Excluded Within: The (Un)Intelligibility of Radical Political Actors

by Sina Kramer

Overview

Why are some claims seen or heard as political claims, while others are not? Why are some people not seen or heard as political agents? And how does their political unintelligibility shape political bodies, and the terms of political agency, from which they are excluded? In this groundbreaking book, Sina Kramer uses the framework of constitutive exclusion to describe the phenomenon of internal exclusion -- exclusions that occur within a political body. More specifically, constitutive exclusions occur when a system of thought or a political body defines itself by excluding some difference (based on gender, race, class, sexuality, etc.) that is considered intolerable to the boundaries that comprise the body or system's political worth. This exclusion is not absolute, but preserves the very difference it seeks to repress in order to define itself against what it is not. Yet, as Kramer argues, if those who are excluded contest their repression, their political claims are deemed threatening and criminal. But can we ever be without constitutive exclusions? And can we avoid reinscribing them through critique? Kramer ultimately argues that to do justice to the excluded, to render those claims intelligible as political claims, instead requires the reconstitution of the political body on new terms. Importantly, this book offers both a diagnosis and a critique of the concept of constitutive exclusion, articulating what counts as a political action and who counts as a political agent. Kramer takes up a range of cases -- including those of Antigone, Claudette Colvin and Rosa Parks, the 1992 Los Angeles riots, and the Black Lives Matter movement -- to better understand who counts as a political actor, and how we understand political belonging and the contestation of exclusion. Excluded Within articulates who we are by virtue of who we exclude, and what claims we cannot see, hear, or understand.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780190840013
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	09/04/2017
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	256
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Sina Kramer is Assistant Professor of Women's and Gender Studies at Loyola Marymount University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements Chapter One: Constitutive Exclusion Part One: Diagnosis Chapter Two: Multiple Negativity Chapter Three: On the Quasi-Transcendental: Economy, Temporality, and Political Epistemology Part Two: Critique Chapter Four: Negative Dialectics as Critical Method Chapter Five: Materialist History Part Three: Contestation Chapter Six: Critical Models Chapter Seven: Multiplicity and Collective Contestation in the 1992 Los Angeles Riots/Rebellion Postscript: The Excluded Within Us: WOC Feminist Plural Ontologies and the Resources for Resistance Notes Bibliography Index

Editorial Reviews

"Kramer's text shows a masterful handling of theoretical schools that is versatile enough to teach critical theory and introduce readers to that body of work." — Mario Venegas, The University of Texas at Austin, Social Forces

"Sina Kramer's Excluded Within is one of those rare books that states things that seems obvious in the telling but which no one had quite thought of before. [...] By bringing multiple forms of resistance, thought and action into conversation, Kramer has offered us much more than a snapshot of how resistance can work. Indeed the problem with snapshots, Kramer shows us, is that they distort the bases of political resistance. Instead, Kramer shows us how to animate politics by contending less with what appears in all of its intractable "thereness" and more with what could be. It is no less realistic for being "impossible." — James Martel, Theory and Event

"At a time when so many find themselves denigrated and silenced, Sina Kramer's Excluded Within asks us to consider how the politics of exclusion both shapes and limits our notions of political membership. Moving from Greek tragedy to Black Lives Matter, Excluded Within enacts the practices of listening and plurality for which Kramer so fervently calls."
—Cristina Beltrán, Associate Professor of Social & Cultural Analysis, New York University

"How can we understand 'constitutive exclusion,' that act of differentiation that gives coherence to things while keeping them unavowably dependent on their outsides? Can it be grasped 'as such,' or does it demand attention to the particulars of history and politics? In this fierce, luminous book, Sina Kramer demonstrates that the answer must be 'both'-and then, in a stunning display of mastery that reaches from Hegel's Science of Logic to the streets of Los Angeles, she shows us how it's done."
—Patchen Markell, Associate Professor of Political Science, The University of Chicago

"This book dives deep into the Hegelian dialectic whose constitutive exclusions structure our thought and political life. With clarity, rigor, and a profound sense of urgency, Kramer challenges the exclusionary production of figures of political unintelligibility: Antigone, Rosa Parks, the 1992 LA Uprisings, Black Lives Matter. At once feminist, queer, and anti-racist, Excluded Within brilliantly exposes the philosophical stakes of our most burning contemporary issues. A must read!"
—Lynne Huffer, Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Emory University

"Excluded Within is a careful reconstruction of the idea of 'constitutive exclusion' in dialectical philosophy and a powerful meditation on its political purchase. Kramer offers original and incisive readings of Hegel, Adorno, and Derrida and draws from each of them to advance feminist and antiracist methods. Her approach is timely and her insights are significant."
—Robyn Marasco, Associate Professor of Political Science, Hunter College, CUNY

APSA Foundations of Political Theory First Book Award

From the Publisher