Beyond the Doctrine of Man: Decolonial Visions of the Human

Description:

Catalyzed by Sylvia Wynter's questioning of modern/colonial descriptions of the human person, the essays in Beyond the Doctrine of Man interrogate the problem of these definitions of the human person and take up the struggle to decolonize and unsettle such descriptions.

Contributors: Rufus Burnett Jr., M. Shawn Copeland, Yomaira C. Figueroa, Patrice Haynes, Xhercis Méndez, Andrew Prevot, Mayra Rivera, Linn Marie Tonstad, Alexander G. Weheliye

Brief description: Xhercis Méndez is an assistant professor in women and gender studies at California State University, Fullerton. She is a transdisciplinary scholar-activist whose research focuses on developing decolonial feminist methodologies and practices for building toward transformative justice and expanding our liberatory imaginations. She is the founder of the Transformative Justice Speaker Series and Initiative at Michigan State University and a co-organizer of the collaborative hurricane recovery project #ProyectoPalabrasPR. Her published work includes "Notes toward a Decolonial Feminist Methodology: Revisiting the Race/Gender Matrix" (Trans-Scripts, 2015), "Which Black Lives Matter?: Gender, State-Sanctioned Violence and 'My Brother's Keeper' " (Radical History Review, 2016), and her forthcoming article "Decolonial Feminist Movidas: A Caribeña Rethinks 'Privilege, ' the Wages of Gender, and Building Complex Coalitions." She is currently working on her book project entitled Decolonizing Feminist Methodologies from the Dark Side.

Review Quotes: This interdisciplinary work moves from re-articulating the doctrine of man into a re-engagement with Christian theology in order to creatively and imaginatively present the reader with divinity in the flesh. Covering geopolitics and biopolitics and the matter of enfleshed resistance, Beyond the Doctrine of Man offers a challenge to theology from many sides, but a challenge it is meant to rise to, not buckle under. This is a remarkable book offering depth of academic analysis presented in an accessible manner.---Lisa Isherwood