Race’s Recurrence

Theory, Culture and Society 28 (1):112-128 (2011)
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Abstract

The race idea keeps recurring in different guises and yet has an intriguing ‘ever-changing sameness’. Ash Amin has provided an insightful discussion of the question in an earlier issue of this journal. I supplement his account by pointing to the ways in which the nature—culture puzzle identified by Lévi-Strauss creates continuing spaces and seductions for the race idea. I offer an account of the perils of using supposedly ‘natural’ human attributes, as in versions of cognitive anthropology, to explain racism, without completely discounting the idea of human universals. I also explore how ‘race’ retains its continuing hold by intertwining with themes of class, sexuality and nation. I provide an interpretation of racist identities and explain why my account offers both greater pessimism and more optimism than Amin’s more uniform ‘ontological pessimism’.

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References found in this work

The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature.Steven Pinker - 2002 - Tijdschrift Voor Filosofie 66 (4):765-767.
Mythologies.Roland Barthes & Annette Lavers - 1973 - Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 31 (4):563-564.
Orientalism.Peter Gran & Edward Said - 1980 - Journal of the American Oriental Society 100 (3):328.
Ethnicity as cognition.Rogers Brubaker, Mara Loveman & Peter Stamatov - 2004 - Theory and Society 33 (1):31-64.

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