This article provides a Foucauldian perspective on the racialised biopolitics of Islamophobia in the global north. It is argued that a pervasive, wide-ranging racialised logos is being used to unde...

This commentary uses Paul Gilroy’s controversial claim that new technoscientific processes are instituting an ‘end to race’ as a provocation to discuss the epistemological transformation of race in algorithmic culture. We situate Gilroy’s provocation within the context of an abolitionist agenda against racial-thinking, underscoring the relationship between his post-race polemic and a post-visual discourse. We then discuss the challenges of studying race within regimes of computation, which rely on structures that are, for the most part, opaque; in particular, modes of (...) classification that operate through proxies and abstractions and that figure racialized bodies not as single, coherent subjects, but as shifting clusters of data. We argue that in this new regime, race emerges as an epiphenomenon of processes of classifying and sorting – what we call ‘racial formations as data formations’. This discussion is significant because it raises new theoretical, methodological and political questions for scholars of media and critical algorithmic studies. It asks: how are we supposed to think, to identify and to confront race and racialisation when they vanish into algorithmic systems that are beyond our perception? What becomes of racial formations in post-visual regimes? (shrink)

This introduction to this special section on race considers the case for the thesis advanced by Ash Amin in his article ‘The Remainders of Race’ that the conjuncture of vernacular and biopolitical racism has resulted in an upsurge in racism. It draws from three responses to that article by Abdou-Maliq Simone, Denise Ferreira da Silva and Ali Rattansi to problematize explanations for racism which appeal to ideas of human sorting instincts and other universalisms. It examines efforts to combat racism through (...) multiculturalism and non-racial policies implemented in different parts of the world. The role of biopolitics and of neoliberalism in inflecting such policies is highlighted. Lessons are drawn for the analysis of racism from Foucault’s critique of political economy and the functioning of the discourse of ‘race war’ in legitimizing the power relations sustaining systematic inequality in society. The implications for a new politics of the commons are then drawn out. (shrink)

This paper argues that Foucault’s genealogy of racism deserves appreciation due to the highly original concept of racism as biopolitical government. Modern racism, according to Foucault, is not merely an irrational prejudice, a form of socio-political discrimination, or an ideological motive in a political doctrine; rather, it is a form of government that is designed to manage a population. The paper seeks to advance this argument by reconstructing Foucault’s unfinished project of a genealogy of racism. Initially, the paper situates the (...) genealogy of racism within the context of Foucault’s work. It belongs to a period of transition between the mature and the late part of Foucault’s work, more specifically a period of transition from discipline to governmentality. The paper proceeds by reading closely key passages from the 1976 lectures at Collège de France in which Foucault proposes to rethink racism as a form of biopolitical government. While Foucault’s genealogy of racism remains an incomplete project, lacking for example any substantial treatment of European colonialism, the paper proposes to expand the Foucauldian analysis by linking it to the pan-German discourse between 1890 and 1914. Finally, the paper reflects on some of the implications of the Foucauldian analysis, in particular attempts to understand and counter contemporary forms of racism. Foucault’s genealogy of racism, in short, shows us the constructedness of our racialized world and challenges us to develop new and more effective strategies to change it. (shrink)

In the multiplying uncertainties of urban life, entrenched, mediated positions are increasingly difficult to sustain — a dynamic which simultaneously intensifies and counters a racialized biopolitics. In such contexts, is it possible for racial significations to become ironic instruments in the everyday experimentations of residents trying to figure out new ways of both engaging and retreating from each other, of trying to figure out new calibrations of collectivity that enhance the value of differences, not only as markers of navigation, but (...) as a means of curtailing the increased urban emphasis on individual competence and eligibility? (shrink)

This article reflects on a significant dimension of the modern history of race in Europe and the world: the processes of mobility of humans as things that accompanied the scientific pursuit of the immutable racial condition of humans. It asks what it might mean to approach racial conceptions as historically embedded in, and shaped by, racial regimes of mobility, that is, the regimes encompassing the practices and apparatuses for the displacement of human bodies as “scientific things” of racial significance for (...) museum and laboratory networks. The article articulates race in Europe as entailed in a history of national, colonial, and postcolonial regimes of mobility. First, it is suggested that the history of race in science can be understood as the history of regimes of mobility of humans as things. It is then discussed how this history of mobility regimes connects with the making of collectives within and beyond Europe—national, imperial, indigenous, and postcolonial. Finally, the article investigates the contemporary expressions of racial regimes of mobility. (shrink)

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’. (shrink)

Through listening to the voices of students, educators and community members can begin to reconstruct the culture of urban schools that are often full of stories about student deficits, genetic explanations about achievement, and cultural mismatch theories that may be traced to historical and sociological ideologies. The purpose of this heuristic qualitative investigation was to explore the ways in which student voice can contribute to reculturing high schools in urban settings. Data sources for this study included videotaped interviews and observations (...) in two Midwestern urban high schools to explore the stories of 28 culturally and linguistically diverse students in grades 10 through 12. Findings suggested that the teens in these urban high schools want caring teachers who listen attentively, provide engaging learning opportunities, and who demonstrate high expectations for achievement. They did not want teachers who, in essence, perpetuate hegemonic discourses via pedagogical practices, and school environments that resemble prisons. At the same time, students wanted more structure to ?avoid chaos? and asked teachers to give attention to the paradigm of the personal within the school curriculum. We extend the meaning of the study to include student voice as a critical stance for reconstructing the cultural context of urban schools, which entails listening to students to identify complex and sensitive topics for dialogue and inquiry. (shrink)