Maternal Ethics and Other Slave Moralities

InMaternal Ethics and Other Slave Moralitieswhich includes the first extended philosophical discussion of the works of Frederick Douglass, Cynthia Willett puts forward a novel theory of ethical subjectivity that is aimed to counter prevailing pathologies of sexist, racist Eurocentric culture. Weaving together accounts of the self drawn from African-American and European philosophies, psychoanalysis, slave narratives and sociology, Willett interrogates what Hegel locates as the core of the self: the desire for recognition. Surveying the conceptual deficiencies that prevent both Marxism and neo-liberalism from fully comprehending the sources and effects of colonial oppression, Willett examines the social and psychological dynamics of post-colonial oppression and explores the causes of social and cultural denigration that accompanies colonization. In developing her theory of ethical subjectivity, Willet contests the ways in which Western culture projects its misogynisticfantasies onto mother-child relations and poses an alternative view that is suggestive of a repressed sensuality that lies within the bonds formed between mother and child. In this compelling analysis, Willett illuminates the ways in which maternal subjectivies serve as a critique of instrumental reason, calling upon another form of Reason altogether that can transform and emancipate subjects from the shackles of oppressive subject positions they occupy. Includes treatment of such authors as Irigaray, Levinas, Lacan, Hegel, Frederick Douglass, and Nietzsche.