Grammars of Addressing: On Memory and History in Cathy Caruth’s Work

Abstract:Writing about Cathy Caruth’s work allows me to write about my current project on “grammars of listening,” which has not only developed in conversation with her work but has also become a powerful way for me to address, among other things, the question that gathers together this special issue on Women in Theory—a question closely related to issues of epistemic injustice and silencing (Kristie Dotson), of coloniality and the extent to which its effects are still operative today (María Lugones), and to the erasures and practices of un-knowing (Mariana Ortega) that have been deployed against the possibility of embodying what it means to be a “woman”—and more specifically a “woman of color”—in philosophy.None of these questions can be truly addressed without first radically questioning the frameworks of meaning that determine in advance what does and does not deserve to become audible. A subversion and a decolonization of the regime of audibility—one that forces us to listen to what is otherwise constantly rendered unheard and unheard-of—is the only way to begin seriously taking up the question of what it would mean to embody, from a theoretical perspective, the category—historically imposed, philosophically problematized, and in urgent need of decolonization—of “woman.”