Derrida, Stengers, Latour, and Subalternist Cosmopolitics

Postcolonial science studies entails ostensibly contradictory critical and empirical commitments. Science studies scholars influenced by Bruno Latour and Isabelle Stengers embrace forms of realist, radical empiricism, while postcolonial studies scholars influenced by Jacques Derrida trace the limits...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Theory, culture & society Vol. 31; no. 1; pp. 75 - 98
Main Author:	Watson, Matthew C
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	English
Published:	London, England SAGE Publications 01-01-2014 Sage Publications Ltd
Subjects:	Decolonization Derrida, Jacques Empirical research Empiricism Hospitality Intellectuals Latour, Bruno Ontology Politics Postcolonialism Radicalism Representation Scholars Science Stengers, Isabelle Studies Subaltern Latour subaltern Derrida cosmopolitan democracy science
Online Access:	Get full text
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Summary:	Postcolonial science studies entails ostensibly contradictory critical and empirical commitments. Science studies scholars influenced by Bruno Latour and Isabelle Stengers embrace forms of realist, radical empiricism, while postcolonial studies scholars influenced by Jacques Derrida trace the limits of the knowable. This essay takes their common use of the term cosmopolitics as an unexpected point of departure for reconciling Derrida’s program with Stengers’s and Latour’s. I read Derrida’s critique of hospitality and Stengers’s and Latour’s ontological politics as necessary complements for conceiving a care-oriented subalternist cosmopolitics, a process of composing common worlds that remains attentive to the limits of representation.
Bibliography:	ObjectType-Article-2 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-1 content type line 23 ObjectType-Article-1 ObjectType-Feature-2
ISSN:	0263-2764 1460-3616
DOI:	10.1177/0263276413495283