Habeas Viscus: Racializing Assemblages, Biopolitics, and Black Feminist Theories of the Human by Alexander G. Weheliye

Habeas Viscus: Racializing Assemblages, Biopolitics, and Black Feminist Theories of the Human Reviews

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  yarrow

  One of the most brilliant books I've read all year. Weheliye makes it clear in the introduction that he is out for blood, and pulls no punches. The book is best when he is checking Foucault and Agamben and subjecting them to black feminist critique. Particularly compelling is his expose of Agamben's efforts to systematize Benjamin as a Schmittian. Also when he shows Foucault's indebtedness to George Jackson. Dense, but can't recommend highly enough for those who are already reading continental theory and black feminism.
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  Hollis

  Weheliye can make a sentence turn nicely, but I'm not sure where his intervention lies. Its a satisfying meeting between Black feminist thought and white canonical (but whose canon?) biopolitics, further bolstered by a cool set of musical and visual test cases, but I think most could get by with the Spillers and Wynter by themselves. Well, the introduction at least features a persuasive reading of Black Studies in the 2000s. In general, this comes across as an easier to digest example of what Moten was arguing for the stakes of Black Studies in In the Break, but with more specific attention given to Agamben and Foucault. Weheliye's most intriguing and, I think, clearest, intervention takes shape in Chapter 6, a reading of Douglas' narrative of enslavement, when he rifts on Spillers' call for all to recognize the feminine within (though I'm unsure if he actually cited this concluding passage from her famous essay).
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  Niall

  'As a demonic island, black studies lifts the fog that shrouds the laws of comparison, particularity, and exception to reveal an aquatic outlook "far away from the continent of man."'
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  Andy

  I'm going to spend a couple more weeks with this book, but it was good. I'm glad I read it shortly after Bodies that Matter; I think it explained some aspects of subjection/abjection better, and I liked the body/flesh idea. I think I will have to read some Wynter and Spillers soon.
  
  Main problem was the gigantic sentences. Liked the Yeezy references.
  
  For my book list this semester.
• 
  Dan

  A superlative work of critical race theory that lost me at times in the sheer density of its argument but which is never less than impressive in its suturing together of a wide variety of ideas and cultural texts.
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  Krzys Chwala

  Incredible work on what it means to be human, analyzing inclusion/exclusion, fantastic critique of foucault and agamben. it's dense, but oh so wonderful
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  c

  oooh i need to reread this
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  Danny Steur

  "Habeas viscus: because to fully inhabit the flesh might lead to a different modality of existence."
  
  Can't say I got all of it (this is intricate, abstract and dense) but was nevertheless riveted by it, and simply excited whenever lines of argumentation and thoughts started coming together.
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  Michael Skora

  Really awesome interrogation of Foucault’s biopolitics and Ambagen’s “state of exception” and “bare life,” but I feel the book could have been an additional two chapters or so. I feel that particular aspects peaked at in “Habeas Viscus’s” introduction such as an analysis of Mbembe’s “necropolitics” and various upheld manifestos such as the those of the Combahee River Collective, the Black Panther Party, and the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, would have made for a fascinating expansion of this book’s theorizations.
• 
  Tomás Narvaja

  Great discussion of the work of Hortense Spillers, Sylvia Winter, Michel Foucault, and Giorgio Agamben. Very contemporary discussion as to the value of black studies, the importance of its object of knowledge, and the relationships between systems of oppression, Man, the body, and flesh. Uses a lot of jargon that could require a slower reading for less-familiar readers. Definitely a must read for anyone who's work involves discussions of biopolitics or bare life.
• 
  Ken

  Weheliye's viscous, penetrating theorizing has made me reorient my thinking re: the flesh, race/racialization, and humanity. A wonderful text from which I will proceed to configure my doctoral dissertation.
• 
  Anthie

  A must-read for anyone interested in the humanities!
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  Nathaniel

  this would be worth it just for the takedown of Agamben, and then on top of it there's a bunch of other really interesting stuff going on.
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  Roger Green

  This book is excellent in analysis of various textual examples and in its critique of Foucault and Agamben with respect to racialized assemblages.
• 
  Lukas

  This is my new favorite book full of all my favorite things: critical theory, Hortense Spillers, Sylvia Wynter, manifestos, and M.I.A.
• 
  Ai Miller

  A really solid examination and troubling of biopolitics and racialization. It can be rough to get into at first, but once you get going, it gets easier and easier to read, and by the end you're really invested. The last chapter in particular is really good in terms of thinking about what it might mean to consider a futurity outside of the western Man. I really loved chapter 5 ("Law") as well, for its examination of how documented "wounding" may be necessary for full personhood. It may really help you to have reader Hortense Spillers and Sylvia Wynter before you read this, but it's not necessary by any stretch. A really good book overall,and one I'm glad to have read.
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  Ayanna Dozier

  This book is so necessary, it provides a self-determined framework of viewing black ontology. Weheliye excavates the work of Sylvia Wynter (an Afro-cuban theorist whose writings have been neglected by institution) as a way of situating blackness and black studies in society. Weheliye's call for self-determination and promises of afro-futurism through the racial assemblages of body and life and inspiring and offers an innovative way of re-framing Black studies in and outside of the academy.
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  Myriam

  Hands down the best academic book I have read in a while - highly theoretical, addressing issues of racialized identities and their marginalizations through the theoretical principles advanced by Black Feminist theorists such as Hortense Spillers and Sylvia Wynter. Very well written with a touch of hip-hop humor.
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  Zach Irvin

  "Rather, habeas viscus points to the terrain of humanity as a relational assemblage exterior to the jurisdiction of law given that the law can bequeath or rescind ownership of the body so that it becomes the property of proper persons but does not possess the authority to nullify the politics and poetics of the flesh found in the traditions of the oppressed." (136-7)
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  Amanda Hobson

  For those of you who work on social justice issues and issues of modern definitions of humanity, I highly recommend Alexander Weheliye's Habeas Viscus. I really appreciate the depth of theoretical engagement and the cultural critique. (If I can manage a more in depth review I will at some point)
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  Decolonize D Native

  rocked my world
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  Mills College Library

  305.4201 W413 2014