Standpoint theory and double abolition

I read Denise Ferreira da Silva’s Unpayable Debt as an experiment that adopts “the wounded captive body in the scene of subjugation” as an epistemological standpoint. This situates her project in line with a tradition of standpoint theories that adopt, for instance, the proletarian or the feminist standpoint in similar ways. These standpoints grant us not only a superior knowledge of the current social order, highlighting its hierarchies, but also provide a political ground for seeking to abolish the structures of domination. Ferreira da Silva’s argument diverges, however, in that her standpoint does not present a subject to be affirmed, as do the other theories, but rather one that must also be abolished. In this sense, I interpret the aim of da Silva’s book to be a double abolition.

Duke Scholars

Author Michael Hardt Literature