Race, Politics, and the Humanities in an Age of 'Posts'

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue comes at a time when the humanities face conceptual, theoretical, and ethical challenges from within their own ranks, as post-racial and post-human discourses problematize or reject many of their foundational principles. The defining boundaries of both “race” and “human” have been radically called into question, challenging us to rethink the classificatory systems that found hierarchical relationships between, for example, the “fully human” and sub-human or non-human others. What is at stake for the humanities in this presumably post-racial, post-human age, and, in particular, how are we to reimagine racial equality or human rights as sustainable political projects? As Nadia Abu El-Haj puts it, “[W]hat kinds of human collectivities can be recognized at all and, as such, can emerge as ‘populations’ with ‘histories’ that can be read and told?” (2011). This critical engagement is especially urgent given the increasingly precarious conditions and acts of violence endured by members of target “human collectivities” across the globe.

We invite papers from an international community of humanities scholars interested in exploring this complex theoretical terrain and its implications for our understanding of “race” and the “human” in literature, politics, and ethics.  Potential topics include:

• Post-racial discourse and “color-blind” policies;
  • The ethics and politics of the “post-human”;
  • Postcolonialism’s “Ecological Turn”
  • The Post-human/Post-racial in literature and art
  • Speciesism and its Discontents
  • Racialized religious, ethnic, or regional collectivities
  • The Humanities in the Anthropocene
  • White privilege and “human” supremacy;
  • Humanism and neoliberal economics;
  • Brains, Bodies, and the Science of Race;
  • Putting the Human back in “Race”
  • Race and the “post-political” (Chantal Mouffe, Jacques Rancière, Slavoj Zizek)
  • Intersections between Animal, Human, and Civil Rights
  • Patriarchy, Racism, and “Nature”

Prof. Dr. Myra Mendible
Guest Editor

Submission

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. Papers will be published continuously (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are refereed through a peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Humanities is an international peer-reviewed Open Access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript.

References:
Anderson, Kay. Race and the Crisis of Humanism. New York: Routledge, 2007.
Claire Jean Kim and Carla Freccero. “Introduction: A Dialogue.” American Quarterly 65.3 (2013): 461-479.
Huggan, Grant and Helen Tiffin. Postcolonial Ecocriticism: Literature, Animals, Environment. New York: Routledge, 2015.
Lentin, Alana. Post-Race, Post Politics: The Paradoxical rise of Culture after Multiculturalism.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 37.8 (2014): 1268-1285.
Macaya, Ángeles Donoso and González, Melissa M. “Orthodox Transgressions: The ideology of Cross-Species, Cross-Class, and Interracial Queerness in Lucía Puenzo's novel El Niño Pez (The Fish Child).” American Quarterly 65.3 (2013): 711-733,765-767.
Paul, Joshua. “Post-Racial Futures: Imagining Post-Racialist Anti-Racism(s).” Ethnic and Racial Studies 37.4 (2014): 702-718.
Sewpaul, Vishanthie. “Inscribed in Our Blood.” Affilia 28.2 (2013): 116-125.