Advertisement

Turning History Upside Down

  • Denise Noble
Chapter
First Online:
Part of the Thinking Gender in Transnational Times book series (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.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in to check access.

References

  1. Bartky, Susan L. 1988. Foucault, Femininity and the Modernisation of Patriarchal Power. In Feminism and Foucault: Reflections on Resistance, ed. Irene Diamond and Lee Quinby. Boston: Northeastern University Press.Google Scholar
  2. Beckles, Hilary. 1988a. Afro-Caribbean Women and Resistance to Slavery in Barbados. London: Karnak House.Google Scholar
  3. ———. 1988b. Caribbean Antislavery: The Self-Liberation Ethos of Enslaved Blacks. Journal of Caribbean History 22 (1–2): 1–19.Google Scholar
  4. Bell, Vikki. 1996. The Promise of Liberation and the Performance of Freedom. In Foucault and Political Reason, ed. Andrew Barry, Thomas Osborne, and Nikolas Rose, 19–36. London: UCL Press.Google Scholar
  5. Bennett, Louise. 1966. Jamaica Labrish. Kingston, Jamaica: Sangster’s Book Stores.Google Scholar
  6. Bernasconi, Robert. 2010. The Policing of Race Mixing: The Place of Biopower Within the History of Racisms. Journal of Bioethical Inquiry 7 (2): 205–216.Google Scholar
  7. Bhatt, Ashok, Roy A. Carr-Hill, and Sushel Ohri. 1988. Britain’s Black Population: A New Perspective. Aldershot: Gower.Google Scholar
  8. Blunkett, David. 2003. Fortress Britain. Evening Standard. Accessed 25 October 2016. http://standardco.wsgsi.cc/news/fortress-britain-6351118.html.
  9. Bordo, Susan. 1997. The Body and the Reproduction of Femininity. In Writing on the Body: Female Embodiment and Feminist Theory, ed. Katie Conboy, Nadia Medina, and Sarah Stanbury, 90–112. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
  10. Boyce Davies, Carole. 1994. Black Women, Writing and Identity: Migrations of the Subject. London, New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
  11. Burchell, Graham. 1996. Liberal Government and the Techniques of the Self. In Foucault and Political Reason, ed. Andrew Barry, Thomas Osborne, and Nikolas Rose. London: ICL.Google Scholar
  12. Butler, Judith. 1990. Gender Trouble. London, New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
  13. ———. 1999. Gender Trouble. 2nd ed. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
  14. ———. 2004. Undoing Gender. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
  15. Cameron, David. 2011a. Prime Minister’s Speech at Munich Security Conference, February 5, 2011. Accessed 15 May 2016. https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/pms-speech-at-munich-security-conference.
  16. ———. 2011b. David Cameron’s Commons Statement on the Riots, August 11, 2011. Accessed 15 May 2016. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-14492789.
  17. Clarke, J. 2010. Of Crises and Conjunctures: The Problem of the Present. Journal of Communication Inquiry 34 (4): 337–354.Google Scholar
  18. ———. 2014. Conjunctures, Crises, and Cultures: Valuing Stuart Hall. Focaal: Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology 70: 113–122.Google Scholar
  19. Dean, Mitchell. 1999. Governmentality: Power and Rule in Modern Society. London, Thousand Oaks: Sage.Google Scholar
  20. Foucault, Michel. 1972. The Archaeology of Knowledge. London: Tavistock.Google Scholar
  21. ———. 1977. The Means of Correct Training. In Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Pantheon.Google Scholar
  22. ———. 1978. The History of Sexuality: Vol. 1. An Introduction. Trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Pantheon.Google Scholar
  23. ———. 1980. In Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972–1977, ed. Colin Gordon. Hertfordshire: Harvester Wheatsheaf.Google Scholar
  24. ———. 1984. Nietzsche, Genealogy, History. In The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow, 76–100. New York: Pantheon Books.Google Scholar
  25. ———. 1990. The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1: An Introduction. Vintage ed. London, New York: Penguin.Google Scholar
  26. ———. 1991a. Governmentality. In The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, ed. Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon, and Peter Miller, 87–104. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
  27. ———. 1991b. Discipline and Punish—The Birth of the Prison. Middlesex: Penguin.Google Scholar
  28. ———. 1997a. The Ethics of the Concern for Self as a Practice of Freedom. In Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth, ed. Paul Rabinow, vol. 1, 181–301. New York: New Press.Google Scholar
  29. ———. 1997b. Technologies of the Self. In Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth, ed. Paul Rabinow, vol. 1, 223–253. New York: New Press.Google Scholar
  30. ———. 2003. Society Must Be Defended: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1975–76. Ed. Mauro Bertani and Alessandro Fontana. London: Penguin Press.Google Scholar
  31. Fraser, Nancy. 1981. Foucault on Modern Power: Empirical Insights and Normative Confusions. Praxis International 3: 272–287.Google Scholar
  32. Gatens, Moira. 1996. Imaginary Bodies: Ethics, Power and Corporeality. Hove: Psychology Press.Google Scholar
  33. Gilroy, Paul. 2004. After Empire: Melancholia or Convivial Culture? London: Routledge.Google Scholar
  34. Goldberg, David T. 1997. Racial Subjects: Writing on Race in America. London, New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
  35. ———. 2002. The Racial State. Malden, MA, Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
  36. Hesse, Barnor. 2007. Racialised Modernity: An Analytics of White Mythologies. Ethnic and Racial Studies 30 (4): 643–663.Google Scholar
  37. Hirschmann, Nancy J. 2009. The Subject of Liberty: Toward a Feminist Theory of Freedom. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
  38. Iton, Richard. 2008. In Search of the Black Fantastic. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
  39. Kendall, Gavin, and Gary Wickham. 1999. Using Foucault’s Methods. London, Thousand Oaks: Sage.Google Scholar
  40. Kent, Susan Kingsley. 1999. Gender and Power in Britain, 1640–1990. London, New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
  41. Lentin, Alana, and Gavan Titley. 2011. The Crises of Multiculturalism: Racism in a Neoliberal Age. London: Zed.Google Scholar
  42. Lugones, María. 2008. The Coloniality of Gender. Worlds & Knowledges Otherwise, Vol. 2, Spring 2008. Accessed 30 August 2015. https://globalstudies.trinity.duke.edu/sites/globalstudies.trinity.duke.edu/files/file-attachments/v2d2_Lugones.pdf.
  43. ———. 2010. Toward a Decolonial Feminism. Hypatia 25 (4): 742–759.Google Scholar
  44. McNay, Lois. 1992. Foucault and Feminism: Power, Gender and the Self. Cambridge, Oxford: Polity.Google Scholar
  45. ———. 1994. Foucault: A Critical Introduction. New York: Continuum.Google Scholar
  46. Mignolo, Walter D. 2001. Coloniality at Large: The Western Hemisphere in the Colonial Horizon of Modernity. Trans. Michael Ennis. The New Centennial Review 1 (2): 19–54.Google Scholar
  47. ———. 2002. The Geopolitics of Knowledge and the Colonial Difference. The South Atlantic Quarterly 101 (1): 57–96.Google Scholar
  48. ———. 2009. Epistemic Disobedience, Independent Thought and Decolonial Freedom. Theory, Culture & Society 26 (7–8): 159–181.Google Scholar
  49. Moss, Jeremy. 1998. The Later Foucault. London, Thousand Oaks: Sage.Google Scholar
  50. Muir, David. 2014. London’s Burning: Riots, Gangs and Moral Formation of Young People. In Churches, Blackness, and Contested Multiculturalism: Europe, Africa, and North America, ed. R. Drew Smith, William Ackah, and Anthony G. Reddie. London: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
  51. Muñoz, José Esteban. 1999. Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics, Vol. 2. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
  52. Patton, Paul. 1998. Foucault’s Subject of Power. In The Later Foucault, ed. Jeremy Moss. London, Thousand Oaks: Sage.Google Scholar
  53. Quijano, Aníbal. 2007. Coloniality and Modernity/Rationality. Cultural Studies 21 (2–3): 168–178.Google Scholar
  54. Rose, Nikolas. 1999. Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
  55. Sawicki, Jana. 1996. Feminism, Foucault, and the ‘Subjects’ of Power and Freedom. In Feminist Interpretations of Michel Foucault, ed. J. Susan Hekman. Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press.Google Scholar
  56. Schilt, Kristen, and Laurel Westbrook. 2009. Doing Gender, Doing Heteronormativity: ‘Gender Normals,’ Transgender People, and the Social Maintenance of Heterosexuality. Gender & Society 23 (4): 440–464.Google Scholar
  57. Scott, David. 1995. Colonial Governmentality. Social Text 43 (Autumn): 191–220. Accessed 2 October 2013 (06:44). http://www.jstor.org/stable/466631.
  58. ———. 2004. Conscripts of Modernity: The Tragedy of Colonial Enlightenment. Raleigh, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
  59. Slater, Don. 1997. Consumer Culture & Modernity. Cambridge: Polity.Google Scholar
  60. Weheliye, Alexander G. 2014. Habeas Viscus: Racialising Assemblages, Biopolitics, and Black Feminist Theories of the Human. Raleigh, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
  61. West, Candace, Michelle Lazar, and Cheris Kramarae. 1997. Gender in Discourse. In Discourse as Social Interaction, ed. T.A. Van Dijk. London, Thousand Oaks: Sage.Google Scholar
  62. Wynter, Sylvia. 1992. No Humans Involved: An Open Letter to My Colleagues. Voices of the African Diaspora 8 (2): 12–16.Google Scholar

Copyright information

© The Author(s) 2016

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.5/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

Authors and Affiliations

  • Denise Noble
    • 1
  1. 1.Department of Sociology and CriminologyBirmingham City UniversityBirminghamUK

Personalised recommendations

Cite chapter