Learning from Experience: Minority Identities, Multicultural Struggles

By Paula M.L. Moya

Book Overview

In Learning from Experience, Paula Moya offers an alternative to some influential philosophical assumptions about identity and experience in contemporary literary theory. Arguing that the texts and lived experiences of subordinated people are rich sources of insight about our society, Moya presents a nuanced universalist justification for identity-based work in ethnic studies.

This strikingly original book provides eloquent analyses of such postmodernist feminists as Judith Butler, Donna Haraway, Norma Alarc n, and Chela Sandoval, and counters the assimilationist proposals of minority neoconservatives such as Shelby Steele and Richard Rodriguez. It advances realist proposals for multicultural education and offers an understanding of the interpretive power of Chicana feminists including Cherr e Moraga, Gloria Anzald a, and Helena Mar a Viramontes. Learning from Experience enlarges our concept of identity and offers new ways to situate aspects of race, gender, class, and sexual orientation in discursive and sociopolitical contexts.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0520230132
• ISBN13: 9780520230132
• Release Date: February 2002
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Length: 247 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 1.0" x 6.3"