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Turning History Upside Down

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Decolonizing and Feminizing Freedom

Part of the book series: Thinking Gender in Transnational Times ((THINKGEN))

Abstract

This chapter maps out the general aims of this study and explains both the historical sociological approach taken and the key concepts that will be used. In particular, it provides an overview of the Foucauldian genealogical approach to the history of freedom. The aim is to enable readers new to these approaches and concepts to make sense of the micrological as well as the macrological lenses of vision that this study brings to the formation of the Black Caribbean free woman. It will then go on to explain why and how this approach when informed by postcolonial, critical race, transnational feminist and decolonial theories of modernity will be particularly useful in analysing and unravelling contemporary and historical constructions of the free Black Caribbean woman and of British liberalism. This leads on to an explanation and discussion of the concept of governmentality that is central to this book’s analytical framework. Recognizing the influence of Foucauldian theory both on this study and on postcolonial theory, this chapter concludes with a discussion of the limitations of Foucault’s work for understanding the colonial temporalities of modernity and modern freedom.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    David Starkey on BBC Newsnight 12/08/2011. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14513517. Last accessed 25/10/2016.

  2. 2.

    Since the publication of Lugones’ article, recent advances in LBG transgender and transsexual politics have been powerful in complicating and unsettling the dimorphism of the post-Enlightenment modern sex/gender order.

  3. 3.

    In both Lugones’ and Butler’s work there seems to be at several points in their respective analyses a conflating slippage between gender, sex and sexuality that is confusing. For the purposes of this current study, it is not necessary to delve into this in depth, but Gatens’ work seems to be an important intervention into feminist debates that insists that these issues cannot be fully settled outside conducting a theoretically nuanced genealogy of these concepts. As Gatens charges feminist theory, both Lugones and Butler seem to be operating within an Enlightenment-driven tradition of thought shaped by metaphysical dualism and liberal humanism even as they critique them. This rests on the pre-supposition ‘that culture (and reason) presume the organization and control of nature (and the body) by a power that transcends the natural condition’, producing a juridical view that relies on understanding existence as operating on two planes: ‘an inert, passive, immanent plane of matter or nature and an intentional plane of an organizing “intelligence” or “force that imposes form and meaning”’ (Gatens 1996, 6). Gatens offers a fascinating situated genealogy of these concepts as they emerge in the context of Western feminist problematizations of gender inequality.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology and Criminology, Birmingham City University, Birmingham, UK

    Denise Noble

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  1. Denise Noble
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Noble, D. (2016). Turning History Upside Down. In: Decolonizing and Feminizing Freedom. Thinking Gender in Transnational Times. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-44951-1_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-44951-1_2

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