seminar:
Topic: Monahan on the Ontology of Race: Race, Being, and the
Politics of Purity
Presenter: Clevis Headley (Associate Professor of Philosophy
at Florida Atlantic University).
Venue: Politics Seminar Room
Date & Time: Friday April May 10th from 1 pm to 2:30 pm
Michael Monahan will also be in attendance. He is Associate
Professor of Philosophy at Marquette University.
Michael Monahan's 'The Creolizing Subject: Race, Reason, and
the Politics of Purity' analytically unsettles the dominant philosophical
rhetoric purporting to theoretically anchor thinking about race.
Indeed, the fashionable nonsense now in vogue, which passes
for the normativity of race, declares that ontologically dubious talk about
race causes racism. The concept of race is, accordingly, so intensely
denigrated, that many thinkers consider the following claims as self-evident: (1) "a racially just future must be a
raceless one[,]" and (2) "racial categories [are] inherently
inconsistent with a commitment to human freedom." Monahan's text focuses on, among other
things, various historical approaches to the concept of race, the ontological
status of race, the meaning and significance of racism, the politics of purity,
and creolization as it relates to the possibility of a more racially just
future. Despite this diverse list of topics, my response to Monahan will focus
primarily on the ontology/being of race. After reviewing a cluster of issues
regarding the ontology of race, this essay will conclude with a few affirmative
and evaluative remarks to reinforce Monahan's position in defense of the
realness of race.
Click here to download this paper.
Click here to download this paper.
