Witnessing: Beyond Recognition [Paperback]

Kelly Oliver (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 3, 2001

Philosophy

A new, ethically based theory of identity by a major scholar.

Challenging the fundamental tenet of the multicultural movement-that social struggles turning upon race, gender, and sexuality are struggles for recognition-this work offers a powerful critique of current conceptions of identity and subjectivity based on Hegelian notions of recognition. The author's critical engagement with major texts of contemporary philosophy prepares the way for a highly original conception of ethics based on witnessing.

Central to this project is Oliver's contention that the demand for recognition is a symptom of the pathology of oppression that perpetuates subject-object and same-different hierarchies. While theorists across the disciplines of the humanities and social sciences focus their research on multiculturalism around the struggle for recognition, Oliver argues that the actual texts and survivors' accounts from the aftermath of the Holocaust and slavery are testimonials to a pathos that is "beyond recognition."

Oliver traces many of the problems with the recognition model of subjective identity to a particular notion of vision presupposed in theories of recognition and misrecognition. Contesting the idea of an objectifying gaze, she reformulates vision as a loving look that facilitates connection rather than necessitates alienation. As an alternative, Oliver develops a theory of witnessing subjectivity. She suggests that the notion of witnessing, with its double meaning as either eyewitness or bearing witness to the unseen, is more promising than recognition for describing the onset and sustenance of subjectivity. Subjectivity is born out of and sustained by the process of witnessing-the possibility of address and response-which puts ethical obligations at its heart. Kelly Oliver is professor of philosophy and women's studies at SUNY Stony Brook. She is the author of, among other works, Subjectivity without Subjects (1998) and Family Values (1997).

Product Details

• Paperback: 262 pages
• Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press; 1 edition (January 3, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0816636281
• ISBN-13: 978-0816636280
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.8 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #311,443 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Kelly Oliver was born on July 28, 1958 in Spokane Washington. She graduated from Gonzaga University with honors in 1979 with a double major in philosophy and communications. She earned her Ph.D. from Northwestern University in philosophy in 1987. She has held teaching positions at various Universities, including George Washington University, University of Texas at Austin, and Stony Brook University. Currently, she is W. Alton Jones Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University.

She has published 19 books on topics ranging from family, love, war, and violence to affirmative action, Hollywood films, and animal rights.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

0 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars for the far out, June 18, 2008

By 

Bruce P. Barten (Saint Paul, MN United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Witnessing: Beyond Recognition (Paperback)

I have done a little reading in Witnessing Beyond Recognition (2001) by Kelly Oliver lately. My own life is changing rapidly enough to defy recognition by those people who expect me to function as anyone who attempts to be disguised as a normal person. This book is an ideal old possession for people like me, who realize how little anyone has learned from all the lessons that are constantly being served to us by people who wish we had a more positive attitude. Since there was a bookmark near the end of the book, I read from there to the end, just to make sure I had read all the pages. The conclusion was that having a relationship ends when a person is reduced to serving a particular function as a kind of object. People with aims in life expect most people to conform to their particular ideals, and we all have trouble fulfilling the wave of hoops that pop up as regularly as dropping the kiddies off at the pool. I learned a new euphemism last night for an old obsession, and dropping kiddies off at the pool functions as well as religion for people who lead modern lives. Keeping busy with a regular routine is the coping mechanism of everybody who does not like us clowns who are just kidding.

2 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Stony Brook witness, October 29, 2001

By 

Bruce P. Barten - See all my reviews

This review is from: Witnessing: Beyond Recognition (Paperback)

Try imagining Stony Brook, where the author of this book is a SUNY professor of philosophy and women's studies, as an intellectual heartbeat away from what took place on September 11, 2001, and this book, which was prepared before the events of that day, gains a bit of weight if it is considered as a sincere attempt to understand such things, although it was written in a philosophical manner which is remote from the intrigue with which such events are planned and executed. Philosophers have often fallen back on their affinity for the familiar, and this tendency may also be found in this book, especially in the attention it gives to current feminist thought, in spite of the churlishness that is occasionally to be found regarding those things which are out of the ordinary in a thoroughly distasteful way, as intentionally destructive acts often appear to be. Though the book attempts to deal with psychologically troubling matters, there are thoroughly feminist moments, which are particularly heartwarming in regard to the innocence of financial planners, whose only connections to the World Trade Center towers were, at their best, in a manner which might previously have been regarded as impersonal and businesslike, and whose expectations implied that the accumulation of wealth through world trade was the sole context in which the activities that are entitled to the most significance in our world might be judged. The best example of such thinking in this book, which is copyright 2001 but reflects the thinking dominant prior to the events of September 11, 2001, is its consideration of the ideas of Patricia Williams on "the metaphor of investment instead of possession to convey social relations and their incumbent responsibility. Imagining a more optimistic future, she says: `What a world it would be if we could all wake up and see all of ourselves reflected in the world, not merely in a territorial sense but with a kind of nonexclusive entitlement that grants not so much possession as investment.'" (p. 155). If there is a bombing campaign, or investment in weapons of mass destruction, or a war against drugs, or two million people in prison in the United States of America, going on right now, all of which are probably being rationalized by just about everybody as steps that must be taken so that we can have such an ideal world, with an economy which would be truly great, but actually, the way that things like this have been going on for the last 10,000 years suggests that, if we keep following our own tendencies on this, outer space might even become the new frontier for weapons which could be this destructive, if anyone with our instincts is allowed to use it to try to defend ourselves. This book approaches reality on a lot of levels, but I may be the only person to read it who could find any support for my views in this book. You can read it for yourself, too.