“Ann Stoler has given us an ingenious and compelling reading of the apparent absence of race and colonialism in Foucault’s account of modern power. She shows how colonial history remains embedded in the very conceptual categories that order modern bourgeois society in the West. Written with verve, erudition, and a sense of engagement.”
Partha Chatterjee, Centre for Studies in Social ... Read moreScience, Calcutta "Race and the Education of Desire is a tour de force. Stoler has engaged in a productive dialogue with Foucault’s seminal text, and interwoven that dialogue with an illuminating analysis of the concepts and policies of imperial racism. This book should have a major impact on scholarly discussions of modern imperialism and racism."—Talal Asad, Johns Hopkins University "Ann Stoler combines impressive historical and ethnographic scholarship with moral fervor to turn Foucault’s definition of critique as the ‘art of reflective insolence’ back on his own work. A controversial tour de force!"—Paul Rabinow, University of California, Berkeley "Stoler does something here that’s incredibly rare: the delineation of a topic that now, in retrospect, appears so obvious and so right that one wonders why it had never been broached systematically before. Students of Foucault, race, empire and its aftermath, gender and sexuality will be quoting from it for years."—Andrew Parker, Amherst College "This is an important book, probably the only reading of Foucault that seriously tracks and takes up his probing, restless and recursive leads. Instead of reducing him to an icon of one or more ideas to be either uncritically embraced or irresponsibly discarded, as others have done, Stoler engages Foucault’s dynamic, nervous, and passionate moves towards focusing the interdependence of ideas and forces."—Doris Sommer, Harvard University Show Less