DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY

José works primarily in critical race theory, feminist and queer theory, political philosophy, communication theory and social epistemology. He has published five monographs, five edited (or co-edited) volumes, and over seventy articles and book chapters. His latest book, The Epistemology of Protest: Silencing, Epistemic Activism, and the Communicative Life of Resistance, came out with Oxford University Press in 2023. Previous books include The Epistemology of Resistance: Gender and Racial Oppression, Epistemic Injustice, and Resistant Imaginations (Oxford University Press, 2013), recipient of the North-American Society for Social Philosophy Book Award. His current projects focus on how social perception and the social imagination contribute to the formation of vulnerabilities to different kinds of violence and oppression. These projects also explore the social movements and kinds of activism (including what he terms “epistemic activism”) that can be mobilized to resist racial and sexual violence and oppression in local and global contexts. Current book projects on theories of oppression and resistance include the collection of essays Resistance for Oxford University Press, and Communities of Resistance and Prefigurative Politics for Marquette University Press.

Selected Books

The Epistemology of Protest: Silencing, Epistemic Activism, and the Communicative Life of Resistance (Oxford University Press, 2023)

The Epistemology of Resistance: Gender and Racial Oppression, Epistemic Injustice, and Resistant Imaginations (Oxford University Press, 2013) 

Speaking from Elsewhere: A New Contextualist Perspective on Meaning, Identity, and Discursive Agency (Albany: SUNY Press, 2006)

The Handbook of Epistemic Injustice (Routledge, 2017), co-edited with Ian J. Kidd and Gaile Pohlhaus Jr.

Cosmopolitanism and Place (Indiana University press, 2017), co-edited with Jessica Wahman and John Stuhr

Selected Essays

“Epistemic Injustice and Epistemologies of Ignorance”, in Paul Taylor, Linda M. Alcoff, and Luvell Anderson (eds.), Routledge Companion to the Philosophy of Race (Routledge, 2017).

“Pragmatism, Racial Injustice and Epistemic Insurrection: Toward an Insurrectionist Pragmatism”, in Susan Dieleman, David Rondel, and Christopher Voparil (eds.), Pragmatism and Justice (Oxford University Press, 2017).

“The Will Not to Believe: Pragmatism, Oppression, and Standpoint Theory”, in S. Sullivan and E. Tarver (eds.), Feminist Interpretations of William James (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2015), pp. 256-289.

“Communicative Democracy and Solidarity Across Racial and Sexual Differences”, in Ulrike Vieten (ed.), Revisiting Iris Marion Young on Normalization, Inclusion and Democracy (Palgrave: 2014), pp. 33-48.

“An Enactivist Approach to the Imagination: Embodied Enactments and ‘Fictional Emotions’”, American Philosophical Quarterly 50 (3), (2013), 317-335.

“Color-Blindness, Meta-Ignorance, and the Racial Imagination”, Critical Philosophy of Race 1 (1), (2013), 38-67.

“Hermeneutical Injustice and Polyphonic Contextualism: Social Silences and Shared Hermeneutical Responsibilities”, Social Epistemology Vol. 26 (2), (2012), 201-220.

“Toward a Foucaultian Epistemology of Resistance: Counter-Memory, Epistemic Friction, and Guerrilla Pluralism”, Foucault Studies No. 12, (2011), 9-35.

“Wittgenstein as a Rebel: Dissidence and Contestation in Discursive Practices”, International Journal of Philosophical Studies Vol. 18 (1) (2010), 1-29.

“Whose meanings? Resignifying Voices and Their Social Locations”, Journal of Speculative Philosophy Vol. 22, No. 2 (2008), 92-105.

“How to Undo Things with Words: Infelicitous Practices and Infelicitous Agents”, Essays in Philosophy Vol. 8, No. 1 (2007), 1-16.

“Tongues Untied: Polyphonic Identities and The Hispanic Family”, Ethnic Studies Review 29 (2006), 1-21.

“Pragmatism and Ethnicity: Critique, Reconstruction, and the New Hispanic”, Metaphilosophy 35 (2004), 115-146

“Identity Trouble: Disidentification and the Problem of Difference”, Philosophy and Social Criticism 29 (2004), 655-680.