between race, gender, class, safety, and convenience that complicate the South African transportation landscape, as well as the normative discourses of mobility that privilege some practices while restricting others. 1 My bus travel takes place in a
Search Results
Race and the Micropolitics of Mobility
Mobile Autoethnography on a South African Bus Service
Bradley Rink
Susan L. Smith
This project reveals the false conceptual space within which the contemporary debate about the nature of race is taking place. There is an implied spectrum within philosophical discussions of the nature of race that ranges from purely biological accounts of race to purely socially constructed accounts of race. In reality, no account of race can be given which exists at either extreme of the spectrum. The same discussion also applies to accounts of ethnicity. Ethnicity, though typically thought of as a non-biological entity, can be shown to be the result of a combination of nature and nurture or biological and social effects. In this project I examine six contemporary positions on race and ethnicity and illustrate how each makes the assumption that race and ethnicity are two distinct concepts. These positions include those proposed by Naomi Zack, Sally Haslanger, Joshua Glasgow, Linda Martin Alcoff, Robin Andreasen and Jorge J. E. Gracia.
'Race' and Its Contemporary Confusions
Towards a Re-statement
Crain Soudien
Central in clearing the ground around the standing of the concept of 'race' are two positions with which we need to come to terms. The first is what I call 'the science' position and the second 'racial realism'. Neither of the positions is coherent and homogeneous. Neither, also, self-consciously projects itself as a political position in response to the other. In this contribution I attempt to bring these positions into a clearer juxtaposition with a view to developing a statement about the value of 'race' as an analytic concept. in taking this expository route I lay out what 'the science' position is in the first part of the discussion and proceed to engage with 'racial realism' in a second. The premise with which the 'science position' begins, adumbrated above, is the argument that 'race' cannot be empirically demonstrated. It takes its substance from the historical time and place in which it finds itself. In the Althusserian sense its materiality is in the effects of ideology. The second position of racial realism argues that the science position is naïve and fails to understand the materiality of 'race'. The focus of this paper is the second position. It looks at the issues and shortcomings of this position.
Occupation, Race, and Empire
Maxence Van der Meersch's Invasion 14
W. Brian Newsome
In his 1935 novel Invasion 14, Maxence Van der Meersch painted a nuanced picture of the German invasion and occupation of northern France during World War I. Despite local controversy, Invasion 14 won national and international praise, losing the Prix Goncourt by a single vote. Though neglected in the wake of World War II, when the author's treatment of Franco-German relations between 1914 and 1918 ran headlong into evolving myths of widespread resistance between 1940 and 1944, Invasion 14 has garnered renewed attention as a window onto the occupation of World War I. Heretofore unappreciated, however, is Van der Meersch's use of colonial themes of race and empire. Based on research in the Archives Maxence Van der Meersch, this study explores the author's treatment of colonial motifs, demonstrating their centrality to the novel and the debate it generated.
In Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques
- Published (Print):
- 01 Mar 2014
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 47–66 (20 total)
Caroline Bressey
Though a substantial and groundbreaking book, the comprehensiveness of E. P. Thompson's narrative in The Making of the Working Class highlighted its many absences. This article considers the potential for examining the black presence within a Thompsonian framework of class in eighteenth-century England. It focuses on the politics of multiethnic solidarity, considering why black history remains so marginalized when key organizations and political moments, such as the Cato Street Conspiracy and the London Corresponding Society, both present in The Making, were multiethnic in their political ambition and their membership. Through the discussion of a Victorian multiethnic community of antiracist activists, this article also examines how research focusing on the intersecting geographies of race and class can contribute to the foundations of scholarship of English history provided by The Making.
In Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques
- Published (Print):
- 01 Mar 2015
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 70–82 (13 total)
The Nemesis of the Suburbs
Richard Turner and South African Liberalism
Steven Friedman
its adherents what to think and write, while Turner was more likely to persuade them to act to change the world. The Race of Class Turner’s view of capitalism may have made an impression on his students but it is not the reason why he was so
A White Race Blindness?
Abstract Universalism and the Unspeakable Making of Race
Sarah Mazouz
seminal work, historian Joan W. Scott sheds light on how abstract universalism was an ideological mystification in the case of gender equality. 4 In the case of race, far from being an ideology of inclusion, abstract universalism allows one to
In French Politics, Culture & Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Jun 2021
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 116–135 (20 total)
Target Practice
The Algorithmics and Biopolitics of Race in Emerging Smart Border Practices and Technologies
Tamara Vukov
central place that race continues to hold as a key biopolitical vector in the regulation of mobilities through the mechanism of the border. Focusing largely on the Canadian—U.S. border, it seeks to consider how race is being enacted and reconfigured
Obscuring Race
Franco-African Conversations about Colonial Reform and Racism after World War II and the Making of Colorblind France, 1945–1950
Emily Marker
In 1945, the first significant cohort of African, Caribbean, and Malagasy deputies were elected to the French National Assembly, where they participated in special parliamentary commissions tasked with colonial reform. This article traces the contours of postwar conversations about colonial policy, race, and racism that took shape in those commissions, as metropolitan and colonial deputies confronted these issues face-to-face, as ostensible equals, for the first time. Deputies of color tried to force frank discussions about racial inequality in their campaigns to reform political representation, working conditions, education, and compensation for Africans. Their metropolitan counterparts responded, however, by developing new code words and rhetorical strategies that deflected accusations of systemic racial inequality in postwar Greater France. The competing understandings and ways of talking about race and racism produced in this encounter helped consolidate a postwar speech regime of “colorblindness” that obscured the way racial logics were inscribed in the new institutions of the postwar Republic.
In French Politics, Culture & Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Dec 2015
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 1–23 (23 total)
“White” Guadeloupeans of “Mixed” Ancestry
Complicating Analyses of Whiteness and White Supremacy
Ary Gordien
racialization process it reveals originate in the former French Caribbean colonies where slavery took place, most discussions on blanchité (and more generally on race) tend to focus on the racial dynamics at play on the mainland. Based on a retrospective
In French Politics, Culture & Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Jun 2021
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 95–115 (21 total)