BOOK REVIEW Subjects That Matter: Philosophy, Feminism, and Postcolonial Theory Namita Goswami. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2019 (ISBN: 978-1438475660) Lauren Guilmette Elon University, North Carolina, United States Email: lguilmette@elon.edu Namita Goswami’s Subjects That Matter: Philosophy, Feminism, and Postcolonial Theory begins by identifying a common “nonidentitarian value” that feminist and post- colonial theoretical approaches share with philosophy, understood as an open-ended pursuit of wisdom: a deep sense of respect for the “heterogeneity” of our subject matter and for the complexity of existing beings (2). This heterogeneity overflows our human capacity to categorize in any kind of timeless way. As a tenet and a tool for our historical moment, this respect for heterogeneity is more urgent considering our planetary con- text and “the extraordinary collapse of species-life and the destruction of the physical environment” (2). As Goswami observes, “climate change puts the lie to Eurocentrism as heterogeneity is the very basis upon which terrestrial life, human civ- ilization, and human thought depend” (3). In other words, Eurocentrism shows its homogenizing limits as the system that continues to prevent the historical (as well as conceptual) achievements of postcoloniality, while it also destroys the diversity of species-life for a short-term accumulation of resources in the so-called advanced West. Goswami suggests that we might productively thwart Eurocentric frames when we work to uphold our “subject matter” without clinging to inherited frames of refer- ence, such as what “properly” counts as “philosophy” and other forms of disciplinary legitimacy in the Euro-US academy. Goswami’s book will be of interest to decolonial feminist researchers, scholars, grad- uate and advanced undergraduate students, especially those engaging Spivak’s question of subaltern speech, and/or those drawing insights from Frankfurt School critical theory to more recent feminist and/or postcolonial conversations, and/or those exploring crit- ical animal studies, environmental philosophy, and other inquiries attuned to an eco- logical, more-than-human frame, without forgetting the differential distribution of harms in the ongoing history of Western imperialism and globalization. This book will be generative for scholars and students looking to make connections between and among these critical concerns, and to explore underlying concerns of “difference” and the possibility of a nonantagonistic understanding of difference. Goswami’s inquiry begins from the question that animated her dissertation, in response to Gayatri Spivak’s 1988 essay, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” This question was: “Who was Roop Kanwar?” The answer, at least on paper: a nineteen-year-old Indian widow who was immolated on the funeral pyre of her husband, as a sati, before 5,000 spectators in 1987. As Goswami writes, “No matter what scholarly tradition I used © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Hypatia, a Nonprofit Corporation Hypatia (2023), 1–4 doi:10.1017/hyp.2023.51 https://doi.org/10.1017/hyp.2023.51 Published online by Cambridge University Press