ummmm, maybe some of us need to acquire a more nuanced understanding of sex, gender, womanhood, you know, like a third of the contents of this book. Some of us could work on that.

[Elizabeth · Rating 2 out of 5]

from the library


from the Worldcat computer:
Identities real and imagined.

Introduction : identity and visibility ;
The pathologizing of identity ;
The political critique ;
The philosophical critique ;

Real identities -- Gender identity and gender differences.

The identity crisis in feminist theory ;
The metaphysics of gender and sexual difference -- Racialized identities and racist subjects. The phenomenology of racial embodiment ;
Racism and visible race ;
The whiteness question -- Latino/a particularity. Latinos and the categories of race ;
Latinos, Asian Americans, and the black-white binary ;
On being mixed.

[Dalia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Okay, maybe it's because I didn't go to college, but how often do I get to read about halfies? Mixed Latino/white (creating black brown white or something in between depending) people make it to the frontlines of the discourse that forever reshapes itself faster than I can keep up with: yeah identity!

I've only read excerpts that Dr. Tom Hansen included in our "Social Movements in Mexico" syllabus, but if I ever get an actual copy I'd eat it up

[Paige Lau]

The section discussing gendered embodiment and sexed identity is considerably flawed, especially as regards its phenomenological account of womanhood as a sexed identity—a bummer, given the otherwise phenomenal (sorry) usage of Merleau-Ponty and others throughout. In spite of my reservations about its take on gender/sex, the majority of the text is so carefully argued and and breathtaking in scope that 5 stars is more than warranted.

[Milo · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm a big fan of post-positivist realism, Alcoff, Moya, Mohanty, etc...

But for the last time, PPR-ists, spit...it...out!

[Hafsa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Adds a much-needed element to discussions of identity that focuses on visible/material manifestations.