AnaLouise Keating
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252037849
- eISBN:
- 9780252095115
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252037849.003.0007
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Gender Studies
This introductory chapter calls attention to the limitations of oppositional politics in initiating change, particularly due to the underlying binary systems on which oppositional epistemologies and ...
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This introductory chapter calls attention to the limitations of oppositional politics in initiating change, particularly due to the underlying binary systems on which oppositional epistemologies and practices are generally based. At the same time this chapter advocates for a post-oppositional resistance as an alternative to conventional oppositional thinking and scholarship. These alternatives are described as “threshold theories” to underscore their nonbinary, liminal, potentially transformative status. Threshold theories facilitate and enact movements “betwixt and between” divergent worlds, enabling us to establish fresh connections among distinct (and sometimes contradictory) perspectives, realities, peoples, theories, texts, and/or worldviews. Finally, this chapter looks at Gloria Anzaldúa's theories and practice of nepantleras and nepantla to consider some of the forms that these nonoppositional threshold theories can take.Less
This introductory chapter calls attention to the limitations of oppositional politics in initiating change, particularly due to the underlying binary systems on which oppositional epistemologies and practices are generally based. At the same time this chapter advocates for a post-oppositional resistance as an alternative to conventional oppositional thinking and scholarship. These alternatives are described as “threshold theories” to underscore their nonbinary, liminal, potentially transformative status. Threshold theories facilitate and enact movements “betwixt and between” divergent worlds, enabling us to establish fresh connections among distinct (and sometimes contradictory) perspectives, realities, peoples, theories, texts, and/or worldviews. Finally, this chapter looks at Gloria Anzaldúa's theories and practice of nepantleras and nepantla to consider some of the forms that these nonoppositional threshold theories can take.
Thomas Fisher
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780816698875
- eISBN:
- 9781452954264
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816698875.003.0015
- Subject:
- Art, Design
The chapter examines the politics of planning and urban design, and how they reflect the oppositional nature of contemporary thinking. Despite oppositional thinking’s long history in Western culture, ...
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The chapter examines the politics of planning and urban design, and how they reflect the oppositional nature of contemporary thinking. Despite oppositional thinking’s long history in Western culture, the chapter pleads for another equally strong tradition: the “opposable” thinking that allows us to hold seemingly opposite ideas in the mind simultaneously and imagine solutions that embrace such apparently opposite goals. Design’s abductive nature epitomizes such opposable thinking, and the author argues for according it a stronger role in politics.Less
The chapter examines the politics of planning and urban design, and how they reflect the oppositional nature of contemporary thinking. Despite oppositional thinking’s long history in Western culture, the chapter pleads for another equally strong tradition: the “opposable” thinking that allows us to hold seemingly opposite ideas in the mind simultaneously and imagine solutions that embrace such apparently opposite goals. Design’s abductive nature epitomizes such opposable thinking, and the author argues for according it a stronger role in politics.
