About

Mariana Ortega is an Associate Professor of Philosophy and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Pennsylvania State University. Her main areas of research and interest include women of color feminisms, particularly Latina feminisms, twentieth-century continental philosophy, phenomenology (notably Heidegger), philosophy of race, and aesthetics. Her scholarly work focuses on questions of self, identity, and sociality, as well as visual representations of race, gender, and sexuality. She has published in various academic journals such as The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, International Philosophical Quarterly, Critical Philosophy of Race, Hypatia, Radical Philosophy Review, and philoSOPHIA. Ortega is the co-editor of the anthology 'Constructing the Nation: A Race and Nationalism Reader' (SUNY 2009) and the author of 'In-Between: Latina Feminist Phenomenology, Multiplicity, and the Self' (SUNY 2016). She is also the founder and director of the Roundtable on Latina feminism, a forum dedicated to discussions of Latina and Latin American feminisms. Her current project explores questions at the intersection of aesthetics, practices of othering, memory, the epistemology of ignorance, and Latinidad.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Philosophy
• Law
• Social Science
• Sociology
• Biology
• Visual arts
• Ecology
• Aesthetics
• Epistemology
• Food science
• Art

Selected publications

• Latina Existentialism and the Multiplicitous Self

  2024-02-22

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  While existential phenomenological accounts of selfhood promise theories that do justice to lived experience, they do not always engage the experience of those at the margins. This chapter introduces a notion of multiplicitous selfhood inspired by Latina feminist theory—primarily the work of Gloria Anzaldúa and María Lugones—and Heideggerian existential phenomenology that attempts to do justice to the experience of marginalization. While this self is shown as having important similarities with the Heideggerian account of Dasein, it nevertheless differs from it due to the constant experience of not-being-at-ease. Ultimately, multiplicitous selfhood takes into consideration both the multiplicity and the oneness of the self.

  PublisherDOI

• Impureza Crítica e a Disputa por uma Fenomenologia Crítica

  Phenomenology Humanities and Sciences · 2024-05-27

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  A fenomenologia encontra-se em um momento crítico, enquanto investigadores reinterpretam textos canônicos e reverenciados de Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger e Maurice Merleau-Ponty para tentar demonstrar sua importância política e ética. Mais especificamente, os fenomenólogos desejam demonstrar a relevância da fenomenologia para as análises críticas das diversas identidades sociais. Devido aos compromissos metodológicos com o método transcendental, uma predileção por evidências apodíticas, o apelo para a suspensão da atitude natural e a busca por categorias ontológicas gerais, os investigadores contemporâneos não reconheceram imediatamente a fenomenologia como uma fonte provável para teorizar as estruturas históricas e contingentes. Talvez o problema seja que a própria Filosofia em si, como observa Helen Ngo (2019), tem “uma tendência bem conhecida em direção à abstração e à conceitualização que pode dificultar o reconhecimento da natureza profundamente histórica e da especificidade situada do racismo” (p. 207; grifo nosso) . De fato, a descrição de Ngo sobre o “acerto de contas” da raça pela Filosofia é muito apropriada; a Filosofia precisa confrontar suas práticas de omissão e supressão ou, em resumo, seu racismo. Certamente, uma filosofia como a fenomenologia, que leva a sério a experiência vivida e o mundo da vida, precisa teorizar a raça como uma característica fundamental da experiência vivida e da criação de sentidos. Não fazer isso indicaria um profundo fracasso em se envolver com o famoso “problema da linha de cor” que W. E. B. Du Bois (1989) entendeu tão agudamente como o principal problema do século XX, mas que claramente continua a nos assombrar

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Latina/x Feminisms and Phenomenology

  2023-01-01

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Crossroads in the Flesh: An Interview with Mariana Ortega

  diacritics · 2022-01-01

  articleSenior author

  Jessica Elkayam asks Mariana Ortega about the influence both Latina feminisms and Martin Heidegger have had on the development of Ortega's mestiza theory.

  PublisherDOI

• Critical Impurity and the Race for Critical Phenomenology

  Puncta · 2022-01-01 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Informed by María Lugones’s understanding of the “logic of purity,” this essay analyzes the race for critical phenomenology. It suggests how Lugones’s analysis of such a logic may guide us in developing phenomenological analyses of complex social identities such as race. It also shows how traces of the logic of purity remain even in critical phenomenological analyses of race. Specifically, the essay analyzes the methodological call for a reduction of quasi-transcendental structures. Ultimately an attitude and practice of critical criticality and a mode of critical impurity are suggested so as to avoid problematic traces of the logic of purity. Ultimately, the discussion reveals how Latina feminist theorizing stands to enhance critical phenomenology.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Arts of Address, Being Alive to Language and the World

  Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism · 2021 · 47 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Aesthetics
  • Social Science

  To live is to be addressed, not just by other human beings—friend, foe, lover, enemy, child, clerk, cook, teacher, stranger—but by things all around us, the chair that invites rest, the photograph that pierces, the letter that prompts a smile, the landscape that inspires awe. To read Arts of Address is to receive an invitation by Roelofs that “fuels a reading practice and prompts a kind of participation in day-to-day existence that sparks heightened modalities of being alive to language and the world” (p. 141). The book, then, is not merely an analysis of the notion of address in relation to aesthetics, but an offering and a summons—for a praxis of living, interpreting, and doing philosophy that is cognitively and sensuously attuned to the multifaceted, multivocal, workings of address, which, in turn, promise ethical, political, and aesthetics possibilities, if not to make new or more just worlds, to understand the...

  PublisherDOI

• In-Between-Worlds and Re-membering

  Philosophy Today · 2021-01-01 · 2 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Altars for the Living:

  Northwestern University Press eBooks · 2021-03-15

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Theories of the Flesh: Latinx and Latin American Feminisms, Transformation, and Resistance

  2020 · 54 citations

  • Political Science
  • Political Science
  • Biology

• Queer Autoarte

  Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal · 2020 · 9 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Philosophy
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• José Médina

  Northwestern University

  17 shared

• Kelly Zaytoun

  Binghamton University

  16 shared

• Roundtable Feminism

  Worcester Polytechnic Institute

  16 shared

• Ariel Monterrubianesi

  University of California, Berkeley

  16 shared

• Celia Herrera Rodriguez

  Binghamton University

  16 shared

• John Kaag

  Binghamton University

  16 shared

• Lynn Stephen

  University of California, Berkeley

  16 shared

• Laura Dumond-Kerr

  Worcester Polytechnic Institute

  16 shared

Awards & honors

• Judith Hardes WGSS Reproductive Justice Undergraduate Studen…
• Mimi Barash Coppersmith Endowed Scholarship in Women’s Studi…
• Laura Richardson Whitaker Memorial Undergraduate Award in Wo…
• Wietlisbach Family Award in the Department of Women’s Studie…
• Judith Hardes Fund in the College of the Liberal Arts