Levinas and the Postcolonial: Race, Nation, Other

This title relates Levinas’ central concept of the Other to distinctly postcolonial conceptions of Otherness. The idea of the Other is central to both Levinas’ philosophy and to postcolonialism, but they both apply the concept in different ways. Now, John E. Drabinski asks what we can learn from reading Levinas alongside postcolonial theories of difference. With that question in view, Drabinski undertakes readings of Gayatri Spivak, Homi Bhabha, Edouard Glissant and Subcommandante Marcos in order to rethink ideas of difference, language, subjectivity, ethics and politics.

Reviews of Levinas and the Postcolonial: Race, Nation, Other

To think of postcolonial critique as a philosophy of difference and an ethical relation to the other is inconceivable without taking into account the work of Emmanuel Levinas. "Levinas and the Postcolonial" refuses all theoretical ghettos, bringing welcome intellectual rigor, depth, and insight to the critique of global colonialism.–Nick Nesbitt, Princeton University