Philosophy Across Borders

This book brings into conversation geographically diverse theorists to question the meaning, purpose, and place of conceptual borders in philosophy. It shows how contemporary theory is constituted by a dynamic practice in which the boundaries created to define it are simultaneously overcome in their establishment.

Philosophy has often taken itself to be distinguished from and superior to alternative ways of thinking. To do so, philosophical thinking has found itself rigidly affirming the need to think within borders to obtain conceptual clarity and certainty and/or secure its own independent existence. The chapters in this volume call into question the need to retreat behind demarcated boundaries that mark the domain of philosophy proper, to instead offer a performative account of how philosophy can creatively work across (geographical, cultural, linguistic) borders, without foreclosing that analysis conceptually. In so doing, the contributors tackle issues including the historical establishment of philosophical borders, the metaphysics of philosophical borders, the relationship between Western and non-Western thinking, the ethics of transgressing borders, and the political implications of Western rationality on and for non-Western societies.

Philosophy Across Borders will therefore be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in philosophy, aesthetics, critical theory, comparative philosophy, cultural studies, feminist theory, history of ideas, political theory, and postcolonial studies.

Emma Ingala is Associate Professor in the Department of Logic and Theoretical Philosophy at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain. Her recent publications include coediting the volumes Transformation in Contemporary French Theory (forthcoming) and Historical Traces and Future Pathways of Poststructuralism: Aesthetics, Ethics, Politics (Routledge, 2021).

Gavin Rae is Associate Professor in the Department of Logic and Theoretical Philosophy at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain. His most recent publications include Questioning Sexuality: From Psychoanalysis to Gender Theory and Beyond (2024) and Poststructuralist Agency (2020).