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Dissertation Information for Dawn Rae Davis

NAME:
- Dawn Rae Davis

DEGREE:
- Ph.D.

DISCIPLINE:
- Women's Studies

SCHOOL:
- University of Minnesota, Twin Cities (USA) (2006)

ADVISORS:
- None

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
- None

MPACT Status: Incomplete - Not_Inspected

Title: Decolonizing love: Feminist subjects and the ability of not knowing

Abstract: This dissertation philosophically examines the relationship between love and knowledge from the perspective of postcolonial analysis and its focus on the self-other relation, elaborating ethical and epistemological approaches best suited to engage the complexities of transnational feminisms. Theorizing love in relation to public spheres of discursive productions of power and resistance, I critically analyze a philosophical itinerary of western congruencies between modernity's subject, discourses of love and knowledge, and colonizing processes of imperialist power arguing that a totalizing structure of thought constructs a discursive subject that appropriates all it encounters, demonstrating an imperialist logic of possession. I then show how a non-totalizing system of logic can be used to theorize love in relation to an intersection between ethics and epistemology, emphasizing the transformative potential of third space meanings and agencies which can be taken up as a decolonizing politics of non-possession in the context of feminist practice. My argument is that a feminist ethics of love must include a consistent focus on the epistemological and confront the colonizing history of love and knowledge in the context of feminism in order to philosophically render love as a decolonizing practice that resists a unitary logic, entails the priority of radical difference as the constitution of community, and constructs knowledge as engagement with the non-identical and an ever-impending transformative aspect for which love is the ability of not knowing.

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