Rey Chow

A Face Drawn in Sand: Humanistic Inquiry and Foucault in the Present by Rey Chow presents Foucault not just in relation to his own chosen areas (of subject and time) or his contemporaneous time and events, but in conversation with us and the world we now inhabit. This is both what we do when we reference an important thinker as well as what we sometimes forget to do at the same time.

While Foucault's major works are often referenced as well as many of his (relatively) minor works, they are usually brought to bear on the same topics. While understandable it also means we have, for lack of a better term, gotten into a rut with how and where we use his ideas. Chow utilizes a much wider swath of his work and ideas, bringing them into conversation with each other (so we might gain new perspectives) then bringing them into ongoing debates and issues where he may well have been overlooked.

I usually approach books of this sort, at least initially, in one of two ways. I either devote almost all of my energy to understanding what the author is presenting or I spend some energy on that (it is essential to try to understand a writer's argument) but devote most of my energy to how things in the book are influencing my thinking. I always start by trying to understand then, if something sends me down a path, I often follow that path more rigorously than I might otherwise. This book actually made me do my best to do both. I love a book that challenges me to both understand it as completely as possible (I am still a couple rereads away from that goal) and apply new insights to my own thinking. At one point I looked at and read some work on some of the art mentioned here and found myself looking at some other works with a new eye.

I would hesitate to recommend this to someone not very familiar with Foucault though I think it can be quite enlightening for such a reader. But it does help to already have solid ideas about what he thought as well as at least some of the nuances of his thought. I highly recommend this to those who have read and may often cite Foucault in their own work and/or thinking. If you're like me you will likely revisit some of his work and, most important, rethink the ways in which you use his ideas.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.… (altro)

Explores the issue of cultural otherness in fiction, film, and other forms.

At a time when cultural identity has become intrinsic to the way we read our many "others," Rey Chow argues that what demands to be examined critically is no longer identity politics per se but the idealism—especially in the sense of idealizing otherness—that lies at the heart of identity politics. She discusses multiple cultural forms—fiction, film, popular music, poetry, and essays—and a range of cultural topics—pedagogy, multiculturalism, fascism, sexuality, miscegenation, fantasy, nostalgia, and postcoloniality.

Rey Chow is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Irvine. She is the author of several books, including Woman and Chinese Modernity, Writing Diaspora, Xie zai guo yi wai, and Primitive Passions: Visuality, Sexuality, Ethnography, and Contemporary Chinese Cinema, which was awarded the James Russell Lowell Prize by the Modern Language Association.… (altro)