Walter D. Mignolo: Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking (1999)

“This book is an extended argument on the “coloniality” of power by one of the most innovative scholars of Latin American studies. In a shrinking world where sharp dichotomies, such as East/West and developing/developed, blur and shift, Walter Mignolo points to the inadequacy of current practice in the social sciences and area studies. He introduces the crucial notion of “colonial difference” into study of the modern colonial world. He also traces the emergence of new forms of knowledge, which he calls “border thinking.”

Further, he expands the horizons of those debates already under way in postcolonial studies of Asia and Africa by employing the terms and concerns of New World scholarship. His concept of “border gnosis,” or what is known from the perspective of an empire’s borderlands, counters the tendency of occidentalist perspectives to dominate, and thus limit, understanding.

The book is divided into three parts: the first chapter deals with epistemology and postcoloniality; the next three chapters deal with the geopolitics of knowledge; the last three deal with the languages and cultures of scholarship. Here the author reintroduces the analysis of civilization from the perspective of globalization and argues that, rather than one “civilizing” process dominated by the West, the continually emerging subaltern voices break down the dichotomies characteristic of any cultural imperialism. By underscoring the fractures between globalization and mundialización, Mignolo shows the locations of emerging border epistemologies, and of post-occidental reason.”

Publisher Princeton University Press, 1999
Princeton Studies in Culture/Power/History series
ISBN 0691001405, 9780691001401
xix+371 pages

Interview with author (L. Elena Delgado and Rolando J. Romero, Discourse, 2000)
Author on pluriversality (2013)
Review: Serge Gruzinski (Annales, 2002, FR).
Commentary: Linda Martín Alcoff (CR, 2007).

Author
Publisher
WorldCat

PDF (17 MB)

Diary of a Conference on Sexuality (1982)

“Diary of a Conference on Sexuality is a conference program booklet designed by Hannah Alderfer, Beth Jaker, and Marybeth Nelson and published in conjunction with the ninth “Scholar and the Feminist” conference, “Towards a Politics of Sexuality,” held at Barnard College on April 24, 1982. Better known as the Barnard Sex Conference, the conference was a key event in the feminist sex wars of the 1980s. Organized by Carole Vance to explore the politics of sexuality, the conference was picketed by antipornography groups. While these protesters focused their objections on issues of pornography, S/M, and butch/femme, the conference addressed a much wider array of questions about women’s experiences of sexuality, some of which are represented here.

No ordinary conference program, the Diary included Vance’s invitation to presenters, a coauthored “Concept Paper” that described the conference’s aims and guiding questions, a list of speakers and schedule of events, as well as minutes from planning meetings, bibliographies of suggested reading, and a page devoted to each workshop. The Diary was, as Gayle Rubin later wrote, “intended to be something of an archival document.” Each speaker created a page in the Diary to represent her workshop; many of these included a “postcard” featuring some image that she found meaningful personally or in the context of the workshop. These images added to the visual impact of the program. With its striking images, its combination of politics, scholarship, and personal reflection, and its moments of insight, polemic, and humor, the Diary remains a compelling record of feminist collaboration.

In the days leading up to the conference, members of antipornography groups contacted the Barnard administration and issued a warning about what they saw as the “antifeminist” nature of the proceedings. In response, Barnard administrators confiscated 1,500 copies of the Diary two days before the conference. Despite subsequent reprinting, the Diary remains exceedingly rare.” (Heather Love, 2011)

Edited by Hannah Alderfer, Beth Jaker, and Marybeth Nelson
Publisher Faculty Press, New York, 1982
72 pages
via Dark Matter Archives

Commentary: Carole S. Vance (1984), Gayle Rubin (GLQ 2011).

WorldCat

PDF, PDF (18 MB)
See also conference proceedings (Pleasure and Danger, ed. Carole S. Vance, 1984, 462 pp)

Beatriz Colomina (ed.): Sexuality & Space (1992)

The first book-length publication dedicated to a comprehensive discourse on sexual identity within the discipline of architecture. Based on a symposium held at Princeton University School of Architecture in March 1990.

Publisher Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 1992
ISBN 1878271083, 9781878271082
389 pages
via Dubravka

Reviews: Elizabeth Wilson (Harvard Design M 1997), Nadir Lahiji & D.S. Friedman (AA Files 1999).
Commentary: Samuel Ray Jacobson (master’s thesis, 2013).

WorldCat

PDF (9 MB)