Whither Theory? Debts to Caliban’s “Woman”

Abstract:This essay explores the categories of “women” and “theory” as apposite in light of the institutional practices specific to the neoliberal university. Sylvia Wynter’s exposition of the “silencing,” the “ontological absence” of Caliban’s “woman” clarifies the foundation and ongoing actualization of modernity/rationality that theory often represents. Considering Celenis Rodríguez Moreno and Yuderkys Espinosa Miñoso’s work on Caribbean mimetic racial/gender formation, I expand on Wynter’s account of the binding of desire, rationality, and race that establishes Miranda as the only possible “genetrix” of humanity/rationality. Theory becomes more than an academic endeavor that actualizes, updates, the race/gender/class hierarchy distinctive of the modern colonial world through the dislocation that its debts to Caliban’s “woman” effect.