Description: In Habeas Viscus, Alexander G. Weheliye seeks to rectify a major shortcoming of the "bare life and biopolitics discourse," exemplified by the works of Agamben and Foucault, its failure to appreciate the centrality of race to accounts of the human. Working from the vantage point of black studies and drawing especially on the thought of the black feminist theorists Hortense Spillers and Sylvia Wynter, Weheliye suggests alternate ways of conceptualizing the place of race within the dominion of modern politics.
Review Quotes: "Weheliye's dual theoretical-political aim of clarifying the operating force of racializing assemblages as well as voicing the necessity and potentiality of alternate political futures is an urgently needed intervention in conversations about the human and humanity. Not satisfied with critiquing the perils of our contemporary condition, he orients us towards new futures. In doing so, Weheliye's Habeus Viscus offers intellectual victuals not only for the project of black studies, but for all those who study non-white being-in-the-world and are relegated to the conceptual ghetto of ethnographic specificity."--Aditi Surie von Czechowski "Borderlines (CSSAAME blog)"