Strange Affinities: The Gender and Sexual Politics of Comparative Racialization

Perverse Modernities

by Grace Kyungwon Hong (Editor), Roderick A. Ferguson (Editor)

Representing some of the most exciting work in critical ethnic studies, the essays in this collection examine the production of racialized, gendered, and sexualized difference, and the possibilities for progressive coalitions, or the “strange affinities,” afforded by nuanced comparative analyses of racial formations. The nationalist and identity-based concepts of race underlying the mid-twentieth-century movements for decolonization and social change are not adequate to the tasks of critiquing the racial configurations generated by neocolonialism and contesting its inequities. Contemporary regimes of power produce racialized, gendered, and sexualized violence and labor exploitation, and they render subjects redundant and disposable by creating new, nominally nonracialized categories of privilege and stigma. The editors of Strange Affinities contend that the greatest potential for developing much-needed alternative comparative methods lies in women of color feminism, and the related intellectual tradition that Roderick A. Ferguson has called queer of color critique. Exemplified by the work of Audre Lorde, Cherríe Moraga, Barbara Smith, and the Combahee River Collective, these critiques do not presume homogeneity across racial or national groups. Instead, they offer powerful relational analyses of the racialized, gendered, and sexualized valuation and devaluation of human life. Contributors
Victor Bascara
Lisa Marie Cacho
M. Bianet Castellanos
Martha Chew Sánchez
Roderick A. Ferguson
Grace Kyungwon Hong
Helen H. Jun
Kara Keeling
Sanda Mayzaw Lwin
Jodi Melamed
Chandan Reddy
Ruby C. Tapia
Cynthia Tolentino

Genres: Race, Gender, Sexuality, Nonfiction, Academic, Queer, LGBT

384 pages, Hardcover

First published July 1, 2011

Reviews

[leni swagger · Rating 4 out of 5]

Still on the last argument for one of my essays, and I just want to curl up in my own bed and snuggle with my cats...

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

An impressive collection of contemporary essays on race, gender and sexuality. The authors revive women of color feminist texts from the 1980s as theoretical frameworks, rather than simply drawing from post-structuralist and more eurocentric versions of queer theory, although they draw on Deleuze, Derrida, Foucault, et al too. It provides a clear geneaology of contemporary "queer of color critique" & I would definitely use this book to teach from. It provides a good sampling of where the field is now, particularly in terms of literature and film studies. As with any collection, some essays are stronger than others.

[Tea and Spite · Rating 1 out of 5]

Why do academic writers insist on using 200 words to explain what could be said in 20? Why? This was a slog. Full of jargon, completely inaccessible even to those with a background in race and ethnic studies, and just generally tedious. If anyone gets anything out of it, it's because most chapters are written so opaquely that you can put nearly any interpretation you want on them. Nostradamus is more easily interpreted.

[Mills College Library]

305.42089 S8973 2011

[Brandon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely incredible volume.