In 1845 two thinkers from the American hemisphere - the Argentinean statesman Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, and the fugitive ex-slave, abolitionist leader, and orator from the United States, Frederick Douglass - both published their first works. Each would become the most famous and enduring texts in what were both prolific careers, and they ensured Sarmiento and Douglass' position as leading figures in the canon of Latin American and U.S. African-American political thought, respectively. But despite the fact that both deal directly with key political and philosophical questions in the Americas, Douglass and Sarmiento, like African-American and Latin American thought more generally, are never read alongside each other. This may be because their ideas about race differed dramatically. Sarmiento advocated the Europeanization of Latin America and espoused a virulent form of anti-indigenous racism, while Douglass opposed slavery and defended the full humanity of black persons. Still, as Juliet Hooker contends, looking at the two together allows one to chart a hemispheric intellectual geography of race that challenges political theory's preoccupation with and assumptions about East / West comparisons, and questions the use of comparison as a tool in the production of theory and philosophy. By juxtaposing four prominent nineteenth and twentieth-century thinkers - Frederick Douglass, Domingo F. Sarmiento, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Jose Vasconcelos - her book will be the first to bring African-American and Latin American political thought into conversation. Hooker stresses that Latin American and U.S. ideas about race were not developed in isolation, but grew out of transnational intellectual exchanges across the Americas. In so doing, she shows that nineteenth and twentieth-century U.S. and Latin American thinkers each looked to political models in the 'other' America to advance racial projects in their own countries. Reading these four intellectuals as hemispheric thinkers, Hooker foregrounds elements of their work that have been dismissed by dominant readings, and provides a crucial platform to bridge the canons of Latin American and African-American political thought.

About the Author
Associate Professor of Government and African and African Diaspora Studies, University of Texas-Austin; author of Race and the Politics of Solidarity (OUP, 2009)

Reviews
Hooker's emphasis on noncanonical works and hemispheric dimensions enriches the already extensive scholarship on these four men, providing a creative contribution to critical race studies and decolonial political philosophy. * Nancy P. Appelbaum, Binghamton University, State University of New York, Latin American Research Review *
Juliet Hooker's Theorizing Race in the Americas is a refreshing intervention in Black, American, and Latin American political thought that transforms these fields through an original hemispheric juxtaposition. We are indebted to Hooker's powerful intervention. * Ines Valdez, Contemporary Political Theory *
Theorizing Race in the Americas is more than a groundbreaking guide about how to recognize the intersection of race, gender, and geography when we see it - be in Latin American and African American thought or across national boundaries throughout the Americas. Hooker's work is equally significant because it shows how and why we need to examine the complex, progressive, and not so-progressive politics that often arises at these intersections. * Keisha Lindsay, Contemporary Political Theory *
Theorizing Race in the Americas is a bold innovation in thinking across lines of discourse, method, region, and nation in order to engage in what could be called 'hemispheric' thinking. * James Martel, Contemporary Political Theory *
The scholarship of Juliet Hooker compellingly challenges narrow conventions and beckons us to think beyond existing boundaries of knowledge. Hooker belongs to a short list of pioneering contemporary intellectuals exploring the meanings of race and their implications for the private sphere, civil and political society, identity and difference, citizens and foreigners, slavery, fugitivity, freedom, rights, sociality, solidarity, and democracy. The age of Trump in the United States and Bolsonaro in Brazil, coupled with retrenchments, realignments, and transformations in polities, their leadership, and their inhabitants' ways of life across the Americas, highlight the continuing rather than declining significance of race. We would be wise to take heed of the content in Hooker's valuable text. * Neil Roberts, Contemporary Political Theory *
"Theorizing Race in the Americas insightfully highlights how the role of the West and global white supremacy has created linkages between two previously disconnected geographical spaces of study, thus centering comparative racial politics in the field of political science."--Danielle Pilar Clealand, Journal of Race, Ethnicity and Politics
"[Juilet Hooker] unearths alternative texts and reads even these against the grain. And hers, too, is a sharp curatorial eye, rigorously contextual and historical but with a laser-focus on the task at hand. She rejects no thinker out-of-hand and claims to discover no pristine theoretical vehicle, plumbing each instead for whatever unanticipated moments of epistemological and political resistance they offer."--George Ciccariello-Maher, Political Theory
"A tightly written and rich work in political thought that adds great depth to understanding racial theory in the Americas."-Saladin Ambar, American Political Thought
"The book makes both a substantive and methodological contribution to the field of comparative political theory, where relatively little attention has been paid to African-American and Latin American political thought."--Katherine A. Gordy, Inter-American Journal of Philosophy
"Theorizing Race in the Americas: Douglass, Sarmiento, Du Bois, and Vasconcelos is an outstanding scholarly work within contemporary political philosophy. While the book itself offers a compelling set of analyses regarding race, national and pan-national identities, and democratic theory, it is Hooker's scope, methodological innovativeness, and theoretical complexity that make the work exceptional."--Andrea J. Pitts, Critical Philosophy of Race
"Theorizing Race in the Americas is an original and groundbreaking achievement... I would not be surprised if the book becomes in the next few years a central reference for scholars interested in investigating the various conceptions of race across the Americas." -Sergio Armando Gallegos-Ordorica, Radical Philosophy Review
"Theorizing Race in the Americas is undoubtedly a unique and impactful contribution to the study of race. Hookeras methodology for reading race in broader hemispheric context as well as her initiative to put Latin American and African American thinkers on the topic in conversation with each other is groundbreaking. Readers will find a rich analysis of ideas seldom appreciated in their conceptual depth and breadth and the book reminds readers that we must continue to be more thorough and historically attuned theoArists as we expand, deepen, and stretch our conceptualizations of race." --Stephanie Rivera Berruz, Radical Philosophy Review
"Hooker's Theorizing Race in the Americas makes a valuable contribuAtion to both Latinx and Africana thinking and research on race. It offers a new and rigorous analysis of these four canonical figures. Additionally, Hooker introduces a compelling methodological approach-juxtaposition, rather than comparison-that suggests opportunities for further cross-disciplinary work."--Amir Jaima, Radical Philosophy Review
"Apart from..the considerable merits of political insight and intelligence displayed in its composition, [Theorizing Race in the America] is particularly valuable for the theoretical originality and ingenuity of its conception."- Charles W. Mills, Perspectives on Politics


Awards
Winner of Winner of the APSA Race, Politics, and Ethnicity Section Best Book Award.



Book Information
ISBN 9780190633691
Author Juliet Hooker
Format Hardback
Page Count 296
Imprint Oxford University Press Inc
Publisher Oxford University Press Inc
Weight(grams) 581g
Dimensions(mm) 157mm * 239mm * 23mm