Caren Kaplan – författare

Contemporary theory is replete with metaphors of travel-displacement, diaspora, borders, exile, migration, nomadism, homelessness, and tourism to name a few. In Questions of Travel, Caren Kaplan explores the various metaphoric uses of travel and displacement in literary and feminist theory, traces the political implications of this “traveling theory,” and shows how various discourses of displacement link, rather than separate, modernism and postmodernism.Addressing a wide range of writers, including Paul Fussell, Edward Said, James Clifford, Gilles Deleuze, Jean Baudrillard, Gayatri Spivak, Edward Soja, Doreen Massey, Chandra Mohanty, and Adrienne Rich, Kaplan demonstrates that symbols and metaphors of travel are used in ways that obscure key differences of power between nationalities, classes, races, and genders. Neither rejecting nor dismissing the powerful testimony of individual experiences of modern exile or displacement, Kaplan asks how mystified metaphors of travel might be avoided. With a focus on theory’s colonial discourses, she reveals how these metaphors continue to operate in the seemingly liberatory critical zones of poststructuralism and feminist theory. The book concludes with a critique of the politics of location as a form of essentialist identity politics and calls for new feminist geographies of place and displacement.

In Between Woman and Nation constructions such as nationalism, homeland, country, region, and locality are for the first time examined in the context of gender. The contributors-leading scholars of ethnicity, transnationalism, globalization, and feminist theory-are united in their determination to locate and describe the performative space of interactions between woman and nation. These are interactions, claim the contributors, that cannot be essentialized.This interdisciplinarily collection investigates women in diverse locales-ranging from Quebec to Beirut. The contributors consider such subjects as Yucatan feminism, Islamic fundamentalisms, Canadian gender formations, historic Chicana/o struggles, and Israeli/Palestinian conflicts. Divided into three parts, the collection first examines constructions of nationalism and communities whose practices complicate these constructions. The second section discusses regulations of particular nation-states and how they affect the lives of women, while the third presents studies of transnational identity formation, in which contributors critique ideas such as “multicultural nationalism” and “global feminism.” Arguing provocatively that such movements and concepts inadequately represent women’s interests, contributors examine how such beliefs and their attendant organizations may actually bolster the very formations they ought to subvert.In its demonstration of the critical possibilities of feminist alliances across discrepant and distinct material conditions, Between Woman and Nation will make a unique contribution to women’s studies, feminist theory, studies of globalization and transnationalism, ethnic studies, and cultural studies.

This volume's contributors offer a new critical language through which to explore and assess the historical, juridical, geopolitical, and cultural dimensions of drone technology and warfare. They show how drones generate particular ways of visualizing the spaces and targets of war while acting as tools to exercise state power. Essays include discussions of the legal justifications of extrajudicial killings and how US drone strikes in the Horn of Africa impact life on the ground, as well as a personal narrative of a former drone operator. The contributors also explore drone warfare in relation to sovereignty, governance, and social difference; provide accounts of the relationships between drone technologies and modes of perception and mediation; and theorize drones’ relation to biopolitics, robotics, automation, and art. Interdisciplinary and timely, Life in the Age of Drone Warfare extends the critical study of drones while expanding the public discussion of one of our era's most ubiquitous instruments of war.Contributors. Peter Asaro, Brandon Wayne Bryant, Katherine Chandler, Jordan Crandall, Ricardo Dominguez, Derek Gregory, Inderpal Grewal, Lisa Hajjar, Caren Kaplan, Andrea Miller, Anjali Nath, Jeremy Packer, Lisa Parks, Joshua Reeves, Thomas Stubblefield, Madiha Tahir

This volume's contributors offer a new critical language through which to explore and assess the historical, juridical, geopolitical, and cultural dimensions of drone technology and warfare. They show how drones generate particular ways of visualizing the spaces and targets of war while acting as tools to exercise state power. Essays include discussions of the legal justifications of extrajudicial killings and how US drone strikes in the Horn of Africa impact life on the ground, as well as a personal narrative of a former drone operator. The contributors also explore drone warfare in relation to sovereignty, governance, and social difference; provide accounts of the relationships between drone technologies and modes of perception and mediation; and theorize drones’ relation to biopolitics, robotics, automation, and art. Interdisciplinary and timely, Life in the Age of Drone Warfare extends the critical study of drones while expanding the public discussion of one of our era's most ubiquitous instruments of war.Contributors. Peter Asaro, Brandon Wayne Bryant, Katherine Chandler, Jordan Crandall, Ricardo Dominguez, Derek Gregory, Inderpal Grewal, Lisa Hajjar, Caren Kaplan, Andrea Miller, Anjali Nath, Jeremy Packer, Lisa Parks, Joshua Reeves, Thomas Stubblefield, Madiha Tahir