Philosophizing Contestation

This collection elaborates contemporary possibilities for, and evaluates the concept of, contestation, highlighting tensions that emerge with thinking about the concept itself, various modes of contestation, and the terminology that surrounds the concept of contestation.

Contestation often carries with it the air of liberation or emancipation-of an egalitarian struggle pushing back against forces of domination, subjugation, and hierarchy. Coming from across the critical humanities and social sciences, the contributors focus on conceiving of contestation in such a way that those struggles do not in the end reduce themselves, theoretically or practically, to further exclusion. Must fighting on behalf of one cause or population necessarily involve the exclusion of another? Is a horizon of universal emancipation conceivable for contestation? What distinguishes critique from criticism? To flesh out the notion of contestation in this light, the contributors consider the different potential modes of contestation, the domains of analysis within which contestation can occur, and the productiveness of understanding contestation as a form of engagement.


The chapters bring perspectives that are theoretical and practical, philosophical and historical, engaging a variety of theories and practices, issues of identity to racial politics and from cultural criticism to conceptions of historiography. The volume itself exhibits contestation.