The Shock of the Other: Situating Alterities
Thamyris/ Intersecting: Place, Sex, and Race Series Editor Ernst van Alphen Editorial Team Murat Aydemir, Yasco Horsman, Isabel Hoving, Saskia Lourens, Esther Peeren
The Shock of the Other: Situating Alterities
Editors Silke Horstkotte Esther Peeren
Colophon Design Mart. Warmerdam, Haarlem, The Netherlands www.warmerdamdesign.nl
Printing The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO 9706:1994, Information and documentation – Paper for documents – Requirements for permanence”. ISSN: 1381-1312 ISBN-13: 978-90-420-2199-0 © Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam – New York, NY 2007 Printed in The Netherlands
Mission Statement
Intersecting: Place, Sex, and Race
Intersecting is a new series of edited volumes with a critical, interdisciplinary focus. Intersecting’s mission is to rigorously bring into encounter the crucial insights of black and ethnic studies, gender studies, and queer studies, and facilitate dialogue and confrontations between them. Intersecting shares this focus with Thamyris, the socially committed international journal which was established by Jan Best en Nanny de Vries, in 1994, out of which Intersecting has evolved. The sharpness and urgency of these issues is our point of departure, and our title reflects our decision to work on the cutting edge. We envision these confrontations and dialogues through three recurring categories: place, sex, and race. To us they are three of the most decisive categories that order society, locate power, and inflict pain and / or pleasure. Gender and class will necessarily figure prominently in our engagement with the above. Race, for we will keep analysing this ugly, much-debated concept, instead of turning to more civil concepts (ethnicity, culture) that do not address the full disgrace of racism. Sex, for sexuality has to be addressed as an always active social strategy of locating, controlling, and mobilizing people, and as an all-important, not necessarily obvious, cultural practice. And place, for we agree with other cultural analists that this is a most productive framework for the analysis of situated identities and acts that allow us to move beyond narrow identitarian theories. The title of the new book series points at what we, its editors, want to do: think together. Our series will not satisfy itself with merely demonstrating the complexity of our times, or with analyzing the shaping factors of that complexity. We know how to theorize the intertwining of, for example, sexuality and race, but pushing these intersections one step further is what we aim for: How can this complexity be understood in practice? That is, in concrete forms of political agency, and the efforts of self-reflexive, contextualized interpretation. How can different socially and theoretically relevant issues be thought together? And: how can scholars (of different backgrounds) and activists think together, and realize productive alliances in a radical, transnational community? We invite proposals for edited volumes that take the issues that Intersecting addresses seriously. These contributions should combine an activist-oriented perspective with intellectual rigor and theoritical insights, interdisciplinary and transnational perspectives. The editors seek cultural criticism that is daring, invigorating and self-reflexive; that shares our commitment to thinking together. Contact us at
[email protected]
The Shock of the Other: Situating Alterities
Contents
9
Introduction: The Shock of the Other
Esther Peeren and Silke Horstkotte
23
I. Bodily Alterities – Between Matter and Specter
25