Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T14:50:25.816Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Comparative Racialization: An Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Shu-Mei Shih
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In the Fall of 2004, members of the MLA committee on the Literatures of People of Color in the United States and Canada felt that it was time to assess the state of the study of race in literary studies as we approached the twenty-year anniversary of the publication of the seminal collection “Race,” Writing, and Difference (1986), edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., which contained contributions from some of the most important scholars of race. It may appear that studying race is now largely taken for granted in English departments and that we no longer need to place quotation marks around race to emphasize its constructedness. Many scholars, though, feel a deep sense of anxiety that the situation with regard to race may have been normativized and comfortably compartmentalized but not improved. Intellectual tokenism abounds, as do equivalences between phenotypes and fields of study, with notable exceptions in larger metropolitan universities. For those of us outside English departments, the situation has barely improved. Each discipline has its unique historical baggage, and some are more able to discard their baggage than others, while some have been placed under greater pressure to change. But the truth of the matter is that some are just plain unwilling to acknowledge the significance of race even as they strive to update their disciplines and expand into new areas. In the extensive field of literary studies, it is premature to state that race has arrived, and it is not at all certain that the relation between race and critical theory, so central to the Gates volume, is settled. To a large extent, critical theory continues to see race as exterior to it, transcendent of the theorizations and lived experiences of race. Even though South Asia-based postcolonial theory has geared us to the study of colonialism and its consequent postcolonial complexities, it has also long held a strongly ambivalent relation to race studies.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 123 , Issue 5: Special Topic Comparative Racialization , October 2008 , pp. 1347 - 1362
Copyright
Copyright © 2008 by The Modern Language Association of America

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Alcoff, Linda Martin. “Is Latina/o Identity a Racial Identity?” Hispanics/Latinos in the United States: Ethnicity, Race, and Rights. Ed. Garcia, Jorge J. E. and Greiff, Pablo de. New York: Routledge, 2000. 23–44.Google Scholar
Bakhtin, Mikhail. The Dialogic Imagination. Ed. Holquist, Michael. Trans. Caryl Emerson and Holquist. Austin: U of Texas P, 1981.Google Scholar
Étienne, Balibar. “Toward a Diasporic Citizen? From Internationalism to Cosmopolitics.” Creolization of Theory. Ed. Lionnet, Françoise and Shih, Shu-mei. Forthcoming.Google Scholar
Balibar, Étienne, and Wallerstein, Immanuel. Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities. London: Verso, 1991.Google Scholar
Banton, Michael. The Idea of Race. London: Tavistock, 1977.Google Scholar
Ben-zvi, Yael. “Where Did Red Go? Lewis Henry Morgan's Evolutionary Inheritance and U. S. Racial Imagination.” New Centennial Review 7.2 (2007): 201–29.Google Scholar
Bernasconi, Robert. “Who Invented the Concept of Race? Kant's Role in the Enlightenment Construction of Race.” Race. Ed. Bernasconi, . Malden: Blackwell, 2001. 11–36.Google Scholar
Brickman, Celia. Aboriginal Populations in the Mind: Race and Primitivity in Psychoanalysis. New York: Columbia UP, 2003.10.7312/bric12582CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buck-Morss, Susan. “Hegel and Haiti.” Critical Inquiry 26 (2000): 821–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Champagne, Duane. “From Sovereignty to Minority: As American as Apple Pie.” Wicazo Sa Review 20.2 (2005): 21–36.10.1353/wic.2005.0019CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cherki, Alice. Frantz Fanon: A Portrait. Trans. Nadia Benabid. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2006.Google Scholar
Conn, Steven. History's Shadow: Native Americans and Historical Consciousness in the Nineteenth Century. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2004.10.7208/chicago/9780226115115.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. “Geopsychoanalysis: ‘… And the Rest of the World.‘” The Psychoanalysis of Race. Ed. Lane, Christopher. New York: Columbia UP, 1998. 65–90.Google Scholar
Eze, Emmanuel Chukwudi. “The Color of Reason: The Idea of ‘Race’ in Kant's Anthropology.” Bucknell Review 38 (1995): 200–41.Google Scholar
Eze, Emmanuel Chukwudi, ed. Race and the Enlightenment: A Reader. Oxford: Blackwell, 1997.Google Scholar
Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks. Trans. Charles Lam Markmann. New York: Grove, 1967.Google Scholar
Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks. Trans. Richard Philcox. New York: Grove, 2008.Google Scholar
Fanon, Frantz. Les damnés de la terre. Paris: Maspero, 1961.Google Scholar
Fanon, Frantz. Peau noire, masques blancs. 1952. Paris: Seuil, 1965.Google Scholar
Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. Trans. Richard Philcox. New York: Grove, 2004.Google Scholar
Fujikane, Candace. “Asian Settler Colonialism in Hawai'i.” Amerasia 26.2 (2000): xv–xxii.Google Scholar
Goldberg, David Theo. “Racial Europeanization.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 29 (2006): 331–64.Google Scholar
Goldberg, David Theo. Racist Culture: Philosophy and the Politics of Meaning. Oxford: Blackwell, 1993.Google Scholar
Harvey, David. Spaces of Capital. New York: Routledge, 2001.Google Scholar
Hedrick, Todd. “Race, Difference, and Anthropology in Kant's Cosmopolitanism.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 46 (2008): 245–68.Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel. “From Physical Geography.” Eze, Race 58–64.Google Scholar
Khana, Ranjana. Dark Continents: Psychoanalysis and Colonialism. Durham: Duke UP, 2003.10.1215/9780822384588CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kim, Claire Jean. “The Racial Triangulation of Asian Americans.” Politics and Society 27 (1999): 105–38.10.1177/0032329299027001005CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Memmi, Albert. Racism. 1984. Trans. Steve Martinot. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2000.Google Scholar
Mills, Charles. The Racial Contract. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1997.Google Scholar
Murji, Karim, and Solomos, John. “Introduction: Racialization in Theory and Practice.” Racialization: Studies in Theory and Practice. Ed. Murji, and Solomos, . Oxford: Oxford UP, 2005. 1–27.Google Scholar
Nelson, Benjamin, and Gittleman, Jerome, trans. “Max Weber, Dr. Alfred Ploetz, and W. E. B. Du Bois (Max Weber on Race and Society II).” Sociological Analysis 34 (1973): 308–12.Google Scholar
Omi, Michael, and Winant, Howard. Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s. 1986. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 1994.Google Scholar
Palumbo-Liu, David. “Rational and Irrational Choices: Form, Affect, and Ethics.” Minor Transnationalism. Ed. Lionnet, Françoise and Shih, Shu-mei. Durham: Duke UP, 2005. 41–72.Google Scholar
Philcox, Richard. “On Retranslating Fanon, Retrieving a Lost Voice.” Postface. The Wretched of the Earth. By Frantz Fanon. Trans. Philcox. New York: Grove, 2004. 241–51.Google Scholar
Poole, Debra. Vision, Race, and Modernity: A Visual Economy of the Andean Image World. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1997.Google Scholar
Posnock, Ross. “How It Feels to Be a Problem: Du Bois, Fanon, and the ‘Impossible Life’ of the Black Intellectual.” Critical Inquiry 23 (1997): 323–49.10.1086/448831CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rafael, Vicente. White Love and Other Events in Filipino History. Durham: Duke UP, 2000.Google Scholar
Said, Edward. Culture and Imperialism. New York: Knopf, 1993.Google Scholar
Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Vintage, 1979.Google Scholar
Said, Edward. “Representing the Colonized: Anthropology's Interlocutors.” “Reflections on Exile” and Other Essays. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2003. 293–316.Google Scholar
Said, Edward. The World, the Text, and the Critic. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1983.Google Scholar
Takeuchi, Yoshimi. What Is Modernity? Writings of Takeuchi Yoshimi. Ed. and Trans. Richard F. Calichman. New York: Columbia UP, 2005.Google Scholar
Trask, Haunani-Kay. “Settlers of Color and ‘Immigrant’ Hegemony: ‘Locals’ in Hawai'i.” Amerasia 26.2 (2000): 1–24.Google Scholar
Wallerstein, Immanuel. “The Construction of People-hood: Racism, Nationalism, Ethnicity.” The Essential Wallerstein. New York: New, 2000. 293–309.Google Scholar
Wallerstein, Immanuel. “The Rise and Future Demise of the World Capitalist System: Concepts for Comparative Analysis.” The Essential Wallerstein. New York: New, 2000. 71–105.Google Scholar