[On March 30, the Unit for Criticism & Interpretive Theory hosted the lecture "Sex, Paranoia & the Workplace" The speaker was Jennifer Doyle, Professor of English at UC-Riverside. Below is a response to the lecture from Tim Dean, Professor of English.]

Response to Jennifer Doyle's "Sex, Paranoia & the Workplace"
by Tim Dean, Professor of English

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[On March 13, the Unit for Criticism & Interpretive Theory hosted the lecture "Technological Futures & Networked Time at the Periphery." The speaker was Anita Say Chan, Associate Professor of Media & Cinema Studies and the Institute of Communications Research at UIUC. Below is a response to the lecture from Gabe Malo & elizaBeth Simpson (Institute of Communications Research).]

"Seeing Spaces: Re-centering Peripheries"
Written by:
Gabe Malo (ICR): Lecture, Q&A, and Conclusion
elizaBeth Simpson (ICR): Introduction and Response

Source: MIT Press

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[On February 28, the Unit for Criticism & Interpretive Theory hosted the lecture "So, What's Wrong With 'The Relatable' As a Category of Judgment?". The speaker was Nirvana Tanoukhi, Assistant Professor of English at University of Wisconsin-Madison. Below is a response to the lecture from Helga Varden, Associate Professor of Philosophy at UIUC.]

Response to Nirvana Tanoukhi’s “So, What’s Wrong with the Relatable as a Category of Judgment?” Read more

[On Monday February 20th, the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory hosted a system-wide University of Illinois faculty forum titled “What’s at Stake? Intersectional Conversations in a Post-Truth Era.” The event was co-sponsored by the departments of African American Studies, Asian American Studies, Latina/Latino Studies, and Political Science. The UI forum included Professors Jodi A. Byrd, Ben Miller, A. Naomi Paik, and Gilberto Rosas from UIUC; Nadine Naber and Amalia Pallares from UIC; and Hinda Seif from UIS. Below is a response to the forum from Eman Ghanayem, Dept. of English.]

"Truths — Known, Unknown, and Forgotten — in the US Past and Present"
Written by Eman Ghanayem (Dept. of English)

The event was a timely response to the recent political developments brought in by the Trump administration, particularly the executive orders related to immigration and border security that were accompanied by the proliferation of “alternative facts” and sensationalized fear. In their presentations, the panelists adopted intersectionality as a method of reading and responding to social exclusions, and as a tool for community organizing and academic sanctuary building. Professor Ben Miller (Political Science, UIUC) overviewed Kimberlé Crenshaw’s definition of intersectionality and intersectional feminism, and emphasized their value as tools for understanding society and changing it. While most conservatives lean towards the former role because of its sanitized, apolitical nature, the capacities of intersectionality as a tool for social reformation was evident in the panelists’ critiques and hopes for the future. Professors Gilberto Rosas (Anthropology and Latinx Studies, UIUC) and Amalia Pallares (Political Science and Latin American and Latino Studies, UIC) modeled the practices of intersectionality as they explored the responsibilities of academics, themselves and others, towards vulnerable communities. Professor Rosas highlighted that current immigration policies were an extension of the Obama administration practices that resulted in the deportation of nearly three million people. He explained how the Trump administration speaks truth post-truthfully to the legacy of deportation in US history. Professor Rosas reminded us that, in the current moment, the continuous televising of deportation and profiling cases promises a kind of transparency that can aid pro-immigrant activism. The resurgence of refusal within communities of immigrants of color is gradually and rightfully becoming the protest strategy that is bringing people together. Professor Amalia Pallares also drew parallels between the Trump and Obama administrations. “Post-truth” as a descriptor of the Trump era echoes the ways “post-race” was used throughout Obama’s presidency. Pallares reminded us that “truth” is still here and has always been present, and that the recognition of certain truths can set the ground for resistance. Professor Pallares drew on her engagement in recent efforts to turn Oak Park, IL, into a sanctuary, immigrant-friendly place. One of the problems she and other activists have faced in the process is the reluctance of some staff members in the Oak Park municipal office to endorse an all-inclusive sanctuary ordinance that does not rest on exceptions of certain categories of undocumented immigrants from sanctuary. She described the difficulty of making a case for a sanctuary policy without exceptions, and explained how activists had dealt with this problem by reframing their demand as a call for sanctuary without loopholes. The rhetoric of loopholes suggested that those who sought exceptions were engaged in a dubious practice. This rhetoric of sanctuary without loopholes won over community members who were hesitant to embrace an inclusive sanctuary policy. She was hopeful as she articulated her conclusions about her experience, saying that she realized that “truth” in spaces of conflict can be harnessed by searching for and exposing loopholes in the system. More importantly, she sees great promise in the “creation of truth.” Truth is created when historical precedent is made through local efforts. Turning a place into a sanctuary, and having that backed by the community of that place, whether it be a town or a campus, can be a great goal to pursue and realize as she had worked with others to do in Oak Park. Like Professor Rosas, Professor Pallares ended with the questions: how can we protect our students and community members? And, how can we begin to enact our responsibility towards them as academics in a public university?

Jodi Byrd, Nadine Naber, Naomi Paik, and Hinda Seif

Following a similar thread of questioning, Professor Hinda Seif (Gender and Women Studies and Sociology/Anthropology, UIS) asked, what is the ability of Illinois educators at this time, and how can they offer truth to the government? Professor Seif referenced state cuts to public education as an issue that adds to the current climate of crisis and uncertainty. She highlighted the great diversity on UI campuses and how, as an educator, she always encourages her students to challenge unstable politics by drawing on personal narratives. These narratives can function as truthful accounts that undermine discriminatory state and federal policies and highlight the power of proper education and facts.

A slide from Professor Naber's Presentation

Professor Naber explained how the confusion and chaos that accompanied the first couple of weeks of Trump’s presidency were a strategy meant to obstruct the possibility of resistance and its mobility. The confusion embedded in the executive orders is intentional, for how can we resist the law if the law is unclear? Professor Naber drew on multiple examples of policing Muslim students in the UIC campus and the horrifying reality of the kind of federal funding and interest that goes into watching and tracking these subjects and their respective communities. She spoke truth as she laid out these unknown or, at times, undermined realities, and reminded us all that there is more to learn about the deep roots of Islamophobia and the grim future it promises if unstopped. Last but not least, Professor Jodi A Byrd (English and Gender and Women’s Studies, UIUC) reoriented the discussion around the focal point of indigeneity as the prior to US state violence, national borders, and political making. State-sanctioned exclusions and misappropriation of land grants and public resources emanate from an intertwined network of settler colonial past and present actions, a truth that unfortunately remain forgotten in the US collective consciousness. Professor Byrd referenced the indigenous resistance hashtag #NoBanOnStolenLand as embodying a historical fact that can help us see the “line of continuity from Jacksonian removals and FDR’s Executive Order” to Trump’s immigration and Muslim ban. Professor Byrd drew on recent threats to water protectors in North Dakota as exemplifying a modern-day Indian removal that cannot be seen in isolation and must be productively tied to deportation and evacuation policies for the whole truth of US politics and exclusions to surface. Only then can we have the full narrative, and only then can we create intersectional forms of resistance that can support all.

'No Bans on Stolen Land' (Medicine Wheel Version) - Source: justseeds.org

One of the many lessons I took from Professor Byrd’s presentation is the urgency of confronting colonial histories in public institutions. Before any securities can be ensured and successful curricula created, we have to remind ourselves that political presents are the products of the past. There are so many truths that go unnoticed and forgotten, and the only way to move forward is by seeking them and paying a long-overdue respect to their origins and protectors. At the end of the forum, I found myself assured by the knowledge these professors have generously shared. To account for one’s conscience, educational responsibility, and community, as professors, students, and academic professionals, and to understand the deep implications and stakes of intersectional lives, is now more pertinent than ever. Read more

[On October 18, the Unit for Criticism & Interpretive Theory hosted the lecture "Electric Lights, Tourist Sights: Gendering Dispossession and Colonial Infrastructure at the Niagara Falls Border" as part of the Fall 2016 Modern Critical Theory Lecture Series. The speaker was Mishuana Goeman, Vice Chair and Associate Professor of Gender Studies at UCLA. Below is a response to the lecture from Ethan Madarieta, Comparative Literature.]

"Making Haunting Matter"
Written by Ethan Madarieta (Comparative Literature)

At the Niagara Falls border, the colonial infrastructure (the dam, tourist buildings, etc.) is a haunting, a reminder of the violent and gendered dispossession of Native lands and waters. Through colonial geography, environmental impact, and narrative, the settler-states (U.S. and Canada) continue to actively and passively dispossess and exploit Indigenous peoples, as manifest in both myth and matter. As the opening slide of “Before Dispossession, Or Surviving It” by Angie Morrill, Eve Tuck, and Super Haunts Qollective states: “The opposite, the endgame of opposing our dispossession is not possession—not haunting, though I’ll do it if I have to; it is mattering.” Read more

[On October 25, the Unit for Criticism & Interpretive Theory hosted the lecture "What is Philosophical Race Theory?" as part of the Fall 2016 Modern Critical Theory Lecture Series. The speaker was Paul C. Taylor, Associate Professor of Philosophy and African American Studies and Head of the Department of African American Studies at Penn State University. Below is a response to the lecture from Alex Jong-Seok Lee, Anthropology.]


Taylor situated this appeal within the context of Omi and Winant’s pioneering hypothesis, racial formation theory (RFT). For him, RFT treated race as a processual affair while also presenting a middle ground between the view that race was both illusory and essential. This latter point emerged from the historical context of the late twentieth century from which RFT emerged. The familiar maxim, “race is neither real nor an illusion,” espoused by the likes of David R. Roediger, revealed RFT’s “groping for a metaphysical vocabulary.” The discipline of philosophy (albeit reconfigured), Taylor hoped, potentially could provide an alternative theoretical language on the matter.

Racial Formation in the United States (1992) by Michael Omi and Howard Winant

A protégé of the pioneering philosopher of race, Lucius Outlaw, Jr., Taylor expressed delight at discovering as a graduate student Omi and Winant’s magnum opus, Racial Formation in the United States. This was a time when the 1990s Appiah debates and widespread commodification of African American culture put the question of race on continual trial. For Taylor, RFT was a social construction thesis that considered race “real” insofar as social realities grounded in social conventions were real. The theory’s true merit was its ability to make this argument in the context of a view that was painstakingly political. However, more recently, RFT has come under fire within scholarly works, such as Conceptual Aphasia in Black: Displacing Racial Formation and Racial Formation in the Twenty-First Century. Increasingly having to orient himself in relation to these commentaries, Taylor viewed his talk as a participatory process for rethinking RFT as less tethered to orthodox critical race theory (à la Derrick Bell) than widely allied with all scholarly fields aimed at understanding the meanings and mechanisms of race.

Do the Right Thing (1989) by Spike Lee. From indiewire.com

As Taylor noted, quoting from Barnor Hesse’s introduction to Conceptual Aphasia in Black (2016): “[RFT’s] exemplary social construction thesis has dominated the critique of race in the intellectual landscape of the U.S. academy since the late 1980s and made the critique of race thinkable only in a liberal multicultural idiom that presupposes a decisive liberal-democratic rupture with the racial ontology of the United States’ settler colonialism and its white supremacy nation-state” (ibid). Chief among Hesse’s disapproval of RFT was its supposed failure to foreground the centrality of violence to the constitution of race in the U.S. This, wrote Hesse, hindered our understanding of race as a deep, constitutive feature of Western modernity.

Conceptual Aphasia in Black: Displacing Racial Formation (2016) by Khalil Saucier and Tryon P. Woods

Racial Formation in the Twenty-First Century (2012) by Daniel Martinez HoSang, Oneka LaBennett, and Laura Pulido

Seeking further perspective, Taylor drew on an earlier critique of RFT, this time from Roderick A. Ferguson’s contribution in “Racial Formation in the Twenty-First Century (2012). Ferguson took greatest issue with the obstructing effect of historiographical assumptions behind RFT. Resting on a “declension hypothesis,” Ferguson wrote, Omi and Winant’s theory “tells a story of bold and transformative anti-racist movements during the 1950s and 1960s becoming fractured and destabilized in the face of an insurgent New right in the 1970s and 1980s” (2012:2). However, this periodization, Ferguson explained, “occludes anti-racist movements that were no less significant than the social formations around civil rights and national liberation… [movements that were] initiated by women of color and queers of color within the United States” (ibid).

Taylor later turned his attention to Nikhil Pal Singh’s work within Racial Formation in the Twenty-First Century. Like Ferguson’s critique, Singh complained that RFT focused too narrowly on a particular, historical and national context. RFT also undertheorized the concept of race, in part because of its narrow focus on this particular, historical and national context. Finally, in accordance with Hesse’s assessment, RFT prioritized a certain a kind of normative politics over deployments and resistances to sovereign violence. More specifically, Singh was referring to how these limitations have blinded RFT from “a racialized law-and-order project [that] was introduced during this period as the opening wedge in a broader reorientation of the very forms and dispositions of governance” (2012:280).

Taylor attended to these criticisms one by one. In terms of Hesse, RFT was viewed as an obstacle to thinking productively about race today. However, Taylor questioned the value of such an uncompromising view. Regarding Ferguson’s comments about RFT’s problematic periodization, Taylor reiterated the essential merits of Omi and Winant’s theory from a philosophical standpoint. It still offered a much-needed social constructivist answer to what for so long principally was thought of only as an abstract metaphysical question (i.e., the question of what constituted race). Taylor claimed that when engaging with historical theories philosophers generally were less sensitive to the kind of historical contextualization other disciplines might deem compulsory. Thus, being a philosopher allowed him certain license to interpret RFT in a looser fashion, namely the ability to effectively distinguish epistemic worries (concerns over RFT’s logic or grammar) from political ones over knowledge production. Lastly, Taylor suggested that Singh’s critiques might have had more to do with differing notions over what constituted the “political” than a fundamental flaw with Omi and Winant’s theory.

Ultimately, the recent attacks of RFT might have had less to do with the latter’s theoretical failings than with other factors occurring in contemporary academia. According to Taylor, criticisms of the theory could have been the effect of a certain neoliberal logic within higher education wherein RFT was deemed obsolete in an innovation economy. Another possibility was what Lewis Gordon called “disciplinary decadence” or how the popularity of certain academic disciplines permitted only their proponents to dominate professional spaces over less powerful ones (e.g., the “decline of Black Sociology”).

Taylor closed his talk by reiterating his training as a philosophical pragmatist. As such, he was less interested in the historical context of RFT’s development than in the theory’s analytic efficacy, especially as it related to social-justice aims. Consequently, the basic argumentative structure of RFT still worked in accommodating the anti-racist story that race scholars wanted to tell. Why not simply attach such criticisms (or “semi-hostile amendments,” Taylor joked) to a suitably revised account of RFT? For all scholars interested in how to think productively about the meanings and mechanisms of race in 2016 this is a question to consider. Read more